List of authors in war

Many of the authors that served in various real-life wars (and survived) wrote stories that are at least somewhat based on their own experiences. Some of them are outright memoirs or fictionalized accounts of their exploits.

World War I

• Henri Barbusse, served in France (Under Fire)
• E. E. Cummings, volunteer ambulance driver (The Enormous Room)
• Robert Graves, infantry officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers (Goodbye to All That)
• Jaroslav Hasek, served in Austrian and Czech armies (who were on opposing sides), (The Good Soldier Svejk)
• Ernest Hemingway, drove ambulances in Italy (A Farewell to Arms)
• Thomas E. Lawrence, Arabian Lawrence (Seven Pillars of Wisdom)
• Erich Maria Remarque, infantry soldier, wounded in Passendale (All Quiet on the Western Front)
• Siegfried Sassoon, infantry officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers (Memoirs of an Infantry Officer)
• Lajos Zilahy, (Century in Scarlet)

Spanish Civil War

• Laurie Lee, served on the Republican side (A Moment of War)
• George Orwell, served and wounded on the Republican side (Homage to Catalonia)

World War II

• J. G. Ballard, interned boy in a Shanghai (Empire of the Sun)
• Pierre Boulle, in British Special Forces (Bridge on the River Kwai)
• Samuel Fuller – (The Big Red One)
• Sven Hassel, Danish-born penal regiment soldier
• Joseph Heller, served in 12th Air Force (Catch-22)
• Alistair MacLean, in the Royal Navy (HMS Ulysses)
• Norman Mailer, served in South Pacific (The Naked and the Dead)
• Harry Martinson, Swedish volunteer in Winter War (Verklighet Till Döds)
• John Masters Gurkha officer, served in North Africa and Burma with the Chindits (Bhowani Junction, The Road Past Mandalay)
• Leon Uris, in United States Marine Corps (Battle Cry)
• Gore Vidal, in US Army (Williwaw)
• Kurt Vonnegut, US infantry soldier, survived bombing of Dresden as a POW (Slaughterhouse Five)
• Evelyn Waugh, in Royal Marines, later Royal Horse Guards served in Crete and Yugoslavia (Men at Arms, The End of the Battle)

Vietnam War

• David Hackworth, in US Army (Vietnam Primer, About Face, Steel My Soldiers' Hearts)

Gulf War

• Anthony Swofford, in US Marines (Jarhead (book))

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