Johnny got his Gun, Chris Guyle

"Johnny got his Gun" by Dalton Trumbo is an antiwar story. Joe Bonham enlists in the army, and just a few short weeks later he is drafted to go fight in world war 1. Before Joe went to war he had a normal life, he had a girlfriend, a job at a factory, friends, and a family who loved him. A week before Joe goes to war, his father passes away from illness. Joe at this time has a lot on his mind because of the war and his father passing away. A week later Joe goes to war and fights on the frontline. At night during night watch the enemy launches a mortar shell and Joe gets blown up. After the traumatic injury the triage unit comes and loads Joe onto a cot and into an ambulance and they take him to the military hospital. Joe can't feel anything besides the pinching and scraping and digging of scalpels and equipment in his skin, he don't know what was going on until he tries to move his arms and he realizes that the nurses and staff have amputated both his arms and legs off. At this point Joe is freaking out, and he then realizes he can't talk because the lower jaw has also been blown off along with half his face. The nurse starts to wonder if Joe is trying to communicate, or if he is having a seizure, so the nurse goes and gets help and the charge nurse injects him with a drug to knock him out. Joe is so mingled and battered that he can't tell whether if its day or night, or if he is awake or asleep.  Joe then realizes that he can't do anything because he is a quad amputee and that he has no way to communicate or to keep himself company. Joe has flash backs to when he was a child and a young man, and he would go fishing with his dad and losing his dads favorite fishing pole. Then he had a flashback to when his dad catches him using Morris code with a friend by using two cans and a string running between the two houses, after that flashback Joe discovers and remembers that the army uses Morris code to communicate. To know how the story ends you have to read the novel.