So here for the first time in decades was a war story entirely free of literary finesse. It was most definitely free of black irony and high style. In other words, it was not a book about a writer writing about war, a la Herr or Liebling, for that matter, but a simpler book about soldiers at war. A book that showed how terrible war was, but that did not portray war as pure madness or soldiers as sadists, stooges, victims, or lunatics, or any combination of those things. It was a return to an age-old literary form, a story of brave men at war.
