Salinger's Military Experiences In The Hurtgen Forest

523 Words2 Pages

Antonio
Gomez
Per.2

The Hürtgen Forest

Salinger's military experiences in World War II traumatized him and made him a phonomenal writer.The battle in the Huertgen Forest of Germany the U.S. forces were outnumbered four to one, insufficiently supplied and sporadically reinforced with troops so exhausted they stepped on the dead bodies of their comrades. The soldiers were unsafe wherever they went. You had almost no chance of survival as a soldier. There were effects on the soldiers that did survive,they would never forget what happened to there friends.

Next salinders world war 2 experience was horrible he described one horrific event as “ the resulting bursts in metal and wood fragments downward ripping through a man's back his abdomen or most frequently his arms”. He thought himself there was minimal chance of surviving “ the safest thing to do was the huddle against a tree of course the problem with that was that the tree often took direct hits and exploded or toppled over”. Salinger had to indear bad …show more content…

All he say on a daily bases was his friends being killed “a man could hug the mood for dear life only to take your blood and shoulder through his head or in the back of his thighs since these were generally the highest parts of the body”. The Hürtgen forest was an experience to remember “ some could never set foot in woods again”.

Finally the Hürtegen forest affected salinger in many ways. Some effects are that it permanently scared him he could not get the buring smell of flesh out of his nostrils. He was traumatized he was in war for 290 days he went crazy. Due to all that he was seeing in the forest he suffered a nervous breakdown. I think it made his writing realistic he described the characters in his book as if they're real. Salinger had demons inside of him i think this is why he disappeared when his book was a top seller ,the demons from the war would never go

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