Thursday, October 21, 2010

Vonnegut and Camouflage

From the opening page of Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard: The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988). New York: Dell, 1987—

…I was deprived of my left eye while commanding a platoon of Army Engineers, curiously enough artists of one sort or another in civilian life, in Luxembourg near the end of World War Two. We were specialists in camouflage, but at that time were fighting for our lives as ordinary infantry. The unit was composed of artists, since it was the theory of someone in the Army that we would be especially good at camouflage.