[Ottis413]

This isn't so much a Tolkien related post, but in a round-about way it might be. (I can't sleep, just need to do something.)
My Dad passed away on Oct. 6th of this year, 4 days before his 87th birthday.
I Had found this website while looking for some good Fan-fic to download and read on my laptop while staying at the hospital, some two and a half hours fast drive from my house, so Mom, Shell and I stayed there. I wrote part of the story "the last Gray Ship" sitting beside his bed while he slept.
He was a WWII vet, (Europe, 44-45) and had a millitary furenial, the first I had been too. Vetrens from the VFW did the hounors, and it was very touching, they do a great service and I was very impressed.
Mom and I went through some of his stuff this evening. There was some stuff from where he was in the CCC camps in the 30s, and from the different places he was stationed in the millitary before being shiped overseas in 1944. (We found his "little black book" from that time, kind of an eye opener, mom and dad had been married for 44 years, but it seems he "got around" a bit in his younger days.
Also, there was sone stuff from his days as a coal miner, a paper from where he was hurt on the job states that he made $75.78 a week (1948) and he had told me of the Depression, when a dollar a day was good pay.
He retired from the WV Dept. of parks and receration, and had for many years worked for the Forestery Division growing trees to reclaim old strip mining jobs. He loved nature and the forests. He told me many time about being in the Arden Forest during the battle of the buldge, and how he hated what the war done to it(as well as his frends). He maintained a part of the Allegheny Hiking trail for a time, and that was about his favorite job.
The thought came to me that he and Tolkien would have got along well, Dad only got to the 6th grade before going to work, but he was an avid reader, that and his love of nature would have given them a common ground to meet on.
I also wonder what 'The Lord of the Rings' would have been like if Tolkien hadn't been in WW I, I know a lot of people has debated this, but I'm sure it would have been quite different.
A lot of great authors have been combat vetrens of varyous wars through history, one of the first (real) books I remember reading as a kid was 'All Quiet On The Western Front', (also 'Lord of the Flies', but I don't remember if the author of that was a war vet, but it was war related).
I wonder what great works will come out of the conflicts around the world today, and how many great people who would have writen great things, or done great things, have died in wars through history.......
[end ramble]

[SilverMoonLady]

*understanding nod* I have to agree with you, that war, like any other event in one's life (though often more sharply, more traumatically), most certainly informs one's understanding of the world, sometimes one's very perceptions, and there is no doubt in my mind that Tolkien's time in the trenches influenced the form and substance of his creative endeavors.
After my own father passed away, it took a while for me to be able to look beyond the formal papers and things to settle. Four years later, I was at last able to open the "Atlantis box", the case he kept all of his pictures, sailing logs, sea charts and mementos of the vaguabond portion of his life, the part that came before me. It was a strange journey, to say the least... But it was nice to get to know who he was, besides being my father.
Made me think a lot about what I will be leaving behind one day as well.

[Yavanie]

(love your place line under your avie.... one of my favorite pieces for Tolkien).

as for Authors and wars and it's influence, first, as Veteran's Day was observed this past week here in America this somehow seems appropriate. Your dad sounds like he was an amazing man and I'm sure his life had an enormously positive affect on you, so thank you to you on his behalf for his service to this country and the conflict in WWII. My father served in the Coast Guard at the end of WWII, and I am blessed that both he and my mother are still living and in relatively good health.

I have just finished reading a book about Robert the Bruce, King of Scots and with every page I kept thinking how much can one man suffer and still retain principles and honor. It was just page after page of conflict, battles and treason. Forces that shaped the land, the people and the leaders.

I do think Tolkien's experience could not help but impact him. Tragedy and conflict test and temper the measure of a man (person). I believe therein an insight is gained that could not be shaped otherwise.

I have read some of Tom Clancy's novels and as fascinating as they are, there is an element that seems lacking and I think you might have a line on it. As military as some of his books are oriented, I don't believe he has served in the military (at least in time of war) and perhaps his books would be different if that were the case.

Overall, an interesting point. Thanks.

[Ottis413]

[NeumeIndil]

First and foremost, my condolances for your dad. I'm working on a writing project (might be a play) about this same situation inspired in part by my grandmother's death this spring. Going through her things was some of the hardest work any of my family had ever faced, but it reminded me of all the things she'd seen and done and helped her family do in that time and it was simply too much not to write about.

www.wwiimemorial.com is the url for the National WWII Memorial where you can register your father as a WWII vet if he isn't already (the VFW might have done it).

I think the most gritty and disturbing book I've read about a war was The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (sp?). He served in Vietnam and wrote about it very beautifully, but very realistically. I've read other books about that conflict and I'll third the motion that there's some element (of reality?) absent if they haven't seen battle, or in O'Brien's case spent months on end wondering who was the next to be killed unexpectedly. I think part of that something missing might be joi de vivre or however the heck you spell it. Put simply, the guys who lived through war long enough to write about it appreciate the ability to tell a story more than those who haven't risked their lives and only know military conflict from an outsider's perspective. Maybe it's just that having risked losing their lives, they're more grateful to be alive and that's the element that makes those stories that much more and better and different.

[ghettoelleth]

I think a big part of the impact that war had on writers in the time of Tolkien, Maugham, Lewis, and so very many other is an element of war that no longer exists. There will never again be another Iwo Jima, Normandy, D-day Invasion, or even Hamburger Hill. At least not for the US. The last two wars, (Gulf), we're largely staged miles off the coast of the countries we were opposing, there was no hand to hand combat, very little use of ground troops, comparatively and, thank God and with the exception of the current conflict, mind bogglingly few allied casualties.

We no longer fight wars on the level of those times and as a whole, America is a country with an astonishingly low infant, adolescent and young adult mortality rate. Basically, we are, as a whole, rarely forced to deal with mortality on that level any longer. I believe that the issue of mortality and all that comes as a result of consdering the transient nature of man, shaped and influenced the very foundation of so many works of literature from before the 70's. The issues which had such a profound impact on so many of the writers of that era are simply foreign concepts to most modern day European and American writers. I can't think of a single author from the past twenty years destined to be a literary giant of that caliber in a relevant genre. In order to find the great works of literature of this magnitude, turn to the writers from third world countries and you find that element of understanding and truth of what the horror of a war like The War of the Rings might entail. Immediately, In The House of the Spirits comes to mind, a book by Isabel Allende, forced into exile from her native Chile after her uncle, Salvador Allende, president at the time, was assassinated. Another South American who conveys the same sense of presence urgency and inherent feel for wartime is the Argentinian screenwriter, Hector Babenco, who wrote the screenplays for movies like Kiss of the Spider Woman and At Play In the Fields of the Lord.

This is not to say that there are not US or European servicemen who have suffered in war greatly, its simply that, it is, thankfully, not anywhere near the level of days of old.

[Rous]

Sorry for your loss. It has been twenty-three years since I lost my step-dad, but the pain is still just as intense. He, too, was a WWII vet. We used to laugh at him; he joined the Army because he was afraid of being drafted into the Navy (humongous fear of water), then spent his entire tour on an Army supply ship. We never got over the irony of that.

I also agree about the experience. There is another thread on personality dealing with, to me, this very issue. I think good writers write about what they know. They pour a part of themselves into the characters and the story. You can write about anything, but if you have first hand knowledge of it, it just makes it more believable. A doctor can describe childbirth in a very realistic way, but a woman who has borne children will have a take on it that no man can truly have. And, it bears (pardon the pun) out in the writing.

On the other topic, I wrote my feelings for my step-dad in a book I gave him for his last birthday. It was supposed to be in his casket, but I guess the funeral director took it out. Years later, I came across it in my mother's things when I went through them. I tore me up to read, but I treasure it. Along with the silly letter my mom wrote on an adding machine (remember those) roll of paper.

Memories. They are what sustains us, and makes for great reading.