Johnny Got His Gun

By Dalton Trumbo

From an Academy Award–winning screenwriter, the classic novel examining the sacrifice of one American soldier in World War I.

The Searing Portrayal Of War That Has Stunned And Galvanized Generations Of Readers

An immediate bestseller upon its original publication in 1939, Dalton Trumbo’s stark, profoundly troubling masterpiece about the horrors of World War I brilliantly crystallized the uncompromising brutality of war and became the most influential protest novel of the Vietnam era. Johnny Got His Gun is an undisputed classic of antiwar literature that’s as timely as ever.

Winner of the National Book Award for Most Original Book of 1939

“A terrifying book, of an extraordinary emotional intensity.”—The Washington Post

“Powerful…an eye-opener.”—Michael Moore

“Mr. Trumbo sets this story down almost without pause or punctuation and with a fury amounting to eloquence.”—The New York Times

“A book that can never be forgotten by anyone who reads it.”—Saturday Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Citadel Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9780806537603

Book preview

introduction (1990)

by Ron Kovic

Johnny Got His Gun still remains the most powerful piece of writing to influence me after Vietnam. Upon my return from the war, and all these twenty-two years spent in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the mid-chest down, I’ve read many writers that have influenced my life profoundly—Hemingway, Conrad, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King—but there has been nothing out of that body of great literature to compare to this book. Dalton Trumbo’s classic antiwar novel was written simply and honestly in a language that I understood. I was immediately drawn to it, the way I had been drawn to Kerouac’s On the Road, and could not put it down. Page after page I read, drawn deeper and deeper into the story and identifying with every page, every paragraph, every word.

The first time I heard Dalton Trumbo’s words was at an antiwar demonstration in Los Angeles in the spring of 1971, when I heard actor Donald Sutherland read from Johnny Got His Gun. Sutherland and his partner Jane Fonda were traveling around the country on their famous F.T.A. Tour. (F.T.A. stood for Free the Army, or Fuck the Army, depending on how angry you were.) Trumbo’s words moved me so much that day I wanted to speak out, and I was able to. I went up to the stage, and made my very first speech as a political activist.

That’s me! I kept thinking, that’s what happened to me, that’s how I felt, that’s what I went through. It was clear that Trumbo wrote that book for everyday people, for the ones out there, the poor suckers, as he called them, who had to send their sons, those young boys who worked in the factories and the bakeries—or like myself, in the A & P—to the wars for the rich and mighty. I had been one of those everyday kids, who bought the lie, the way a million others did. Trumbo’s novel came at a time in my life when I desperately needed to know that I was not alone.

Most importantly, Johnny Got His Gun was the cornerstone in a great monument of protest and dissent that my life would become—it was the anchor, the key foundation. Simply put, I was not the same person after reading it that I was before. And there is no higher compliment that you can give a book, or for that matter any piece of art, than that you have been changed by it forever. When I was twenty-four, that remarkable work exploded in my consciousness like a timebomb of truth, hurtling me into action and a fiercer commitment against the Vietnam War than I ever thought possible.

I carried the book everywhere I went—with all the pages faded and turned yellow. And the cover fell off. It was like a Bible to me, but more relevant than anything I had ever read in the Holy Scriptures, including the Psalms, which I read before going out on patrol in Vietnam. Even the 23rd Psalm, which was my favorite, and gave me great comfort, never affected me in the way Trumbo’s Johnny did. The Bible and the Psalms were a soothing balm, an anesthetic, in frightening situations I could not understand or had no control over. But Johnny was the antidote to the pain I brought home, and it was also a rude awakening, as the truth has always been. It led not to sleep or comfort, but kept me wide awake and agitated—making me think, and in thinking see, and in seeing act, powerfully and with others against what was frightening me. Johnny Got His Gun gave me insights into the truth of my own predicament and led me toward answers and solutions, so that I could better live with my situation, find meaning in my suffering, and in so doing gain my life’s purpose.

And though Johnny inspired me deeply to continue the struggle, there was still a terrible emptiness inside me, a sadness, a need to be a part of the world, and appreciated again. The things that Trumbo’s fictional character in the story, Joe Bonham, had yearned for—the smell of fresh air, the smell of a woman’s perfume, a long walk in the woods, to be with other human beings, to feel connected to others again—were things I yearned for too. I wanted to not feel so lost, so angry and afraid, and to reconnect with the part of me I was so afraid of. I desperately wanted to believe as Joe Bonham wanted to believe, to believe and to be loved and to be able to love back in return. To have faith again, to trust and feel peace, as I had once done as a boy—when America was more simple for me, and the world seemed so much more simple a place.

Of course when I was a boy, I saw all the World War II movies and read all the war comic books, which glorified war and made characters like Sergeant Rock seem invincible. But movies like Paths of Glory, Catch-22, Oh What a Lovely War, and Johnny Got His Gun told a different story. In the spring of 1971, I met the legendary Dalton Trumbo at a party in L.A. celebrating the premiere of the movie based on his novel, and I remember clearly telling him how deeply his book had moved me—just as people would come up to me many years later after I wrote Born on the Fourth of July. I told him I had read it several times and how his fictional character Joe Bonham and I were so similar, both workingclass kids who had sacrificed their bodies in a meaningless war.

In Johnny Got His Gun, Joe is blown up and the only thing that remains is a slab of meat, only pieces of the young man he had once been. Somehow like myself he miraculously survives. Unable to speak, he drifts in and out of consciousness. He understands the stupidity of war, how senseless it all is, and he wants to live. He decides his life must stand for something, he must be something for people other than a helpless victim. Let me see, what can I do? he thinks. How can I take this disastrous and tragic situation and turn it into something of value and use to others? How can I take this awful thing and reshape it into something of beauty and meaning, something that will enlighten and awaken others? What must I do?

First, he must have a vision of that better person he could become. Trumbo writes, And then suddenly he saw. He had a vision of himself as a new kind of Christ as a man who carries within himself all the seeds of a new order of things . . . [saying] You plan the wars you masters of men plan the wars and point the way and we will point the gun.

That passage probably explains why Trumbo was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, attacked and hounded for years, and eventually forced to expatriate himself, as were many of The Hollywood Ten and hundreds of others like them—blacklisted, their careers ruined, forced to live abroad, some in Paris and Mexico as Trumbo would do, eventually forced to write under pseudonyms as he did magnificently in Exodus and a dozen other brilliantly crafted scripts.

To understand the fate of Trumbo one must know about the witch hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin in the late 1940s and early 1950s. McCarthy ruined careers, paralyzing the entertainment industry with fear, scurrilous rumor, innuendo, turning brother writer against brother, alarmist actors against fellow actors, holding the entire industry hostage in a reign of terror, blackmailing and blacklisting.

But there were men in that group who stood their ground and would not be badgered or beaten down, proud men like Trumbo, who would not capitulate. They knew that bullies like McCarthy would crumble once you stood up to them and began fighting back and that the only weapon the bully could ever count on was fear and once you showed you were not afraid and could not be intimidated, the bully lost his power.

And like all bullies, McCarthy crumbled too, because a bully is nothing more than a frightened man or woman hiding behind threats and accusations, frightened to death that the finger will someday be pointed at them. These bullies must keep up the assault, the slander, the character assassinations, stirring up the emotions of the public to a fever pitch, acting like saviors when in actuality they are frauds, phony patriots and very evil men in disguise, wrapping themselves in the flag. McCarthy and his followers were despicable men who almost ruined our country in the name of patriotism and loyalty. They stooped to any level to divide and conquer, setting people against one another, frightening them into thinking that they would lose their jobs if they didn’t tell on their friends.

McCarthy was allowed to destroy hundreds of careers, only because good men refused to speak out. Evil flourishes when good men remain silent. Yet even in the silence of that awful night, voices could be heard crying out against this injustice and this evil man—people like Trumbo and The Hollywood Ten. They were brave people who refused to collaborate with this senator from Wisconsin in his prying into people’s personal lives, showing complete and utter contempt for the dignity of their humanity, for their right to express their feelings as free men and women.

The night we met, Trumbo seemed very moved by my tribute to his book, and I remember asking him for his autograph. Would you sign my wheelchair? I asked. And he complied, bending down and carefully writing on the back of my wheelchair the words Nothing more can be said—it can only be done and then signing it, Dalton Trumbo. I remember keeping that back-piece long after the wheelchair wore out, carrying it with me wherever I went and eventually losing it.

To this day I still wonder what he meant when he said, Nothing more can be said, it can only be done. Perhaps he meant that all that could be written against war had been written and what we must now do is take action. Is that what he was trying to say? It seemed a call to action, to engage the enemy, the warmakers, the masters of war, those who continued to make war and refused to learn the lessons of the past: Give us the slogans and we will turn them into realities. Sing the battle hymns and we will take them up where you left off. Not one not ten not ten thousand not a million not ten millions not a hundred millions but a billion two billions of us all the people of the world . . .

Trumbo influenced me profoundly at a time when my need to understand how I could take my tragedy and turn it into something useful and meaningful for others was as desperate a need to know as that of Trumbo’s Joe Bonham. And Johnny Got His Gun provided me with that insight; it paved the way. Suddenly, I saw that I could be an instrument of peace. I could use my body and my experiences as awful and tragic as they were to educate others about war, its futility and absurdity, its senselessness and waste, just like Joe Bonham. I could parade myself around America so they would see war once and for all for what it really was. I would take my injury, both physical and emotional, and as horrifying as it might be, make it an instrument of learning and enlightenment; and somehow, if I was lucky, the world would change, sense would replace nonsense. Trumbo showed me that I had a chance to make something beautiful out of something terrible and devoid of all beauty, to take something I detested and didn’t want to think about, something I despised and wanted to forget, a humiliation and great defeat and make it stand for something decent and good, something triumphant and purposeful and life-affirming, just as Joe Bonham wanted to do.

In the end, they denied Joe Bonham the right to bring his message to the world when he was finally able to break through and communicate to them what he wanted to do. He saw that his life had a very special purpose and knew that his suffering did not have to be in vain, and that as awful as his situation was, he was still alive, could still communicate. He could show people what war really was, let them look at it, stare at it, reach down and touch it if they wanted to. He was convinced that when they saw him, they would know, and in knowing, never let it happen again. If he had his way, there would be no more Joe Bonhams.

He became excited. He no longer felt lost or drifting in that angry sea that knows neither life nor death, neither purpose nor meaning—the way many people live. But when he did try to get his message out to the world, they attempted to silence him for wanting to speak the truth. The truth was very dangerous and he understood that they knew the truth was too dangerous to let people see, for if they saw it and understood it the way Joe saw and understood it and now lived with it everyday, then they would never go, they would never fight when the governments asked them to fight.

And this made the governments very anxious—to think that people would not take up arms and fight and kill when they asked them to! What would the world be without wars, and killing and dying and suffering and madness? He, Joe Bonham, persisted, rebelling against them to the very end, crying out the injustice that had been done to him and so many millions of others in every war that had ever been fought, speaking for the dead and the sightless and the maimed, for all the monuments and all the sickening proclamations to those not living.

If you point the way to destruction, to madness, to more deaths and meaningless suffering, Joe asserts, we will point the gun right at your heads, if necessary, to keep you from slaughtering and making us fight in your stupid wars again. You point the way, you masters of war, with all your lies and deceptions, all your tricks and manipulations that send young men off to war, and we will have the guns this time, you sons-of-bitches, and we will use them to protect our lives and the lives of our children.

Trumbo’s novel inflamed me and made me more determined than ever to keep speaking out against war. This book was speaking directly to me, telling me in no uncertain terms that I not only had a solemn right, but a solemn obligation to resist these men and what they were doing. Celebrating the preciousness of life and the dignity of the human being, it gave me courage and strengthened me for the fight that lay ahead.

Johnny Got His Gun remains the most revolutionary, searing document against war and injustice ever written. It says it all, and it tells people what to do. It calls for revolution, for picking up the gun and pointing it in the right direction—not against the poor and the powerless, but against the slime that rule, those who would have one cobbler kill another cobbler . . . one man who works kill another man who works . . . one human being who wants only to live kill another human being who wants only to live.

Johnny Got His Gun is as relevant and meaningful as our Declaration of Independence or the Communist Manifesto. With great courage and a simplicity of language, it goes on record for all time as a warning to all governments that would send their young men to war—that their heads will be on the block next time and that no matter how important they think they are, what office they may hold or military rank they may have attained, all the power they have means nothing to us, for if they try to take our sons or harm us with their stupid policies, we will fight back by whatever means necessary.

And if they put guns in our hands and point us to kill other human beings, no one will have to tell us who the enemy is this time, because we will know, we will certainly know. The enemy is the government in all its greed and corruption, in all its scheming and manipulations, in its endless desire for profit at the expense of human lives.

Try it again, and we will fight you with everything within us, and we will not rest until there is an end to war for all time, and all of us together can begin to truly live.

Redondo Beach, California

August 1990

author’s introduction (1959)

World War I began like a summer festival—all billowing skirts and golden epaulets. Millions upon millions cheered from the sidewalks while plumed imperial highnesses, serenities, field marshals and other such fools paraded through the capital cities of Europe at the head of their shining legions.

It was a season of generosity; a time for boasts, bands, poems, songs, innocent prayers. It was an August made palpitant and breathless by the pre-nuptial nights of young gentlemen-officers and the girls they left permanently behind them. One of the Highland regiments went over the top in its first battle behind forty kilted bagpipers, skirling away for all they were worth—at machine guns.

Nine million corpses later, when the bands stopped and the serenities started running, the wail of bagpipes would never again sound quite the same. It was the last of the romantic wars; and Johnny Got His Gun was probably the last American novel written about it before an entirely different affair called World War II got under way.

The book has a weird political history. Written in 1938 when pacifism was anathema to the American left and most of the center, it went to the printers in the spring of 1939 and was published on September third—ten days after the Nazi–Soviet pact, two days after the start of World War II.

Shortly thereafter, on the recommendation of Mr. Joseph Wharton Lippincott (who felt it would stimulate sales), serial rights were sold to The Daily Worker of New York City. For months thereafter the book was a rally point for the left.

After Pearl Harbor its subject matter seemed as inappropriate to the times as the shriek of bagpipes. Mr. Paul Blanshard, speaking of army censorship in The Right to Read (1955) says, "A few pro-Axis foreign-language magazines had been banned, as well as three books, including Dalton Trumbo’s pacifist novel Johnny Get Your Gun, produced during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact."

Since Mr. Blanshard fell into what I hope was unconscious error both as to the period of the book’s production and the title under which it was produced, I can’t place too much faith in his story of its suppression. Certainly I was not informed of it; I received a number of letters from servicemen overseas who had read it through Army libraries; and, in 1945, I myself ran across a copy in Okinawa while fighting was still in progress.

If, however, it had been banned and I had known about it, I doubt that I should have protested very loudly. There are times when it may be needful for certain private rights to give way to the requirements of a larger public good. I know that’s a dangerous thought, and I shouldn’t wish to carry it too far, but World War II was not a romantic war.

As the conflict deepened, and Johnny went out of print altogether, its unavailability became a civil liberties issue with the extreme American right. Peace organizations and Mothers’ groups from all over the country showered me with fiercely sympathetic letters denouncing Jews, Communists, New Dealers and international bankers, who had suppressed my novel to intimidate millions of true Americans who demanded an immediate negotiated peace.

My correspondents, a number of whom used elegant stationery and sported tidewater addresses, maintained a network of communications that extended to the detention camps of pro-Nazi internees. They pushed the price of the book above six dollars for a used copy, which displeased me for a number of reasons, one of them fiscal. They proposed a national rally for peace now, with me as cheerleader; they promised (and delivered) a letter campaign to pressure the publisher for a fresh edition.

Nothing could have convinced me so quickly that Johnny was exactly the sort of book that shouldn’t be reprinted until the war was at an end. The publishers agreed. At the insistence of friends who felt my correspondents’ efforts could adversely affect the war effort, I foolishly reported their activities to the F. B. I. But when a beautifully matched pair of investigators arrived at my house, their interest lay not in the letters but in me. I have the feeling that it still does, and it serves me right.

After 1945, those two or three new editions which appeared found favor with the general left, and apparently were completely ignored by everybody else, including all those passionate wartime mothers. It was out of print again during the Korean War, at which time I purchased the plates rather than have them sold to the Government for conversion into munitions. And there the story ends, or begins.

Reading it once more after so many years, I’ve had to resist a nervous itch to touch it up here, to change it there, to clarify, correct, elaborate, cut. After all, the book is twenty years younger than I, and I have changed so much, and it hasn’t. Or has it?

Is it possible for anything to resist change, even a mere commodity that can be bought, buried, banned, damned, praised, or ignored for all the wrong reasons? Probably not. Johnny held a different meaning for three different wars. Its present meaning is what each reader conceives it to be, and each reader is gloriously different from every other reader, and each is also changing.

I’ve let it remain as it was to see what it is.

—D

ALTON

T

RUMBO

Los Angeles

March 25, 1959

A

DDENDUM

: 1970

Eleven

Reviews for Johnny Got His Gun

[ghostblanketboy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A very important, yet horrifying read that will stick with you and leave you thinking and thinking and thinking.

[kindarspirit · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautifully haunting story. You can visit this world and then quickly try to slam the book shut, but it will follow you once you open it.

With no welcome, this horrendous parasitic-like intrusion will gnaw it’s way into your mind, forcing you to remember. Your heart will drop out of fear as you unintentionally imagine yourself in the place of the victim. It can’t be ignored, though you’ll push it away, and so it returns again and again, eating a little more each time.

We read these stories of horror and shock, and quickly want to forget about them—and that’s why we never can, and so the story deservedly wins.