Obviously the idea becomes a story (unless the story just happens to happen), and the handling of it is dependent upon skill and technique.
In Kate Kasten’s Home Fires, the concept is laden with potential: In third person pov, the story of Hans begins with his boyhood in Germany during WWII, and points out that the family’s view of the war was so radically different than the reality of it. Living out in the country in the vicinity of Buchenwald, they believed it to be merely a prison. Hans fondly remembers picnics nearby. He is fired up to grow up to be a soldier and fight in a war, inspired by the friendliness of an SS officer to a small German boy. His parents are made aware of the situation when the Americans arrive in Germany, and they are changed forever by the knowledge. They move to the American Midwest, and the story actually starts with Hans reading about Buchenwald in his high school textbook.
However, he doesn’t believe it. This is where the author lost me. Hans still insists on going into the service and finally sees action in the Vietnam War. The concept was brilliant, but I don’t believe the story. You can’t merely pooh-pooh away the facts. All he had to do was ask his parents. There was so much potential for this story, and while the narrative follows Hans around the jungle, broken and bleeding and close to death, there is feeling of war, but not enough (for me) depth to the character for me to care about him enough. It’s still a lot of gore and pain, but without any realization of what war really means–which is what I would have expected him to finally understand. Instead, he peacefully dies in the jungle, looking forward to "going home" to his childhood–and Germany represents that!
A bit implausible, and I would have liked to see the intensity of WW II, and Vietnam, more deeply affect the protagonist.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology