Johnny Got His Gun is an anti-war novel written in 1938 by American novelist Dalton Trumbo and published in September 1939 by J.
Joe Bonham, a young American soldier serving in World War I, awakens in a hospital bed after being caught in the blast of an exploding artillery shell.
He gradually realizes that he has lost his arms, legs, and all of his face (including his eyes, ears, nose, teeth, and tongue), but that his mind functions perfectly, leaving him a prisoner in his own body.
He then decides that he wants to be placed in a glass coffin and toured around the country in order to demonstrate to others the true horrors of war.
Joe eventually successfully communicates this with military officials after several months of banging his head on his pillow in Morse code.
José has many stories that set him apart from the other homeless workers, including the fact that he refused marriage to a wealthy woman.
The title is a play on the phrase "Johnny get your gun",[4] a rallying call that was commonly used to encourage young American men to enlist in the military in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
That phrase was popularized in the George M. Cohan song "Over There", which was widely recorded in the first year of American involvement in World War I. Johnny Get Your Gun is also the name of a 1919 film directed by Donald Crisp.
The novel is inspired by articles about two men with severe injuries that Trumbo read about: the tearful hospital visit of Edward, Prince of Wales to Curley Christian, considered to be the first and only Canadian soldier in WWI who was a quadruple amputee, and a British major whose body was damaged so horrifically that he was reported as MIA to his family.
In his introduction to a 1959 reprinting, Trumbo describes receiving letters from right-wing isolationists requesting copies of the book when it was out of print.
Trumbo regretted this decision, which he later called "foolish," after two FBI agents showed up at his home and it became clear that "their interest lay not in the letters but in me.