Other generations have their war writers. I mean not the essayists, debating policies, or the journalists, corresponding from the lines. War philosophers and cameras. I mean the voice of the war, voices made in it. Hemingway was not a soldier, but he was there. And we had Mailer, and James Jones. We had Tim O'Brien, even Anthony Swofford.
It is a little unlikely to imagine. Armies are different these days. Service is not compulsory, so educated elites do not fight. Working-class soldiers have made writers before, but something else is off. Romance is not anymore in war, and causes not grand. That too is old. But do writers go to wars? The writers we know cannot think of it.
Yet they are there. Certainly, already they are there. Some of them will be killed and never write but some too will write. True we will get war memoirs, and Iraq thrillers, but thought too, literature. So they are there already. They are being made and it becomes a strange thought, them sitting between the bullets and mortars, laying in barracks, the ones who will write, eyes wide, polishing their weapons.
