Excerpt from Johnny Got His Gun (Addendum: 1970)
Dalton Trumbo wrote Johnny Got His Gun in 1938 and published it in 1939. This harrowing novel deals with an American youth missing in action and hideously injured in World War I—his arms, legs and face have been blown away—who can do nothing but endure his tomb-like existence and recall the memories of a family that is unaware that he has survived and relive his life before his dismemberment. Although the novel is set in the years following World War I, it is not primarily interested in recording the experiences of that war; instead, the novel is meant to be a pacifist statement at the beginning of World War II. Trumbo reissued Johnny Got His Gun for yet another war, this one in Vietnam. Below is the introduction he added to this 1970 edition, at a time the Vietnam War was sending young Americans home broken, in body bags.
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