Unbroken

I grew up in WW II, the enemy and its readiness to kill in view nearly every day.

Maybe that explains my life-long interest in war literature and film, each well-crafted tale reinforcing and deepening my revulsion to war.
War, I’m convinced, must have all the devils dancing in hell with glee, confident that it will turn many a warrior into a devil too.
 
No book has brought that home to me as painfully and unforgettably as did Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand.

Were it fiction, it would still have been a memorable read, though I would’ve dismissed some characters and events as simply too incredible.  But it is fact, and fact, we know, is sometimes stranger than fiction. In this case, it took me into the heart of darkness so relentlessly and graphically that I could hardly disentangle myself from its terrors between readings.

 
Yes, war is about death-defying acts of courage.  About giving one’s life for another. But also about taking a life from another. About danger and fear so unremitting and intense that it can inflict life-long psychic damage. About demonic acts of cruelty that destroy one’s dignity and break the human spirit.  

More than anything, of course, war is about people. Like Louis Zamperini, an Olympic long-distance runner, becoming a long-distance bombardier in the war against Japan.  If it’s possible for one to die many deaths, Louie does: on bombing missions, crashing into the vast Pacific, drifting in a leaky raft for nearly fifty days, falling into the brutal hands of Japanese prison guards who inflicted daily beatings and torture and near starvation.

But somehow Louie survives, in a badly damaged body, and with a plague of horrific memories that unravel his spirit.  His descent into the depths of inhumanity has been too steep and prolonged. Neither the adulation of the nation, nor the love of family, nor the love of a beautiful wife can put Louis Zamperini together again. 

Only the love of God can – and does.  Profound and inexplicable. And unforgettable. As it always is when grace makes its amazing entry.

At the end, this reader, too, felt blessed.