James B. Simms began his book of World War II experiences in the late 1960s, then stopped, in the midst of the aura surrounding the Vietnam War.
During World War II, he served in France, with an anti-tank platoon of the 506th Parachute Infantry, 101st Airborne Division. In mid-December 1944, he became embroiled in the Battle of Bastogne, where "death seemed inevitable." "War," he states, "is the method man devised in order to mass produce bitter grief, unbearable suffering, and total misery. . . ."
A Soldier's Armageddon was put together, Simms says, "to observe some of the things pertinent to human nature in order that we might better understand just what makes us tick." His own war experience was a genuine "education," changing many earlier ideas and developing others. At Bastogne, amidst the artillery screaming overhead and rampant death and destruction, the American troops, with almost no armored support, battled the fierce German assault. Simms was wounded in late December 1944:
"As we rode toward the aid station, I began to think of what lay ahead. Somehow I had gotten the idea that a wounded man in an Army hospital was in for a rough time maybe from too many Civil War stories or old Western movies. I could never have been more wrong. I was about to step through another door into an entirely different world . . . . I was about to leave a world that was cold and mean, where men had to be brutal to survive, when man's will and loyalty was made of iron, and the object was to kill. . . ."
A Soldier's Armageddon is an honest look at the American soldier in combat, after combat, and back to civilian life.