When something drastic happens in your life it always leaves an impact on your memories. This has happened to those who have lived through wars, not only memories but also mental and physical scars. Some of those who have endured wars first hand and have suffered with scars both mental and physical left by war have recorded their experiences in autobiographies and poems.

In ‘Losses’ Randall Jarrell, shares with the reader the losses and pain he suffered while he was at war and the pain he suffered after the war also. Although he survived he writes,

“It was not dying: everybody died.

It was not dying: we had died before.”

He describes the death of others whom he cared for or knew and the destruction of his surroundings. Something inside him died, he was never the same after seeing massive damage inflicted on everything and he expresses this. In the last verse of ‘Losses’, he says,

‘It was not dying- no, not ever dying;

But in the night I died I dreamed that I was dead,

And the cities said to me: ‘Why are you dying

“Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live”,

“Terror hunger and humiliation.”

“Is it surprising that I could not sleep after that? Sleep fled from my eyes”, he recalls.

This was also the case with Elie Wiesel the author of Night. He describes many incidents, which were so intense that it scarred him mentally. In the third chapter of his autobiography he records how he is separated from his mother He had no idea what could happen to her and feared that she might die. A few minutes later he was confronted with death itself. He was standing in front of a gigantic fire thinking he would be thrown in, but instead he witnessed dead people being thrown into the fire, babies and young children.

Seeing this kills a part of him; he is no longer the person he was, but now someone who is in fear of his life and has seen the height of torture. He describes the barracks where he sees grown men treated like animals, they too were scarred and the reality of this left a mental scar. The Nazis inflicted physical pain on him, and bruises were caused by being battered around in boxcars and stuffed together in small rooms.

War is a terrible thing for a human to go through at any age. Wh

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