The first page you read and already one is reading a story within a story. You know this book is about war and yet you read a story of a man in his own world to keep his love alive with a woman that may not love him. Such anecdotes is what this Whole book is encompassed with.
Anecdote-Brief story, told to illustrate a point or serve as an example of something, often shows character of an individual.
"First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New jersey They were not love letterss, but Lietenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his hfingers, and spend th e last hour of light pretending. He would imagin romatic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire..." (pg 1)
Such an anecdote makes the reader more informed about where the heads of some of our great soldiers really, in fact are, some of them are not really "in the war" so to speak but live inside the world of fantasy to pass the time and make war more "bearable". But of course there will always be exceptions to this rule. Some men revel in the pains of war and that is just another type of person.
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