The great wounded bird

"If World War II is ancient history to you, The Great Wounded Bird may let you know just what it was like to be in it. What it feels like to drop bombs on strangers, what if feels like to swim out of a bomber, not to really understand war even though you're in one. You'll learn how young men in a strange land, in frightening situations, remain ordinary young Americans who do things they never thought they would be obliged to do, who come to accept danger and hardship as a normal way of life, who never realize they are doing anything out of the ordinary and accept extraordinary events as something they had signed up to endure without question, having given their country a blank check, their power of attorney, because millions of young men just like themselves had done so. Learn that being in combat had its carefree moments, that being a prisoner of war behind barbed wire was not always grim, that the enemy was not always evil, that the camaraderie of shared peril is stronger than blood ties. All this without the reader ever having heard a shot fired in anger."--Jacket.