Dalton Trumbo
E Johnny prese il fucile

"The First World War began like a summer festival, all skirts blowing in the wind and golden epaulettes.
Millions and millions of people waved their handkerchiefs from the sidewalk while the feathered imperial heights, the serenities, the field marshals, and other such idiots paraded through the streets of Europe's main cities at the head of their glittering battalions.
It was a generous moment, a time of bragging, of bands, of poems, of songs, of innocent prayers. August throbbed and gasped for the prenuptial nights of young noble officers and the girls they would leave forever behind.
A Highland regiment on its first battle marched up the hill following forty kilted bagpipers blaring with all their might... against the machine guns."

“Johnny Got His Gun” tells the story of Joe Bohnam, a nineteen-year-old American soldier who, during the First World War, due to a bomb explosion, remains

Hospitalized in a military hospital and kept alive by machines that nourish him and allow him to breathe, Johnny will slowly become aware of his condition. A mind imprisoned in a body that no longer has anything human, hostage to a brain that will never stop bouncing against the walls of the cage of flesh and bones in which it is imprisoned, he will relive some of the most intense moments of his past, clinging to the stumps of the life that once belonged to him.

“Johnny Got His Gun” was written in 1938, when, to use the author's words, “pacifism was anathema to the American left and also to a good part of the center”. After the events of Pearl Harbour, its reprinting and distribution were hindered. From the moment it was published, it was exploited by both political factions, criticized, and even derided. Even in Italy, until a few years ago, finding a copy of this book could be very, very difficult.

It is a book against war, the Gospel of a Christ without legs and arms to be crucified with, without eyes to turn to heaven and without a mouth to invoke forgiveness for the humanity that condemned him.
A book that speaks of homesickness, childhood memories, nights of love before departure, city bands that salute trains full of kids sent to die.
A book of generals pinning medals on the chest of those who will never be able to see or touch those medals again.

But it is also (perhaps mainly?) a book about loneliness, isolation, a desperate need to communicate, and an obstinate, at times inexplicable, will to live.

It is all the war concentrated in a single stump of flesh.
To remember the "difference between the war as described in propaganda campaigns and the war fought in the mud, alone, against the bombs".

"Take me along the country roads and stop at every farm in every field and then sound the gong so the farmers with their wives and children and the laborers and servants come to see me. Tell the farmers here is something you have never seen before. Here is something the plow does not remove. Here is something that will never grow nor bear fruit. The manure you spread on your fields is revolting enough, but here is something that is even lower than manure because it does not die, it doesn’t rot, and it doesn’t even fertilize a weed. Here is something so terrible that if it were born to a mare or a heifer or a sow or a sheep you would kill it instantly but this cannot be killed because it is a human being. It is a brain. It thinks all the time. Whether you believe it or not this thing thinks and is alive and goes against all the rules of nature even if it was not nature that made it so.

You know who did it.
Look at its medals; they are real medals, probably made of solid gold.
Lift the lid of the box and you will see who made it this way.
This is the stink of glory."