ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the utility of the military memoir as a resource in military research. Military memoirs are the autobiographical narratives written in the first person about a life of military participation, or about a specific operation or conflict within a military career. It discusses the genre and its evolution, examine how memoirs used in writing about war, and look at some of the issues raised by their use as a form of research data. As a genre, the military memoir has a long tradition in Western models of both autobiographical writing and writing about war. The concept of genre implies a unity of intent or shared communicative purpose. Military memoirs have a generic intent to communicate the truth of the lived experience of military participation. The chapter focuses on four issues in the use of military memoirs as a research resource: text; paratext; collaboration and censorship. Paratextual features, as defined by Genette, include anything beyond the text itself.
