My dad was a big admirer of Sergeant York stories from the First World War.

My father was in the First World War.

Culturally, the First World War is the war that stands in for other wars.

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.

The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits.

The U.S. military was segregated 'til the Korean War, and the blacks in World War Two were totally segregated.