For Our Beloved Country: American War Diaries from the Revolution to the Persian Gulf

Seven narratives by men serving in seven American wars convey with sharp immediacy--and varying skill--the details of wartime experience. Here's the cast: a Continental soldier from Connecticut in the Revolutionary War; a Massachusetts cavalryman in the Union army, Civil War; a nurse from Illinois in the Spanish-American War; a Michigan man in the ambulance corps in France, WW I; a Texan flying missions from a carrier in the Pacific, WW II; an Army platoon leader from Arizona during the Vietnam War; and a young warden in charge of Iraqi prisoners during Operation Desert Storm. The Continental army soldier and the WW I ambulance driver are true writers; their material is absorbing. The Union cavalryman's observations are interesting, if not unusual; the nurse's comments on the dead and dying in Cuba are occasionally moving; the pilot includes a suspenseful passage about a carrier landing after dark. The Vietnam and Gulf War diaries are less noteworthy. Readers may wonder if the unrepresented Korean conflict is truly ``the forgotten war.'' Morgan and Michaelson are, respectively, the founder and managing editor of the Missouri Review. (Jan.)