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So @maej43 & I have been chatting. All year I have been thinking about a research project where I got access to an unpublished diary of a solider turned academic started in 1915.
He volunteered. He was scared about missing out. He was underage. He saw the carnage and then his officers realized how young he was they sent him to take care of trees for ships. Because he was a baby thrown into war by old men.
He documented everything and was so painfully loyal. Until 1944. And I remember reading his entries. And how everything changed. One of his entries said basically: it would have been worth everything if we had changed but we didn’t.
In movie terms or for a novel it would have ended there or been a dramatic change. It wasn’t. But it very much gently turned from a hero documenting his life to a tired tired man (in his 40s?) documenting what was wrong with him, his life and his world.
For me I stopped studying history. I started into the sociology of science and history.
