The Personality of War

The Personality of War – A volume comprising five pieces.<br /> <br />Dresden.<br />Now an old man, a onetime Air Force flyer recalls his time in the night sky during the bombing of Dresden.<br />For the incineration of a hundred and forty thousand souls, if things went right, for the destruction of a graceful city, of its old walls and obedient gardens, they flew east. He was the navigator.<br /> <br />Rehearsals for the Death of Taipei.<br />One day every year Taiwan practiced its defenses against its possible invasion by China, or for its own invasion of China. Here is the moment in Taipei.<br /> <br />Battle Songs.<br />Music is as much the sound track to certain grainy recollections as it is to silent movies. Here are the popular songs of WW2 and the warfare they recall.<br /> <br />This Perilous Winter in St Moritz.<br />Holidaying at St Moritz as he had since childhood, German industrialist Herr Genscher rides the cable car to the mountain top to meet his son, and recalls his vacation here on leave from World War Two, as did resting British officers, sharing the ski runs.<br /> <br />The End of All Wars.<br />Four stories, moments which ended World War Two, moments for a small band of German women who formed a chamber orchestra in a cellar in East Berlin, moments for a fighter pilot in New Guinea who disobeyed the cease-fire, for another pilot who was exercising in clouds over the Arafura Sea when told the war is over, and the end of the War in Vietnam for a soldier so damaged by warfare he brings cruelty home with him as if it were a trophy.