"Writing a memoir"-Frank Mathias

Frank Mathias is a war veteran, and like every other veteran, he couldn't wait to sit down and write down his battle stories. Unlike a historian, he needs no research, money to travel and gather information, or interviews with people the story involves. He just needs to sit down and try to sink into the depths of his mind to find the things he's long since thought about. One of the few things that helped him refresh his memory where the 300 or so letters and photos his mother saved in boxes. After reading the many letters he sent to young lovers, his mother, and friends, while a young man in the war, he realized the boy he thought he remembered, was not at all who he really was. As we go through lives we are constantly changing, and through writing memoirs, or even keeping a journal, we can help ourselves to revisit who we where in the past. Some of the best memoirs, Mathias's for example, include much dialogue and most importantly, emotion. The unfair advantage a memoirist has in writing a narrative compared to a historian, is the fact that they can create the personalities as they remember them.They may even mold the dialogue of their friends and familys because it is more of an art then a science. In Frank Mathias's narrative he did say that before he started writing his memoir he was afraid of what his colleagues might think, of the ego trip that goes along with writing your life story, I don't understand exactly why he says this because he has such an interesting story and he should not have felt that way.I'm also curious as to how long after the war he began to write his memoir and at what time in his life did he get it published. why also did the publishers seem to have a problem with getting his story published, wouldn't they be happy to have a memoir from the few surviving men from our wars?