War literature derives much of its impact from the fact that many readers will never (and probably never will) experience the subject matter personally. It has been suggested that poets like Ciardi were psychologically damaged by what they saw and heard. In his case much of the evidence for this lies in his abandonment of the war diary, leaving it unfinished. Readers derive meaning from the unwritten words and see them as proof of concept that war is a unique experience, understandable only by those who participated in combat. If one accepts such a claim, one is likely to discover difficulties in the war literature and poetry of James Dickey, a man who created a fiction around his war experience that was utterly compelling to his readers and friends. In his biography, The World as a Lie, Henry Hart outlines the extent of his deception; heavily involved in combat, flying nearly one hundred combat missions in the Pacific campaign in the Philippines, Okinawa, and participating in the bombing of major Japanese cities.” This from a man whose discharge slip tells a remarkably different story; Che was a "radar observer" with a total of thirty-eight missions served between January 1945 and the end of the war. Lorrie Goldensohn succinctly analyzes him as one who "lied about every possible aspect of his wartime flying career and clung to the grandeur of participating in wartime rituals of masculinity." Not therefore a man who enjoys respect in war literature circles. The assumption of many is that the experience of war cannot be falsified, that even... middle of paper... prose concerning the Second World War and other wars, the concept that the enemy army is composed of people just as real as the people who make up the army you are part of, just as intelligent and moral, indistinguishable without uniforms. His war poetry and literature, therefore, is not invalid but unenlightened because of his seemingly compulsive lies about his role in it. Bibliography Ciardi, John. Saipan (University of Arkansas Press, 1988)Dickey, James Crux: The Letters of James Dickey, edited by Bruccoli, Matthew J. and Baughman, Judith S. (Random House, 1999)Dickey, James. To the White Sea (Scribner, 2002) Hart, Henry. The World as a Lie: James Dickey (Picador USA, 2000)Goldensohn, Lorrie. Dismantling Glory: Twentieth-Century Soldier Poetry (Columbia University Press, 2003) Shapiro, Harvey. Poets of World War II (The Library of America, 2003)