The war writes hard

For Memorial Day I have a reading recommendation for you: Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, & the Home Front, in the Words of US Troops and their Families. It’s not an easy read, which is why I commend it to you.

Operation Homecoming was an NEA project sending writers (including Tom Clancy, Stephen Lang, Jeff Shaara and Tobias Wolff) to teach writing workshops to serving troops and their families. The sessions were held in country, on Navy vessels and at various locations around the US. The result was thousands of pages of essays, short stories, poems, letters, journal entries and emails. Editor Andrew Carroll distilled these down to this book.

If you ever want to explore the nature of war from the most granular human level, this is your introduction. You get everything, from the banality and stultifying boredom to “pink mist” (someone who steps on a land mine and explodes in a shower of flesh and blood); the sand, snakes and spiders in your tents; and having to walk a thousand yards out to the latrine in the middle of the night over rocks and stuff you don’t want to think about. And, of course, there’s the fighting and the destruction. You won’t get closer to it—without being in it—than reading these pieces.

The book starts with an account by a Navy captain at the Pentagon on 9/11 and moves on from there. It’s not precisely chronological, because Carroll didn’t want to imply that the wars went to a certain point and stopped. As we know, mission is not accomplished.

One of the last was an essay by a Marine colonel who accompanied the body of a 21-year-old Marine killed in Iraq home to his funeral in Wyoming. (It’s since been made into an HBO film, Taking Chance, starring Kevin Bacon.) From the staff at the mortuary at Dover AFB, Del., who prepare the body (including X-raying the coffin before opening—they found a live grenade in one) to the people at the various airports who treated the coffin with such respect to the funeral held in the gym of the local high school…well if you can read it without crying then you’re way tougher than I.

One of the early entries is from a doctor on a Navy hospital ship, 27 March 2003, waiting for casualties. I loved this comment: “Mike from Massachusetts thinks an attack on our ship is a near given, with a 50 percent chance of success. However, he is a proctologist and Red Sox fan and naturally pessimistic.”

There was another account by a Guardsman returning on a charter flight after his tour in Iraq. Their plane developed mechanical problems in Germany and they had to wait for the next flight, which wasn’t until the next day. Here’s what he relates:

“Thirty-six hours after our scheduled arrival, we landed in Bangor, Maine. It was 3 a.m. We were tired, hungry, and as desperate as were to get to Colorado, our excitement was tainted with bitterness. While we were originally told our National Guard deployment would be mere months, here we were—369 days later—frustrated and angry.

“As I walked off the plane, I was taken aback; in the small, dimly lit airport, a group of elder veterans were there waiting for us, lined up one by one to shake our hands. Some were standing, others were confined to wheelchairs, and all of them wore their uniform hats. Their now-feeble right hands stiffened in salutes, their left hands holding coffee, snacks, and cell phones for us.

“As I made my way through the line, each man thanking me for my service, I choked back tears. Here we were, returning from one year in Iraq where we had portable DVD players, three square meals, and phones, being honored by men who had crawled through mud for years with little more than the occasional letter from home. A few of them appeared to be veterans of the war in Vietnam, and I couldn’t help but think of how they were treated when they came back to the U.S., and yet here they were to support us.

“These soldiers—many of whom had lost limbs and comrades—shook our hands proudly, as if our service could somehow rival their own.

“We later learned that this VFW group had waited for more than a day in the airport for our arrival.

“…Looking back on my year in Iraq, I can honestly say that my perception of the experience was changed; not so much by the soldiers with whom I served—though I consider them my saving grace—but by the soldiers who welcomed us home. For it is those men who reminded me what serving my country is truly about.”

We’re winding down the war in Afghanistan, and they tell us that Iraq is…a success? Over? Whatever.

But you should read Operation Homecoming. Really.