Miracle at St. Anna by Jame McBride

Miracle at St. Anna by Jame McBride - 271 pages

While I remember watching and enjoying the movie this book was turned into (2008), I was not impressed with the book.  This novel tells the story of four Buffalo soldiers in World War II who find themselves trapped behind enemy lines in the Italian mountains.  One, Sam Train, tries to save the life of a injured young Italian boy by bringing the boy along with them (figuring when they found their back to HQ there would be medical care).  Eventually, they find themselves hiding in an Italian village.  Also going on concurrently, is the search to find the missing men, the story of a partisan, the stories of the people in the village, and the story of a massacre at the St. Anna church.  While the descriptions are elegantly written, the back and forth of all the story lines plus extra added "fluff" with no relevance to the story is rampant and just killed the experience to read this book. If this book wasn't for this month's theme, I would not have finished it.

Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, by Shigeru Mizuki

Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, by Shigeru Mizuki, 372 pages

This graphic novel tells the story of a group of Japanese soldiers in the second world war who fight to their "noble" death; those who survive are found unacceptable and forced to either commit suicide or participate in a suicidal attack against Allied troops.  Mizuki, who was a soldier himself during the war, writes in the afterword that this story is, in fact, 90% true.  This was a really powerful work, told from a point of view that I do not believe I have ever read, and really only seen in the film Letters From Iwo Jima.  I highly recommend this to readers who like graphic novels such as Maus or Persepolis.