The word you’re missing is veteran. Stephen Ambrose isn’t a WWII vet, and I’m struggling to think of an American director who was. Off the top of my head, Roman Polanksi and Andrzej Wajda seem appropriately cynical.
And don’t forget Salinger’s contributions to the grumpy vet genre.
Sam Fuller is the first one that occurs to me; The Steel Helmet was a Korean War movie made while the war was still going on, and The Big Red One was based on Sam’s own experiences fighting across Europe with the 1st Infantry Division.
Sam Peckinpah was a Marine and was sent to Japan in 1945 immediately after WWII, but (according to Wiki) he says he witnessed combat there between Japanese & Chinese soldiers, which affected his attitudes toward violence.
And Robert Altman, of course.
[QUOTE=Tom Tildrum]
Note too that in the excerpt from S5 quoted above, Vonnegut is expressly mocking FHTE. His book isn’t just about the war; it’s also a reaction to earlier books about the war.
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I don’t think the passage from “Slaughterhouse 5” is aimed so much at “From Here to Eternity” as it is at the rah-rah WWII movies that often starred John Wayne (e.g, The Sands of Iwo Jima). That’s why there’s also that potshot at Wayne who, like Sinatra, never served during the war.
Actually, it was the other way around. Losses for night sorties were double those of daylight sorties.
