William Warren Walton

Springyboks William Warren Walton

If we read our history books, if we follow the media - TV and newsprint - if we watch the Hollywood and Pinewood studios depictions of war, if we read pop fiction or romance novels about war, then we often form a limited view of what war does to people, nations, and our society. In secondary school I began to read about war. It took some Latin translation work but I got the gist of The Gallic Wars by Julius Caesar. Of course before the Romans there were the Greeks like Thucydides, the Egyptians, and Sun Tzu. The Americans had their Indian wars and then a civil war; the Brits had King Arthur, the Crusades, and endless squabbles with their neighbours across the channel. Authors such as Remarque, Hemingway, Tolstoy, Heller, and Greene sparked my interest in the soldier; however it was Guy Sajer's The Forgotten Soldier that kindled the idea for my stories. The Canadian idea of being Peacekeepers with the United Nations was a noble thought but what does a soldier do in Rwanda, Bosnia, the Sudan, or Afghanistan where people fight tribal or religious wars? What does the soldier do when ordered to fight for land, commercial gain, or political dominance? One could say that war is an atrocity and the people who fight are to blame for the results of war. The soldiers would of course defer to the generals, and the generals to the politicians, and the politicians to society's belief in God or the Fatherland. My stories, some set in historical events, are about the people who served - from privates to generals.