I was just reading Kafka'a journals and I came upon an entry about house to house searches during wartime that stopped me cold. It's short, so I'll reproduce it in its entirety below.
But first, a question: what are you reading - ancient or new, fiction or non - that seems to speak to you thoughts/emotions about the war, or war in general?
I've seen - and taken part in - several great threads about what people are reading, but I'm interested particularly in war writing. (Anyone who was good pull quotes can feel free to post those, too.) Have at it.
Kafka, Blue Octavo Notebooks, second notebook (1917?):
At last our troops succeeded in breaking into the city through the Southern gate. My contingent encamped in a suburban garden, among half-burnt cherry trees, waiting for orders. But when we heard the high clangor of the trumpets from the southern gate, nothing could hold us any longer. With whatever weapons each of us had snatched up, in disorder, each with an arm round his comrade, yelling our battle cry of "Kahira Kahira," we trotted in long columns through the marshes toward the city. At the Southern gate all we found now were corpses and yellow smoke, billowing over the ground and hiding everything from sight. But we did not want merely to be the rear guard and at once turned into narrow streets that had hitherto remained unscathed by the battle. The door of the first house splintered under my ax, and so wildly did we push into the hall that at first we were cchurning around each other in confusion. An old man come towards us out of a long empty passage. A strange old man--he had wings. Wide, outspread wings, the tips taller than himself. "He has wings," I called out to my brotehrs-in-arms, and those of us in front fell back somewhat, as far as we could for those behind, who were pushing on. "You are amazed," the old man said. "We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so." "Why did you not fly away?" I asked. "Fly away out of our city? Leave home? Leave the dead and the gods?"
That man was ahead of his time.