History Response to Lit. (Book Report) on Once There Was a War

In "Once There Was a War" by John Stinbeck, the author, John Stinbeck tells us how WWII was like and shows us this through a journal entry format.
John Stinbeck uses the characters to explain the life of the soldiers during WWII. In this story the soldiers do a lot of other things besides fight the enemy. They did things like play board games, grow vegetables, and drink non-alcoholic beer (they drank this stuff in England).
The theme of this book does not really have a connection with me except for the part where he talks about how the English cook food. Other then that, I don't have any connection to the theme. The theme however, does have a connection with history. The historical connection is that it is about World War II and how the soldiers would live there lives when they were not fighting the enemy.

(Photo is from www.history.com)