Look in his eyes...its all there.I guess for me the defining Vonnegut legacy can be embodied in his 1969 novel “Slaughterhouse Five”. The book is a semi-fictional recounting of the bombing of Dresden in WWII - an event that Vonnegut was firsthand witness to as a prisoner of war being held in that city. The allies carpet bombed the city so heavily that it created a firestorm of unimaginable ferocity - literally hell on Earth. 30,000 died and Vonnegut and other surviving POW’s were given the grim task of piling the bodies in heaps for mass cremations.
My good friend Carl, now dead, was a WWII combat infantryman who spoke to me often of the experiences he endured. His nerves were pretty much shattered forever in the war. I have seen him have the same look on his face as the photo above.
How sad.
No comments:
Post a Comment