this is the beginning of a story i am writting about WWII its called tragedies of a near far, so please tell me what you think about it The BAR rang out so loud that it seemed to be splitting Johns head in two. He tried to set up out of his fox hole and find the rest of his platoon around him but enemy bullets made the effort futile. The air reeked of screams of pain and agony and the snow was no longer white and innocent but drenched in red and stood as a grave for so many young men. “Maintain your intervals!” the sergeant would repetitively yell in fear that the men would forget their training and he would be to blame when a single mortar round would end the lives of a dozen or so men. “Pull your head out of your ass and fire that god damn rifle Private!” Simple words meant nothing to these young “boys” who have grown by seeing the worst sights known to man while they were still in their adolescents. They were trained to take the lives of others who they never knew but yet hated with such a deep passion that it seemed like it was the right thing to do. John didn’t care any more. He couldn’t bare to see another one of his newly found brothers die while he watch, unable to do a thing, only comfort them as they lay where they fell, lay where they would lay for eternity. John glanced over at a fellow soldier, who lay dead in the snow. So hollow he had appeared. Only a shell of a man, a human being, and a life once lived in this shell, but now nothing. It seemed so surreal to John how this was so, one moment life flowed through this body, but now it was separate from the rest of the world. “INCOMMING!” John had only looked up to see the danger from above when he was thrown violently like a rag doll several yards to finally come to a stop against a tree. He lay motionless in the cold snow as the bitter cold air brushed against his face. Was he dead?, he thought to himself. He had absolutely no idea what was going on around him, he was unable to comprehend reality to his own thoughts as he lay in a hypnogogic state. He then saw himself, years earlier on the bus that he had rode to his first day of boot camp. He seemed younger then, unscarred by the extremes of war and oblivious to what he was getting into by joining the military.
I'm really sorry but that did nothing for me, your text seems clumsy and has a lot of cliches have you researched this period in history before you started this? S
well I'm happy to go through it and point out what I feel isn't working, however maybe we should wait for others to comment first, if other people disagree with me, they can say what they think I could be missing S
read some robert service. i can tell that you identify with this period, and this story. it's really hard to tell it without leaning on the noise that has been fed to us, since that period, by hollywood. try to make it a much more personal perspective. try to shake off the images you've received. for some reason your psyche is telling you to tell a story that for some ineffable reason has become your own. how does it relate to YOUR mind? how does it relate to YOUR soul? is there a parallel modern perspective? i really enjoy your up-front language and clear-cut simplicity. why do you, as the author, identify with this story? perhaps you can imbue your perspective on this tale, make it more personal and make it connect that way...like someone sitting next to you in a bar, pouring out his soul to strangers for penance.
out of fairness I would say that War storys do nothing for me, so my opnion will be coloured by that S
I wouldn't bother trying to write about a combat situation unless I'd been there, which I haven't. For a good fictional piece about the Vietnam war (small unit action in I Corps, Ashau valley, 1970, U.S. Army), read "The Thirteenth Valley" by John del Vecchio. Del Vecchio puts you right down there in the night and rain, scared shitless but hoping most of all to be accepted by the other men in your unit. One reason my short story on this thread, "Marathon", works is that I've been there and I know exactly what I'm talking about, down to every gritty detail. Nothing is made up except for a few short bits of dialog and some names.
