Barry Hanna is recognized as one of our nation’s finest contemporary writers. Here, Hannah reads an excerpt from his story Testimony of Pilot. Who had Barry escorted B-52s on bombing missions in North Vietnam. He was catapulted off the bottom. Richard in his suit at 100 degrees temperature, often at night, and put the F-4 when all it could get. The tiny cockpit, the immense, long, $2 million fuselage, wings, tail and jet engine quad. Barry, the genius master of his Dragon flying up to 20,000ft, had to be cool. All his trips want this easy. He’d have to blast out in daytime and get with a B-52s, and a Sam missile would come up among them. Two of his mates were taken …

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Bobby Ann Mason’s famous first novel, In Country, explored the public reaction to the Vietnam War and its veterans in the mid 1980s. The novel’s protagonist, Sam, is a 15 year old girl whose father was killed in the war. In this excerpt from the end of the novel, Sam makes a pilgrimage to Washington, D.C. to visit the Vietnam War Memorial with her grandmother, mama, and her uncle Emmett, who was also a veteran. Here, take the camera, Sam, get his name. Mama has brought Donna’s Instamatic. No, I can’t take a picture this close. Sam climbs the ladder until she’s eye level with her father’s name. She feels funny, touching it and scratching on a rock. Writing something for future archeologists …

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Shelby Foote served in the U.S. Army in the Marine Corps during World War Two. In this selection from his Civil War novel Shiloh, he follows one Confederate soldier into battle. When we were halfway up the rise. I began to see black shapes against the rim where it sloped off shore. At first I thought they were scarecrows. They look like scarecrow. That didn’t make sense. Except they look so black and stick like. Then I saw them move and wiggling and a rim broke out with smoke, some of it going straight up and some jet and jaw. It all lined rolling and jumpers pitch up from east in the north. I’m in like walks past my ears. I thought aloud …

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