Ted Barris is known for his interviews of veterans, particularly Canadian veterans. Usually this is organized around a specific battle or campaign, using those interviews to fill in the details left from the official documents. Breaking the Silence is also based on interviews but used in a different way.
In this book, Barris gathers interviews from veterans ranging from the First World War to Afghanistan. This time, the story is not a specific battle but the veterans themselves.
Barris goes into a bit more depth with the relationships that he had with these men and women. We get to know more about them than just how they did in battle. There are some truly amazing stories.
Barris knows veterans well, and he shares with us the things they rarely tell anyone. Going beyond the details of a battle or the pranks played on one another, they share how they actually felts and the struggles they went through.
If I had one criticism of this book, it is that I would have liked there to have been more interviews with veterans of Afghanistan. The books opens with the hint that’s where it was going, but then focuses almost completely on the first two world wars and Korea.
Still it was a great book, not learn more about war but to learn more about veterans.
