Writing about War

I don’t know anyone whose life hasn’t been affected by war. In fact, I’d go further and say that there can hardly be anyone alive today whose existence isn’t a consequence of war. War has shaped human society for thousands of years, and it’s impossible to think of a time – our own most of all – when there hasn’t been a war being waged somewhere in the world, or when the economic and social effects of war have not been felt, even by those not directly involved in the fighting.

So, for our grandparents and great-grandparents’ generation, there was the Boer War and the First World War; our parents had the Second World War and Korea. Even the period of relative peace that has followed has seen the Vietnam war and the Cambodian genocide; the Arab-Israeli conflict and the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland; the Iran-Iraq war and the Gulf War (parts I & II) – not to mention civil wars in Nigeria, Mozambique, Angola, Rwanda and the Congo… oh, and in Bosnia, Chechnya, Croatia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq… The list seems endless: a murderous catalogue of tribal hatreds, religious factionalism, and pointless slaughter.

Just now, it’s Afghanistan, that graveyard of imperialist dreams, which is in the news again. Night after night we watch the footage of dusty desert landscapes and devastated villages and soldiers in camouflage uniform, and read the terrible litany of names of those killed – many of them blown up by the roadside bombs that have become such a dreadful feature of the campaign. The anguished faces of the relatives and friends of those who have died reproach us from our television screens.

The sound of gunfire, off in the distance,
I’m getting used to it now…

The words of the 1979 Talking Heads song, Life During Wartime, which uncannily presages the mood of unease and paranoia of the ‘War on Terror’ and its aftermath, have never seemed more apposite.

It was partly a feeling of helpless rage at the futility of all this that led me to try and write about war, and its effect on individual lives, in my most recent novel, The Dark Tower. In doing so, I chose to focus, not on more recent conflicts, but on an earlier instance – the Anglo-Zulu war – in which many of the same factors that led to the British and U S forces becoming involved in Afghanistan were also present. The desire to assert supremacy over an unruly, and comparatively unsophisticated, people. The desire to punish insurgency, and prevent its recurrence. The desire to protect vested interests, and strengthen useful alliances.

In describing the terrible débacle of Isandhlwana, I was trying to show how such disasters happen. It didn’t seem to me that much had changed, in the intervening 130 years, beyond the obvious changes in weaponry and social attitudes. ‘Underestimate Not Your Enemy’ was the caption on a famous political cartoon of the time – and it became all too apparent that that was exactly what the British in Zululand had done.

The Zulus will never accept our terms, he had written to his mother a few days before. We have demanded too much. They must surrender everything – or fight… Do not be afraid for me, he had thought to add. These people know nothing of modern warfare. They cannot hope to prevail…

Revising my 1997 novel, Undiscovered Country, for re-publication (by Arbuthnot Books) in September, I was reminded how much that work, too, is overshadowed by the memory of war – in this instance, the Second World War. Here, as in The Dark Tower, I wanted to show that the damage caused by war is long-lasting. In Undiscovered Country, several of the characters bear with them terrible memories of the war – memories they hope to escape, by making a new life in Venezuela. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they find that this is not as easy as it might seem.

He sees now that he and Sofie were also casualties of a kind. It was true that neither had died, or suffered more than an average amount of pain or distress – and yet the more he thinks about their present situation, the more it seems to him that the war was to blame…

War changes lives for the worse – that goes without saying; but its effects are not always malign. Without the Second World War, as I have said, the shifting of vast numbers of people from country to country – whether as refugees or as combatants – would not have taken place. The world as we know it simply would not exist. Without the war it is unlikely – to take just the example of my own parents – that a Dutch engineer would have met and married an English teacher in Venezuela, and that they would have brought up their children there. For this reason, I think of myself as a child of war, although I was born almost a decade after the war ended.

But as I research my next book – which is partly set during the First World War – it occurs to me that we all, to a greater or lesser degree, live our lives in a war zone.

TOP 10 NOVELS ABOUT WAR

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
This panoramic depiction of Russia during the Napoleonic Wars, published in 1869, remains one of the greatest novels about war ever written. Its set-piece account of the Battle of Borodino is a masterpiece of realist writing – perhaps inspired by the author’s own experience of fighting in the Crimea.
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
This, one of the definitive novels of the First World War, was published in 1929 and describes the carnage on the Western Front from the point of view of a young German soldier – whose experiences were based on the author’s own .
Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington
Also published in 1929 was this bitterly cynical account of the needless slaughter of young men that took place during the 1914-1918 war. The author was himself wounded on the Western Front.
We That Were Young by Irene Rathbone
The First World War is here seen from a woman’s perspective, in a novel – published in 1932 – which anticipates Vera Brittain’s autobiographical Testament of Youth, in its often graphic and harrowing account of serving as a VAD on the Western Front.
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Another 1929 novel with a WWI backdrop is this tragic love story, set during the Italian campaign, and based on the author’s own experiences of the conflict.
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
Mailer made his name with this 1948 novel, inspired by his experiences as a young soldier fighting in the Pacific during WWII.
The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen
London during the Second World War is the setting for this superb novel about love and betrayal, published in 1949, which shows what the war was like for the tens of thousands of civilians caught up in the Blitz.
Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh
First in the Sword of Honour trilogy, published between 1952 and 1961, which describes the author’s own wartime experiences both as would-be combatant, and in various ‘desk jobs’, in typically cynical vein.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
More blacker-than-black humour is to be found in Heller’s searingly funny account of life as a pilot serving in the Army Air Corps during WWII, published in 1961.
Empire of the Sun by J G Ballard
Although not published until 1984 – many years after the events described took place – Ballard’s fictionalised account of his childhood experiences in occupied Shanghai during the Second World War offers a vivid record of what took place, and is among the best things he ever wrote.