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// Author's Afterword 
// Story: A Great Endeavor 
// by Rune Soldier Dan 
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First off: Thank you for making it through this project with me. It has eaten up many hours of my life, and – for all its flaws – I am extremely proud of it. It is my tendency to affectionately refer to my writings as “scribbles.” Not so with this work, into which has gone significant research and emotion.

I hope to have entertained, first and foremost. Such is the purpose of fiction. I hope to have provided a few historical insights too, though this is in no way intended to replace actual educational literature (READ A BOOK!). And I quite enthusiastically hope to have made at least one person reading this pause and THINK. All those involved in the war were human, like you and me. Humans do not wake in the morning and randomly decide to be heroes, or send their soldiers to pointless death, or commit mad atrocities. They are brought to such decisions by human motivations and reasoning. 

I believe that trying to understand these motivations brings with it a kind of humbling wisdom. But for chance of birth, that Nazi man committing murder may have been us. And you or I may have been him.

If you’ll indulge me a soap-box, that is why we must act with tolerance towards our fellow man. Everyone believes that “I” am a reasonable, basically-good person. No one believes themselves to be evil. “Evil” is not an intention. It is an action, one almost certainly committed by a person who believes themself to be doing right. If you want to know if what you do is right, don’t ask yourself. Of course you’re “right.” Instead, look at what effect it’s having on your fellow human beings. Resist the urge to act, speak, and vote with the intention to silence dissent and ostracize groups. No matter how extreme you find another’s ideals, you must not infringe on his right to speak it. Otherwise…

…Well, liberal philosophy aside, we’re all enthusiastic adult fans of a show for little girls. The hypocrisy is doubled when it’s us doing the ostracizing and judging.



Alright, I’m done. On to my sources of inspiration, all of which come highly recommended.

-If You Survive (book) by George Wilson, a first-person account of his own experience as an American infantryman in the European Theater. It strikes me as a quintessential infantry memoir: Tactics, facts, and feelings are all covered from the grunt soldier’s perspective, giving a good picture of their struggles without becoming mired in drama or details. The “Bitter Woods” chapter was heavily inspired by his description of an artillery bombardment, and it is not the only time Wilson shows men die in utter waste. It is not all “War is Hell,” though, as he also takes pains to convey the grim sense of duty to see the job done. Thus, a good balance is struck between peaceful and patriotic instincts in the writing.



-Killer Angels (book) by Michael Shaara, a fictional account of the Battle of Gettysburg. Not a WWII novel, but one with a brilliant writing style that I could fanboy on about. One or two word sentences abound in it, conveying emotion and action rather than proper sentence structure. The result feels very close to human feeling: simple and sharp. It also means that much is conveyed with few words, allowing the story to proceed at a rapid pace with no lost tension. I find it to be an excellent, accessible style, and recommend it for anyone interested in writing military fiction with an emphasis on the ‘human’ aspect of war. It also gave us an excellent monologue from Buster Kilrain, one of the characters:

“The truth is, Colonel, that there's no divine spark [in Humanity]…There's many a man alive of no more value than a dead dog. Believe me, when you've seen them hang each other. Equality? Christ in Heaven. What I'm fighting for is the right to prove I'm a better man than many. Where have you seen this divine spark in operation, Colonel? Where have you noted this magnificent equality? The Great White Joker in the Sky dooms us all to stupidity or poverty from birth. No two things on Earth are equal or have an equal chance, not a leaf nor a tree. There's many a man worse than me, and some better. But I don't think race or country matters a damn. What matters is justice. 'Tis why I'm here. I'll be treated as I deserve, not as my father deserved. I'm Kilrain! And I God Damn all gentlemen. I don't know who me father was and I don't give a damn…”

“…The strange and marvelous thing about you, Colonel darlin', is that you believe in mankind, even preachers. Whereas when you've got my great experience of the world you will have learned that good men are rare, much rarer than you think.”



-Stalingrad (1993 Movie), about a German “band of brothers” during the Battle of Stalingrad. Made by a German director, it is a brutal ride through every single horror war could ever conceive. What really distinguishes it from Insert any war drama here is the stark humanity and realism. No one mans up and saves the day, spits death in the face, or even goes down in a blaze of glory. Their wills are crushed, their best efforts are pointless, and their deaths achieve nothing. It is a movie of friendly fire, of starvation and atrocity. It is a horror movie far more terrifying than anything I could ever put on paper.

-Sabaton (music), a Swedish Heavy Metal band that – no fooling – creates its songs around historical battles and events, mostly in the WWII era. I basically recommend their everything, but “Rise of Evil” in particular sends chills down my spine (and was running through my head during the Prologue and Kristallnacht chapters), and “40 to 1” (focusing on the Battle of Wizna, the “Polish Thermopylae”) always gets the blood pounding.



And that’s that for that. I was tempted to jabber on about scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor, but I think I’ll call it here. Thanks for coming along with me on this very rocky ride through a very different war.