"Johnny Got His Gun"

[Jikanu]

Has anyone here heard of it? my parents just got it for me yesterday, and it's really heartbreaking. It's about a guy in his late teens to mid 20's who gets drafted into a war and ends up stepping on a landmine, or getting hit by a bomb, and loses all of his senses (excluding only touch) and loses his arms and legs. He's then put in an army prison and declared MIA since no one can recognize him. He's kept alive through a feeding tube. The rest of the book deals with him thinking about war, and his own bodily prison and his lonliness. It's a really really anti-war book. This passage acctually made me cry:

"They died crying in their minds like little babies. They forgot the thing they were fighting for the things they were dying for. They thought about things a man can understand. they died yearning for the face of a friend. they died whimpering for the voice of a mother a father a wife a child. They died with their hearts sick for one more look at the place where they were born please God just one more look. They died moaning and sighing for life. They knew what was important. They knew life was everything and they died with screams and sobs. They died with only one thought in their minds and that was i want to live i want to live."

Anyways, if you read it, what do you think about it, or the ideas expressed in it?