An Eternal Song: Remembering ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’

 From Bethel McGrew:

Monte Cassino, February 15, 1944. For Allied forces seeking a path to Rome, the holy building on the hill was an immovable obstacle. On each side of it stretched the Gustav Line, 161 kilometers from the Tyrrhenian Coast to the Adriatic. From it, you could see Highway 6. Within its walls, 230 Italian souls took refuge. At headquarters, British Commander-in-Chief Sir Harold Alexander received intel that it had been occupied by the Germans. The order came down: Launch the planes.

So it was that on a cold winter morning, in the blink of an eye, an ancient abbey died. Among the pilots who dropped the bombs was one Walter M. Miller Jr.

The phrase “PTSD” was not in vogue at Miller’s time. In retrospect, it’s clear that he suffered from it, as well as from clinical depression. His war experience didn’t immediately inspire A Canticle for Leibowitz, but as he was drafting a pivotal scene at the end of the novel, he realized it had been hovering over his work the whole time. “Good God,” he remembered thinking, “What have I been writing?” (Read more.)