Breaking the Silence: Veterans’ Untold Stories from the Great War to Afghanistan
Thomas Allen Publishers
October 3, 2009
ISBN-10: 0-88762-465-0
“Never talked about it.”
That’s what most people say when they’re asked if the veteran in the family ever shared wartime experiences. Describing combat, imprisonment or lost comrades from the World Wars, the Korea War, or even Afghanistan is reserved for Remembrance Day or the Legion lounge. Nobody was ever supposed to see them get emotional, show their vulnerability. Nobody was ever to know the hell of their war.
About 25 years ago, Ted Barris began breaking through the silence. Because of his unique interviewing skills, he found that veterans would talk to him, set the record straight and put a face on the service and sacrifice of men and women in uniform. As a result of his work on 15 previous books, Barris has earned a reputation of trust among Canada’s veterans. Indeed, over the years, nearly 3,000 of them have shared their memories, all offering original material for his books.
Among other revelations in Breaking the Silence, veterans of the Great War reflect on an extraordinary first Armistice in 1918; decorated Second World War fighter pilots talk about their thirst for blood in the sky; Canadian POWs explain how they survived Chinese attempts to brainwash them during the Korean War; and soldiers with the Afghanistan mission talk about the horrors of the “friendly fire” incident near Kandahar.
Breaking the Silence is a ground-breaking book that goes to the heart of veterans’ war-time experiences.
On the 11th of November 2012, I purchased Breaking the Silence, I have not been able to put this book down, well authored with passion that jumps off of every page… This is one of the few books that I have had the pleasure of reading, that was composed because the events of these modist soliders needs to be told, and needs to be heard. I have not been able to get through a chapter with out a dry eye.