I'm not an expert or anything, but it seems to me that a cursory glance of history reveals one central fact: that the primary motivator behind building great civilizations is to centrally accumulate as many bodies together so as to form a fighting cadre of such power that the only rational step is to go out and vaporize or enslave all your neighbors. War is in our systems. We love the carnage. Or at least, we find the pain and misery it inflicts okay as long as we have a "reason to fight." Whether we're making the world safe for democracy, stopping dictators from taking over the world, or halting the bone-chilling machinations of genocide, humans are there, in the mix, hurling ordnance at each other.
It is not unusual to read of men and women who returned home after the war "not being able to settle down" or "having a go at everything" because they weren't sure what to do with their lives. Many were restless for months or years after their experience in the war. There was also a sense of bitterness that people who had not served in the war would never understand exactly what it was like for those men and women who participated in World War I.
A tale of a Soldier about his return from World War. It is a beautifully tale of restless disillusionment, the inability of a warrior to adjust to peacetime, and how the horrors of war live on in the hearts and minds of those who must carry on, manifesting themselves over and over in both subtle and obvious ways.
It is the spring of 1925 and war soldier returns to his home town in America. Awaiting Soldier are his wife and son, whose memories have sustained him through the....
