Sima as a young man had spent time in seven different townships in southern Taiwan. He was familiar with every single one of the last four generations of writers with a military background. And so one stormy autumn evening he started jotting down the names of people he had known, but just counting those already passed away, the list ran to 760 men and over 100 women.
他想想也對，年輕時跑過台灣南部 7 大鄉鎮，海陸空 3 軍，上下 4 代，「軍中作家」無一不識，於是有一夜，秋雨瀟瀟，他便開始列名字，單單已過世的，男的就列出七百六十多位，女的一百多，「我想這書是寫不下去了！」