Let Slip the Dogs of War

I never understood how books were worked on for several years, even ten, before the author felt it was finished. I never understood it until I realized that the majority of my work presently has been laying in abandoned notebooks or stuck in my head for decades not really knowing what to do with it.

For instance, I've been working on World War II-era novels for at least a decade. At this point I've narrowed it down to a trilogy and nearly finished with the research for one I titled The Dogs of War. It takes it's title from the quote from Marc Antony in the Shakespeare play Julius Caesar, where Caesar is freshly murdered and Antony makes a declaration that he's going to hunt down the people that plotted against Caesar and kill them.

I just finished reading a book about Dog Company of the 2nd Ranger Battalion (see why I titled it that?) and I had thought I had pretty good knowledge of the company from previous research through the years.

I was wrong.

At Pointe du Hoc, I knew they lost about 90% of their men when they fought to hold the strategically important pointe on D-Day. The fight was incredible. It didn't compare, however, to Hill 400. This seems like it would be the last great battle the rangers would be on. They considered that their darkest hour.

When the battalion hit the hill with two companies (Dog and Fox), they were attacking a point that the Germans were planning on using for an observation post for the upcoming Battle of the Bulge. The Germans dearly needed that hill. So, when the rangers took it after climbing up a frozen hell they were faced with artillery and onslaught of German counterattacks while dangerously low on men.

It was to the point they were calling artillery on their own positions and the shells were intermixed with German artillery. Trees were gone due to them exploding from shells. At one point, the rangers only had a handful of men against the very best of the Germans. They fought wounded and dying. What saved them was their training and courage that were etched into their character. When the rangers were relieved far past when they were supposed to be, only twelve men of Dog stood strong. There wasn't anyone who wasn't killed or wounded.

When I read about history and battles like this, is the pure desperation that must've been felt. I feel that too many times we look back at history and pass judgment of those who lived then, as though they should have known better.

Why? Why should they have known better? They were operating on the knowledge they had at that time. Soldiers never know if they're going to live or die in a battle or a war. They don't even know if they're fighting on the right side of history. I guess historians decide that later. But that's why I fell in love with writing and history.

As I write a story, I keep in mind that the characters have no idea how I the book will end. They don't know the end I have planned. The tenacity that the individuals of history show to get through their present time not because they know their making history, but because they're simply living. History is not made up of fortune-tellers but people doing their best to live their life.

Write that. Live that.