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P.M. Kippert’s novel, One Man’s War, follows 19-year-old Bob Kafak through his experiences in World War II, making visceral the fear, the filth, and the cold that were his constant companions. Seen through Kafak’s thick-lensed army-issued glasses, the wider implications of the war remain blurry while he focuses on the simple, urgent needs of survival: keep your head down, keep your feet dry, gain the next six feet of ground, and try not to think about what comes next. As Memorial Day nears, Kippert explains how his father’s experiences inspired the novel and what he hopes readers take away from it.

The novel is based on World War II experiences of your father. When did he share his stories with you?

For the most part, my father very rarely mentioned anything about his time during the war. It was only when he knew he was getting close to passing on that he decided to put down on paper some of what he had experienced. I think he wrote about 12 pages. Of those reminiscences, maybe a page of them were actually combat-related while the rest were stories about other situations in which he was involved during his army stint. For example, he wrote one paragraph about his time in France saying he had been a scout, a BAR gunner, an acting sergeant, etc.  I turned that one paragraph into about 100 pages! A lot of the specific events were created based on my own imagination and research coupled with some of what he wrote about. For instance, the story of how he missed D-day in France because of lost glasses was a story he mentioned.  How he ended up on the Anzio “Boat Team” was another true story. Discovering the German soldier in American uniform misdirecting US troops was another true story that I enhanced for comedic and dramatic effect. The story of his volunteering for the tommy gun and then its jamming and his record-time 40-yard dash was told in his typical self-deprecating style, but the situation surrounding it (the farmhouse and ambush) were only vaguely related in his pages and so entirely fleshed out by my imagination.

How did you decide to turn his stories into a book?

I decided to write this book after reading these pages and having read dozens of memoirs from other men who had served during WWII. I thought my father’s experiences would make an interesting addition to what I’d read. Beyond that, I felt like I hadn’t read anything about WWII, about the common soldier’s experiences, that really allowed a reader to experience the horror and terror and disgusting conditions a regular line soldier had to deal with as well as reflecting the sort of camaraderie and language that they shared. All the books I read, both fiction and nonfiction, mentioned the language of the frontline soldier, but none of them ever really reflected it. I tried to do that as well as to portray the sort of black humor that existed among the troops and that my father often referenced (one of the few things he did mention over the years).

Foreword Reviews says, “At its best, the book evokes what it’s like to be in mud and blood under constant German gunfire, whether in thick misty woods or on open terrain like the Anzio beachhead.” Did you string real anecdotes together or create the action and feelings in the scenes?

No, I couldn’t really string anecdotes together since what my father wrote had no sense of time or narrative progress. He just mentioned things that had struck him. For instance, he talked about getting sick and made a joke of regaining consciousness after three days, never intimating what a serious matter this had truly been. Reading more about illness and how many more men were killed by disease and accident than by actual combat drove home to me just how serious it had been. But placing it in sequence took a bit of research. He had mentioned being in the hospital during Easter of that year, so I had to find out when Easter was to get an idea of when and how long he had been in Naples during that particular period. Again, as I mentioned earlier, he wrote one paragraph about what he mainly did in France, and I invented episodes relating to those things. He had also written about being frightened out of his mind while on patrol in Alsace-Lorraine when he heard German voices right around a corner. I portrayed this episode in the book, but whether or not that was related to the attempt to rescue Captain Cole is pure conjecture on my part. In fact, that rescue was one of those things my dad wrote that was infuriatingly abstruse.  He simply wrote that Cole had been captured so he volunteered to go out after him because he thought Cole “was a good officer,” but then says nothing more about what happened.  Did they run into any trouble?  Did they locate Cole?  Was Cole rescued at all?  My father didn’t write anything about the results of that mission, so I wrote a scene that seemed to fit the progress of the narrative at that point.

P.M. Kippert’s father, age 19

What sort of research did you do?

I read dozens of memoirs of other WWII vets—specifically sticking with infantry troopers as much as possible. I also read a few from the German point of view, several histories that covered this theater of the war, and tons of WWII fiction. Most of the fiction, though, I noted, would alternate between the experiences of common soldiers and the high-level strategic planning and discussions. A scene would go from a tank trooper to Roosevelt and Eisenhower or something. I love reading that stuff but definitely didn’t want to write it. This book was meant to be about one guy and what he went through. One of the striking features of nearly every memoir I read—as well as my dad’s own pages—was how the common soldier never really knew what was going on in the broader picture. They just moved where they were told to go and did what they were told to do. Sometimes they knew more, but not usually. It was all about keeping your head down and accomplishing this part of the mission you’d been ordered to do.

The most important research, though, was a couple of books my dad had in his library, which I inherited when he passed on. One was a history of the Third Division during WWII; the other was a history of the Fifteenth Regiment of the Third Division during WWII. That allowed me to almost follow in his footsteps throughout the war since I knew where his regiment was and when he was with them and so could sort of fill in the blanks as I went along.

One of the most amazing things of all happened while I was reading that history of the Fifteenth Regiment and had reached the section on the Battle of the Cleurie Quarry. I turned the page and came upon a small note, written in the margin in pencil by my dad, which said, “This is where I was wounded the last time.” It made it all so real to me and even now brings tears to my eyes when I recall it.

Did you have a different image of your father after you heard what he’d been through?

In most ways, no, not really. He was always and always will be just my dad. The guy I could always count on for anything. The guy everybody loved.

On the other hand, though, knowing what he went through, what all those guys went through who lived through combat and the constant threat of combat in the mud and grime and filth and horror did make me realize another part to him. To know that was in him, that he had done that, endured that, and you couldn’t tell any bit of it from looking at him or dealing with him or knowing him—that just astounded me. I think it’s indicative of the depths of experience all these men had. It’s nearly unfathomable to me when I consider these horrors that they had endured and then lived with all the rest of their lives, horrors they rarely revealed and with which they never burdened their loved ones. The personal power, the strength of character it took for all of that is just astonishing and incomprehensible to me.

You wrote the novel using third person limited narration. How did you settle on that voice?

There were several false starts in writing the novel. At first, I tried third person unlimited narration, but that quickly failed because it was not the book I wanted to write, in the end. Then I reduced it to what seemed the simplest method: first person narration. That didn’t work either, though, because it was too difficult to write knowing always, in the back of my mind, that this man’s war was based on my father’s experiences to one degree or another. So it had to be third person and it had to be limited to enforce the idea that this single soldier knew only what he was going through—and what he saw those around him going through as well.

Stylistically, I chose a hardboiled, minimal phrasing style of narration because it worked best in establishing the barrier between the man and what was happening around him. It helped to describe, without actually explaining it outright, how a soldier needs to distance himself from the astonishing horrors surrounding him or else he will never—could never—survive them.

Once I had that narrative voice and style, the book flowed really quickly.

Was there anything else that helped you define Kafak’s point of view?

My dad really never would hunt, and my brothers and I always wondered why. It wasn’t until I read the pages he wrote that I understood it. He described the episode while on patrol in Italy in his reminiscences, what I refer to (in my own mind, anyway) as the “deer hunting episode.”  The conversation in the book is entirely mine, but it conveys the essence of what he wrote. And when I was still struggling to find the voice for the novel, my sister said something to me. She had read my dad’s pages and she said something to the effect of, “Well, at least he knows he saved that one man’s life.” And that was it. That was the hook. It wasn’t about being a hero or killing Germans or winning the war. It was about saving lives. It was about his buddies. I think, from what I’ve read and heard from other soldiers, that taking care of your buddies becomes one of the critical reasons a soldier in a squad fights. To survive and to take care of his buddies.

What do you hope your readers take away from the novel?

I’d say two things, mainly. First, I really wanted to portray what these men on the front lines endured so as to honor them and keep that stuff from being forgotten. All of these guys are getting older now and there won’t be many left with us very much longer, and it’s important that we never forget the real terrors and ugliness that they went through in order to defeat the true evil they faced in that war. And, second, I think any truly realistic war novel—which I certainly hope readers feel this one is—should make people understand just how terrible war really is. In my opinion, any true war novel is, in fact, an antiwar novel. And this book, I hope, not only makes everyone who reads it empathize with what these men dealt with but also makes them never want to see it happen to anyone else.

It’s one thing to debate and discuss the nobility and righteousness of a fight against the elimination of Jews in Europe or the subjugation of an entire continent’s population, but it’s quite another to think about what the people who actually fought and died went through to gain that victory.

One Man’s War: A Novel officially published on May 1, 2016 and is available where ever books and e-books are sold.

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“One Man’s War will appeal to history buffs and anyone interested in the real, human stories from war that should not be lost.”  —Foreword Reviews

“Through its attention to detail and its deliberate perspective, Kippert’s first novel delivers a precise, tense, and moving story.” —Kirkus Reviews