No one who has seen the horrors of war can pen words to glorify it. Neither can they minimise its deeply embedded lies, truths, prejudices or values. And this is the dilemma faced by every correspondent, journalist and author: how to portray a true and accurate account of war in its intimate detail while remaining unaffected by the causal factors underlying the conflict. In writing of war, well-known episodes must take their place; so must the personal observations of those who were there in the field, the bivouacs, the hospitals and the trenches. The writer's eye must also be sharp enough to see through the fog that obscures every arena of conflict, grown thick from the ivory-tower diplomacy and chess-board planning of war by ignorant politicians; the life and death decisions of generals walking tall on their given pedestals; the incompetence of officials that is evident at every level, and the foul stain of corruption that sucks the very lifeblood from the fighting man. This is the silent trauma of war.