WLA Blog

Greetings All,

Next week I’ll be in Washington D.C. for a special week-long event on the role that Art and Literature can play in the healing process for Veterans.  It’s a collaborative effort with the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress to collect stories and hear the voices and artistic expressions of our veterans as they struggle to piece together their lives and cope with the trauma of war.  In addition to a variety of workshops, several events are open to the public.

Workshops will be taking place at various sites across the city.  Some of the Veteran’s work will be presented at the closing program on Friday night, including a theatrical production  at the Library of Congress Coolidge Auditorium (free tickets available here).  The workshops are in conjunction with the 2012 GI Film Festival which will be showing over forty military films across the city.  As part of the Art & Healing project, a special free screening of the new film, Where Soldiers Come From, will take place at the Corcoran Art Gallery, along with a Q & A session with the filmmakers.  Tickets are free for this event at their web site.

As part of the Library of Congress-Veteran’s History Project, I’ll be working with director Jonathan Wei and other Veterans for the “In the Telling” project.  If you’re in the Washington area or know someone who is, I encourage you to stop by and take part in some of the events or take in a film or two.

I’ll give you a full report after I get back.

Until next time,

James A. Moad II

Despite being a perfect tool for learning to fly a new aircraft, I’ve always found the training in a full motion simulator to be frustrating.  Unlike a video game, the visual and sensory cues create a realistic experience and generate a significant level of stress.  There’s so much to learn, but in a training environment you never have enough time to get comfortable in the simulator.  Just when you complete one emergency procedure and make it safely on the ground, the instructor puts you into another scenario—an engine fire, landing gear failure or pressurization problem—something new to test your knowledge and skills.  It’s a humbling experience, and no matter how well you perform, what you come to understand is that there’s always something else that can go wrong.  You have to be ready, rely on what you’ve learned from years of flying different aircraft and hope you’ve trained well enough to survive whatever comes at you.

[Photo 1 - Cockpit of Airbus 320]

There’s an old saying among pilots that any landing you walk away from is a successful one.  It’s from the early days of aviation when a crash-landing was more common—before the technology and advanced training taught us a new way to define success.  This past week I finished training on the Airbus 320, the same aircraft that “Sully” Sullenburger maneuvered on two failed engines over the George Washington Bridge and landed safely in the Hudson River.  As pilots, we’ve all been trained to anticipate that scenario, and at some level I think we all wonder if we would succeed as he did.

After being away from the cockpit for several years, the training program was more challenging than I thought it would be, giving me a new appreciation for what Sully and his first officer were able to accomplish.  The other day as we practiced an emergency evacuation procedure, I noticed on the checklist that part of the captain’s responsibility is to walk through the cabin and ensure that everyone was able to evacuate the aircraft.  I thought of Sully, imagining him walking down the aisle as his plane floated in the Hudson, checking to ensure that everyone was safe before exciting onto the wing.  It must have been a great feeling for him to know that everyone made it out unscathed.  If several of his passengers had died in the landing, I don’t think he would have considered it a successful one.

A few weeks back, I was flying the night simulators, arriving at my hotel well past midnight.  The late schedule meant mornings free instead of nights, coffee and 10 A.M. walks in downtown St. Paul to help clear the mistakes from my mind and focus on the new lesson ahead.  On one walk I came across a statue of Herb Brooks, the coach of the Miracle on Ice Hockey Team that beat the Soviets back in 1980.  Even before I read his name on the plaque, I knew who he was.  His face and outstretched arms took me back to that moment in junior high as I watched a group of college students defeat the highly favored Soviets and then win the gold medal against Finland.  I remember being glued to the T.V. as they outplayed the veteran Soviet team in a game they weren’t supposed to win.

[Photo 2 - Statue of Herb Brooks]

Seeing the statue made me pause and reflect on all the emotions that are tied to a single victory so many years ago.  For me, it’s the sheer joy of winning, of course, along with a youthful patriotism and the quintessential American notion that we can all overcome our obstacles and win despite the odds against us.  But that’s my perspective—the still-lingering, American perspective—the team that actually won the game.  But what about the team that lost?  I began thinking about the psychological blow that I imagine, in retrospect, must have befallen the Soviets after losing to an inferior team—one motivated on their home soil in Lake Placid to win against all the odds.  No one could have predicted it, and as I stood there, I wondered if that game was a precursor for what lay ahead for Moscow.  Just two months prior, in December of 1979, the Russian Army had invaded Afghanistan, setting the stage for an arduous struggle against a combination of forces that Soviet strategists never envisioned.

While I’ve always considered the decade-long War in Afghanistan to be a humiliating and defining failure—one that precipitated the abrupt fall of the Soviet Union—I began to question the narrative I’d come to accept.  It’s easy to make a connection between the two; after all, the Berlin Wall came crashing down later that year (1989), and with it, the Iron Curtain began to rust and crumble all around them.  After revisiting historical accounts and essays about the Soviet occupation, though, I realized that characterizing Moscow’s decision to withdraw their soldiers as a defeat is problematic.  As Lester Grau points out in his article, Breaking Contact without Leaving Chaos,

“When the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, they did so in a coordinated, deliberate, professional manner, leaving behind a functioning government, an improved military and an advisory and economic effort insuring the continued viability of the government. The withdrawal was based on a coordinated diplomatic, economic and military plan permitting Soviet forces to withdraw in good order and the Afghan government to survive.”

While a few soldiers perished during the final withdrawal, there were no frantic helicopter departures from the embassy roof in Kabul; no enemy soldiers advancing on the cities or masses of terrified refugees fleeing their nation alongside the Soviets.  On the contrary, in a symbolic gesture, The Russian Commander, General Boris Gromov, walked across the “Friendship” bridge with his son and a bouquet of flowers in hand—the last soldier to cross over the Amu Darya River during the exodus.

[Photo 3 - General Gromov & Son Walking Across Bridge]

Like anything viewed through a narrow historical lens, the Cold War seems like such a simpler time—a time when we knew who the enemy was, a world where good and evil were framed in stark contrast to one another, and when a nation and military understood why their soldier’s lives might be sacrificed.  The fear of nuclear war and the notion of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) had embedded itself deep within the American subconscious for decades, resonating across a nation, reminding us of a need to be strong, to be vigilant and ensure that war should be limited and engaged in only as a last recourse.  The most glaring exception to that philosophy, of course, was Vietnam.  Despite the politicians declaring success in Southeast Asia and proclaiming victory in a war of attrition, my father said that he never felt as if victory on the ground was possible.  He told me that it became clear that they were losing the war after his unit had retaken the same hill several times—at one point, finding his own trash next to a stump he’d sat upon during a previous operation.  But the lessons of those years have clearly faded into the background.  The specter of Vietnam, closeted for years by a brief Gulf War and a ticker-tape parade, lay in wait, though, as we all became enamored with shock and awe.

Along with most of America, I watched a sanitized version of the 2003 invasion of Iraq unfold on TV.  Fueled by a deep-seated need for retribution in the aftermath of 9/11 and spurred on by uncertainty and fear, we reveled in the destruction of a corrupt regime.  It felt good to win against a tyrant and remind the world that we would prevail in this new War on Terror.  I listened to the military spokesmen and reports from embedded journalists—the play by play of this new war felt like a game—a struggle between two teams in which the world was asked to choose a side.  I wrapped my own enthusiasm in the American flag, forgetting, despite everything I knew, what was actually happening on the ground—the death, destruction and suffering veiled behind phrases such as collateral damage, isolated insurgency, and friendly fire.  I boxed myself off from what I knew:  that all wars begin with the illusion of being short and decisive, but few of them actually are.  I forgot what the stories of past conflicts warned me to expect—that thousands of young men and women would be returning home in silver boxes draped by that same flag, and that the rest would return as well, but a part of them would be buried forever amid the rubble of Fallujah, or in the sewage trenches of Kamaliyah, on the banks of the Tigris River, or in the eyes of the dead women and children of Haditha.

[Photo 4 - American Soldiers Near Dead Iraqi Children]

It was supposed to be a short war, with only the necessary military forces to strike a knockout blow, depose Saddam Hussein and set up a new regime—one that would be on our team in the struggles ahead.  A war, suggested by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, which might be paid for with Iraqi oil proceeds.  Yes, a quick and decisive victory with Iraqi soldiers laying down their arms, the citizens welcoming us as liberators and embracing the invaders on their home soil.  Thirteen months later, when President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier declaring, “Mission Accomplished” and an end to major combat operations—it was a victory, right?  Sovereignty was supposed to be handed over to the Iraqis a month later, a clear sign of success, but the reality couldn’t have been different.  The real struggle was just beginning.  Members of the disbanded Iraqi Army were choosing sides—Sunni and Shia—and our soldiers were caught in the middle of a conflict without a plan for success.   While many have said that the scenario in a post-invasion Iraq couldn’t have been envisioned, the truth couldn’t have been more different.  Not only did senior Generals understand the complications of this war, so too, did Vice President Cheney, who, in an interview regarding the first Gulf War, said that ousting Saddam Hussein would result in a “quagmire” and the death of many American soldiers.  He couldn’t have been more correct.

[Photo 5 - President Bush beneath “Mission Accomplished” Banner]

The solution to the quagmire, of course, was the famous Surge, coupled with General Petraeus’ counterinsurgency strategy.   While its effectiveness will be debated for years to come, the repercussions on the soldiers who took part in the operations are not in doubt.  An overstretched military was pushed to the breaking point, extending combat tours and adding new deployments to a weary and limited number of ground troops.  In his brilliant book, The Good Soldiers, Pulitzer Prize winner, David Finkel, tells the story of the 2-16th Rangers, a unit deployed on the outskirts of Baghdad during the Surge.  Their commander, Lt Col Ralph Kauzlarich, who would later be referred to by his men as, Lost Kauz, was famous for saying, “It’s all Good.”  By the end of the unit’s tour, after fourteen of his soldiers had perished and another seventy-six had earned purple hearts—men burned beyond recognition, scarred from shrapnel or with amputations—Kauzlarich and his catch phrase had become the embodiment of self-delusion.  As the 2-16th packed up in April of 2008 for the long flight home, their base was under attack and the battalion replacing them suffered their first casualty.  Little had changed since the 2-16th arrived fifteen months before  at the start of the Surge, and yet, unlike his disillusioned soldiers, Kauzlarich held onto the notion that “they had won.”

I’ve written before about the number of Americans killed in the war, as well as the untold number of Iraqi civilians who perished along the way, but recently I read a startling article that put so much of this nine-year war in perspective.  It’s a story about the 900,000 Iraqi widows currently in the country—nearly 100,000 new ones from this past decade of war… widows, often with several children, who’ve lost everything.  The photographs in the article are a reminder of the lingering repercussions of long, drawn-out wars, and how they shape the future.  After years of studying conflicts and their effect on the individual and societies, I can’t escape the images that slowly build in my imagination—the people and their stories that emerge like some great storm cloud rising atop a Midwestern plain.  I feel their presence, and when I imagine the years ahead, I see in their sad, defiant eyes the very foundation of tomorrow’s conflicts.

A generation of Iraqi children will always associate the death of their fathers and brothers with this war—the visible scars etched all around them in the rubble and pockmarked streets across their nation.  Yes, The American War—a conflict that has reshaped millions of lives and fundamentally altered the future of so many people.  So, who will lead these children as they grow into young men and women?  While no one can know for certain, the past can always serve as a guide.  In his book, Ghost Wars, about the CIA’s support of the Mujahideen during the Soviet occupation, Steve Coll recounts the nearly tenfold rise in the number of Madrassas (fundamentalist Islamic schools) on the border of Pakistan during the war.  By the end of the Soviet withdrawal, the number of Madrassas had grown to over 8000—schools to indoctrinate a generation of children, ensuring a willing pool of recruits to battle the communist regime in Kabul.

When the Soviet Union broke apart in late 1991, military and financial support for Afghanistan came to an abrupt end.  Ironically, the puppet government in Kabul would survive into the spring of 1992, outlasting the great and powerful, Soviet Union.  By April, though, Mujahideen forces ousted the Afghan government, igniting a horrible civil war that would pave the way for the Taliban and create a fertile ground for Al Qaeda.  No one could have predicted the rise of this new force in the country—the Taliban, a word, which in Pashtu means, students.  Yes, students from those Madrassas—boys who’d grown to fill the ranks of this new and barbaric regime—boys taught to adhere to the strictest and most ruthless version of Sharia Law—boys seduced by the allure of charismatic leaders like Mullah Muhammad Omar and Osama Bin Laden—boys who became the warriors/terrorists/freedom-fighters we are fighting today.

As our soldiers packed up and prepared to leave Iraq this past December, the citizens of a bombed-out Fallujah were dancing in the streets, arms raised in celebration, certain they’d won after ousting the invaders.  But this was our victory, right?  A success story in the end for America, wasn’t it?  We can call it whatever we choose, of course:  a victory, a defeat, a stalemate, a peaceful handover-of-power… the necessary label to frame the story for our own consumption.  But labels don’t mean much to the soldiers or civilians caught in the middle—the fathers, mothers and children, or the brothers, sisters, friends and lovers ever touched by this war.  They don’t need a label to know something that others can’t—a deep and abiding truth they’ll be living with for the rest of their lives—that the scars of war endure for a lifetime.  Veterans will be haunted by the memories and images lodged within their subconscious as they cope with an altered vision of the world.  Parents, spouses and children will struggle to understand and accept the person who has returned from war.  Many of these combat veterans will lose themselves along the way, unable to escape their traumatic experiences, and some will choose a path with no future at all.   According to the Veterans Administration, the V.A. Suicide Hotline receives 10,000 calls a month, with 950 Veterans attempting suicide—eighteen, of whom, succeed in killing themselves and putting their ghosts to rest.

[Photo 6 – Statue of Wounded Soldier Outside the V.A.]

This past fall, I had my post-military, physical exam at the V.A. Hospital in Minneapolis.  Located next to the National Guard base and the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, the main entrance is graced by a statue of a soldier helping a wounded colleague into the arms of a caregiver.  Overhead, the sound of airplanes landing and taking off welcomed me as I walked into the building.  Inside, surrounded by Veterans (mostly men), old and young alike, some in wheelchairs or with prosthetic arms, and many of the younger ones with a distant, hollow look in their eyes, I could feel the impetus of this essay building within me.  The physical lasted most of the day, with a variety of tests, x-rays, and blood work scheduled throughout the hospital.  Waiting there, I began to wonder about what these men were like as young boys, and how many of them, like me, had been looking for an adventure when they joined the military—a chance to be a part of something significant, serve their nation and see the world.  And how many, I wondered, had suffered as my father had, and how many were still struggling with their own demons as they tried to move forward and build a life in the aftermath of their war experiences.

Outside, as I drove out of the parking lot, I noticed a sign pointing to a separate building next to the hospital.  Above the covered entryway were the words, “Spinal Cord Injury And Disorder Center.”  It was an entire wing dedicated to those injuries… a reflection of this war, I thought.   The words and the building had a chilling effect on me in a way that the main hospital didn’t.  I hadn’t been behind those doors, but I could imagine what I might see there.  Maybe it was the hospital, the sound of airplanes passing overhead, or that I was surrounded by the embodiment of war’s effect on the individual, but it made me think of writer and aviator, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the author of The Little Prince.  He once said, “War is not an adventure.  It is a disease.  It is like typhus.”  In that moment, Saint-Exupery’s words seemed to resonate more clearly than ever.  He understood more than most, the truth of war, having experienced it up close as the Nazis invaded France in WW II.  He devoted the last few years his life trying to stem the German onslaught by flying reconnaissance missions during the war, but he never saw the victory he longed for.  He was shot down over the Mediterranean, perishing as his plane crashed into the sea.

[Photo 7 - Entrance to "Spinal Cord" Wing at the V.A.]

As I finished up my last week of simulators, and readied myself for my first flight in the aircraft, I decided to revisit the statue of Herb Brooks, this time with my camera in hand.  Since my first trip, I’d watched a few videos of the victory over the Soviets, as well as the gold medal match against Finland.  The truth is, I still get goose bumps when I watch the final moments of those games, listening to the crowd countdown to victory and then erupt in utter joy.  I felt my own boyish enthusiasm once again when Jim Craig, the U.S. goalie, draped in the American Flag, took a victory lap and then looked up into the crowd, asking “where’s my father?”  It’s a beautiful moment, this feeling of real success, coupled with a longing to share the joy with his father.

[Photo 8 - Jim Craig Looking for his Father]

For many of us who joined the military in the Eighties, that game was a reminder of how we all wanted to win in the struggle of our time—to defeat the Soviets and take pride in our nation.  Like now, those were uncertain and challenging economic times for America.  Our parent’s generation had struggled and lost a drawn out war in Vietnam, and back then, winning a hockey game seemed like much more than simply an Olympic victory.  But in the end, it was just a game and nothing more.  Winners and losers alike moved on, the crowds went home, and the players went on with their careers.  Whenever I look at the statue or a picture of Herb Brooks, I’ll always be reminded of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, reminded of a victory of ideals between two nations.  We felt good, because the victory was real, something tangible to point to as an indication of what we were capable of as a nation, but it wasn’t a call to arms.  Seeing the game again, I was reminded of how much I still love the Olympics, love watching those young athletes push themselves to compete in a venue without weapons.  I also realized, as I stood in front of the statue that I’ve watched every Olympic Medal Game we’ve played since–over 30 years of games, hoping to recapture some of that magic, but we haven’t won since.

Over the last few months, I’ve noticed more and more how members of the military have become routine fixtures at major sporting events.  Cameras from around the globe show our soldiers watching the games from a variety of bases and war zones.  On the fields, giant flags are unfurled as expressions of unbridled patriotism, and while I understand the appreciation for our Armed Forces and their sacrifices, I’m concerned at the trend.  If anything, we need to distance ourselves from the connection between sports and war.  Combat is not a game, and while there are winners and losers in sports, we need to understand that soldiers don’t win or lose wars.  At best, they merely survive the conflicts they’re engaged in.  At the V.A., the sight of so many Veterans from across the years was a clear reminder how the statue outside the hospital represents far more than a commitment to healing those who fight for our nation.  It is also a reminder about the suffering and survival in the aftermath of every war ever fought.  The bronze figures belie the illusion of a swift and decisive victory expressed in empty phrases and lies that often spur a country to go to war, reminders of the individual and societal costs of war

Nations and societies are the ones that ultimately win or lose along the way.  By looking back and learning to listen and accept the lessons from the art and literature of past conflicts, it’s as if we can hear the early echoes of a nation’s demise in the footfall of soldiers marching off to war.  Wrapping oneself too tightly in the flag can be a dangerous thing, clouding our vision, and distorting our ability to understand what the stories of war have taught us for years.  Ultimately, seeing the world through the lens of conflict has prompted me to question old assumptions—to see the rhetoric of war for what it truly is without getting lost in the emotional pull of excessive patriotic zeal.  I made that mistake back in 2003, but I’ve learned from my experience, and hope that the lessons will resonate across society, as well.  I don’t believe that simply saying, “Mission Accomplished” or that we’re winning a “war of attrition” means a victory is on the horizon or that repeating the words, “It’s all good” has any basis in reality.  I don’t believe that any landing you walk away from is a successful one.  And no, I don’t believe that wrapping oneself too tightly in the American Flag ensures that every war we wage is the right one.

Recently, I’ve heard discussions about whether or not we should have a national parade to celebrate the end of the Iraq War.  A few small ones have already taken place across the country, and while the discussion seems to center on giving the troops a proper welcome home, it feels disingenuous to me.  Americans have learned the lessons of Vietnam, no longer vilifying the soldiers for what their nation has asked them to do.  The war in Iraq is already fading into the background, and no parade can change the reality on the ground there or redefine what happened to the countless dead and wounded on both sides.  Of the millions that served, who should take part, I wonder, and what exactly are we to celebrate?  Was our nine-year war in Iraq a success?  If so, what did we win?  Tell me, because when I examine the costs of the war, when I see those soldiers at the V.A. hospital, speak with those suffering from PTSD or hear the news of deteriorating conditions in Iraq and the stories of orphaned children, I don’t sense a victory… It feels like a crash… like something we’re walking away from as a nation… just barely.

Until Next Time,

James A. Moad II

A few weeks ago I was hiking with my family on the same hilltop village where we stayed last summer.  Walking past the Gasthaus, I remembered how I sat there last August writing the first words of this blog, imagining the year ahead, and wondering what I would find compelling to write about.  And now, after just over a year, I’m back in the U.S., surrounded by boxes in a new place, remembering what I can piece together from my memories.  Happy and content about my decision to spend the year in Europe and write this blog, I realize how much I’ve learned in the process.

Like most writers, I have a love of symmetry, and I imagined writing my last blog in Europe at that same Gasthaus—a short piece to reflect on the year and everything I’d written and learned along the way.  But reality and the constraints of life and time always seem to alter our plans.   I needed to find a new way to frame this last blog about my year in Europe.  Finally, I decided to use my family’s final excursion—a week in Ireland—to highlight my experiences in the military… after all, I went to Ireland after graduating from the Academy more than two decades ago.  It seemed appropriate to frame my own military experiences in the context of those two trips.  But, like my life during this past year, so much has changed since I traveled through the rocky, western landscape of that embattled isle, astounded at the beauty and heartache expressed in the music and language of a people who know what it meant to suffer from war and poverty.

My own memory of Ireland is tainted by the Guinness and the distance of time, but I managed to share a few recollections with my children as we maneuvered across Dublin. Like much of the world, Ireland is a nation whose consciousness is rooted in the struggle for freedom, religious oppression, hunger, and a longing for a freedom that resonates in their artwork.  Strolling through the Writers Museum, I recounted the history of England’s occupation, the massacres of civilians by Cromwell’s army, the repression of Catholics and the horrible famine in the nineteenth century.  After pushing beyond the limits of my children’s attention, we left the museum and walked alongside the River Liffey.  On the northern bank, we came across a series of life size statues of a starving people, entitled Famine—statues that tell a story all their own, echoing both my words and those in the writer’s museum.  Paired with those statues, the suffering of a people comes clearly into focus, and the indifference expressed years before in Jonathan Swift’s great satirical essay, A Modest Proposal, clearly resonated across time and into the very heart of a child’s imagination in a way that seems all too real and current.  My children clearly got it.

I remember how I’d been transfixed with the stories of hunger and oppression in the country back after college, and how I’d been amazed with the Irish people’s outlook.  But that was in Southern Ireland, away from the conflict, division, and terrorism present in the North and in the heart of Belfast at the time.  In the South, the people held onto their own positive smiles, seeing beyond the pain of the past, while simultaneously reveling in the stories and longing expressed in their music.  They remembered the pain, but by expressing it in their music, literature and art, many had learned to let go of the anger.  Of course, several of the people I spoke with at the time seemed certain that the conflict in Northern Ireland would never end.  The hatred, after all, was buried deep within the psyche of those on both sides.  Each of them entrenched in the rhetoric of division with arguments echoed and supported by those clinging to religion and nationalism as a means to further an agenda without searching for real solutions.

Back then, after saying farewell to Ireland, I found myself at Reese Air Force Base in the heart of West Texas.  Returning to the U.S. as a brand new second lieutenant, I began falling back, deeper and deeper into the role I’d been trained to play—a young officer and pilot-to-be who would help contain communism.  Steeped in the Cold War era training, I couldn’t have imagined as I took my first few flights in an old T-37 that the Soviet Union was in the midst of unraveling.  Nor could I have known that American soldiers, sailors and airmen would be engaged in so many military operations in the years to come… the invasion of Panama, the first Gulf War, Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and of course, the ever-present War on Terror along with dozens of minor and covert operations around the world.  The Cold War seems to be quite a docile beast by comparison.

What I remember from those early years was how my fear of the Soviet Union faded and how the Middle East held sway in the mind of war planners.  My interest, though, turned to examining the root causes of war.  Ideas which took shape as I flew in and out of Bosnia, airlifting food and supplies into Sarajevo—a city under siege—knowing as I soared above a seemingly idyllic countryside, that the third Genocide of the 20th century was taking place on the ground below me.  The Serbians were engaged in ethnic cleansing while the West looked on in relative silence.  I found it disturbing that Europe was allowing the killing to unfold on the outskirts of the EU.  By the time the West responded, it was too late to save the 200,000+ Bosnians who’d been systematically butchered across that small country.   A nation that once embraced the multicultural ethnic and religious differences of its citizens had turned their diversity into the tools of genocide.  They’d failed to engage in a cooperative effort to see past their differences and chose the path of hatred instead.

Using the word Genocide is, of course, fraught with complications that make diplomats, politicians, and the international bureaucratic machine grind away into a quiet, churning silence of turned heads and empty backroom negotiations—negotiations that fail more often that not to solve any real problems.  And the failures always seem to translate into blood—blood spilled in the name of self-determination or limited involvement.  But self-determination is a relative thing, depending on who is “self-determining” and whether or not the spilled blood is mixed with oil.  After all, take away the oil, and Iraq is simply another country where a despot dreams of being a nuclear player and reins supreme while the world looks the other way.

For years, I’d seen this international gamesmanship as simply a form of Realpolitik—a necessary response to a complex political world with limited resources and a wavering commitment to act.  Conflicts in the Cold War Era were, after all, something to be avoided or played out in the proxy wars around the globe.  But in this new, post 9/11 era, it seems all too easy to engage in military actions without specific goals or clear long-term objectives.  Former Vice President Cheney’s assertion of his One Percent Doctrine—that if there’s a possibility of being attacked, we must be proactive in our response—is still being played out in the mountains and skies of Pakistan and Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East.  The CIA, Special Forces and their drones are expanding their roles across the world, but what are the consequences?  The shelves of bookstores and libraries are filled with the stories that warn us of us the long-term effects on both the individual and society, not to mention that military endeavors undertaken across the globe are more divisive than ever, harnessing old animosities and creating our enemies of the future.

It’s been a decade since 9/11, time enough to let go and shift the way we approach our decisions about war, right?  One might think so, but just as my friends in Ireland wondered about their countrymen in Belfast, I’m beginning to question if and when we will choose to let go and imagine a new way forward.  Like most Americans of drinking age, that September day is seared into my subconscious.  As a young commercial pilot back then, I can still remember my own nightmares as I imagined what took place in those cockpits, thinking about an old pilot buddy who’d been murdered there, and more than anything, the feeling of insecurity reverberating out from the rubble of those two towers like great clouds obscuring the future and limiting us, blotting out the imagination necessary to see beyond the anger and destruction.

I remember taking my last flight just a few months after that September day, wondering if I would ever fly for an airline again.  There were, of course, many military flights for me in the ten years between then and now, but over the last few months, I had a new reason to wonder if I’d ever get back into the cockpit.  In May, despite the physical therapy following reconstructive shoulder surgery, I stopped making progress.  I’d pushed myself, but as my physical therapist reminded me, the surgery was incredibly traumatic (four different procedures rolled into one).  The muscles all around my shoulder, back and side had contracted, limiting my range of motion.  It had healed, but my muscles were locked into a protective mode, as if they were afraid I might damage it again.  I was frustrated, and finally, while attending a Warrior Writer’s conference in Philadelphia, I took part in a Reiki session offered to those in attendance.  Following the experience, I began to feel a shift within me.  I decided to add massage therapy to help release the muscles, and after a few different sessions, I felt a significant change.  The muscles began to let go of the tension, allowing my range to return gradually until last week, when I was finally able to pass my flight physical.

Warior Writers Artwork

While I was surprised at this new path to recovery, I shouldn’t have been.  The Warrior Writers Project is all about using creativity energy to help Vets confront the trauma of war though artistic expression.  My own limitations were tied to the muscle memory—a powerful force that limited my ability to recover and reach my potential.  Of course, for many Vets and victims of trauma, the memory of pain is what keeps them from healing.  By having them write, draw, or mold their experiences into art, the pain and anger boxed up within them loses part of its destructive character.  They can, like the great Irish artists of old, give themselves over to the power of imagination—an effort which both frees and creates a new way of seeing and engaging their own experiences.

Warrior Writer Artwork

At a gathering that Saturday during the conference, I helped hang the new artwork created that day in a modest gallery in South Philly.  There’s something powerful and sobering about seeing the expressions of hurt and pain, the suffering and anger in a variety of forms transformed into art—works that capture and share the emotional trauma in a way that the spoken word sometimes fails to accomplish.  Art, after all, in it’s varied manifestations, reminds us of the power within us, our common humanity, communicating in a language all its own, and reminding us of all the possibilities buried within each of us.

The following day, I said my farewells and boarded a bus to New York.  I wanted to get back to Manhattan and take in the area around Ground Zero while it’s still being molded

Panel outside the Ground Zero Museum

and shaped into a business center and memorial.  Last fall, at the end of a walking tour around the site, I studied the engraving outside the museum—a series of metal panels depicting the events of 9/11.  Rendered beautifully, it is a tribute to the fallen firefighters and police who perished that day, reminding us to never forget their sacrifice.  I wanted to see the space again, be reminded of that great scar on America’s soil, to look out upon the shattered edifices in the heart of Manhattan before it’s

Panel 2 outside the Ground Zero Museum

all boxed into history and defined, in part, by those who dictate the intersection between memory and space.  But more than anything, I wanted to capture the end of a decade defined by 9/11, experience the sight of cranes gliding through the sky, look upon the foundations being carved into the ground and see how the sunlight breaks itself upon turned earth and stone.  More than anything, I wanted to feel the energy amid all the transformation and to see beyond the pain and suffering lingering in the memories there.

In the past decade, we’ve seen a world transformed into something few of us could have imagined, and yet here we are, in midst of an era defined by constant warfare.  Of course, nothing should surprise us by now, should it?  The roots of war and division are buried

Ground Zero under construction

deep within our collective consciousness— in memories tied to fear and uncertainty—the very tools that are often harnessed to limit and keep us from moving forward.  Yes, 9/11 was an attack on the very heart of our nation, one that resonates still across this great country, but it’s been a decade now since those towers came crashing down.  Sometimes I can still recall the ghostly feel of those deserted airports in the weeks and months following the attacks, the nightmares, the empty airplanes and the faces of the departed that linger with me still.  And I know for many others, the memories are much worse.  It’s my hope that we’re learning to let go of the anger and hatred embodied in all the destruction, but as anyone who reads a few Internet postings about that day will discover, we still have a ways to go.

When I arrived in Germany last summer, I couldn’t have imagined that a minor fall would threaten my career and put my future at risk.  Even after the surgery, I didn’t realize how the healing process and therapy would consume over half of my year abroad and define my time as much as anything.  By May, though, as I boarded an airplane at Kennedy International, I understood that I was up against something I didn’t expect, with a lot of work ahead of me, and that I might never recover completely.  As the plane departed, I remember my own apprehension down deep at a visceral gut level—an uncertainty about my own future, and whether or not I would ever be in the cockpit again.  Looking out the window, I watched the Manhattan skyline drift below me, realizing that like most of us, the city will always be tied to our memories of that September day in one way or another.  We can’t change that, but we can understand how the thoughts and images can constrain us in many ways and keep us from seeing beyond the context of the past.   Memories are fragile things, each of us clinging to them, holding on to the way they define us, give a degree of certainty and ground us in the present.  They provide a sure footing in a world changing all around us, something necessary, of course, but they don’t have to keep us from engaging in imaginative solutions to the conflicts ahead.

If I have learned nothing else from this past year abroad and from all the reading and writing I’ve done on War Literature, it is the profound danger of being absorbed and overwhelmed by past injustices and suffering.  They make us vulnerable, and the vulnerable are easy prey for those who manipulate emotions and our collective memory of pain and frustration to keep anger and hatred alive. Our greatest defense is to remember the importance of letting go of the things that limit us—aware of the pain and suffering, but understanding how unchecked anger corrupts the present and distorts our vision of the future.  Life is a process of transformation, after all—of creation itself—all of our tomorrows are wrought with memories, and our worlds are informed by past experiences, but just as the Vets expressed their sorrow and grief through art, all memories, no matter how painful can find a new kind of expression—one that doesn’t consume us.

Wars will continue to be waged, new reasons will be found to engage in a variety of military campaigns, and people will die in the process, this I accept, but the need to limit the scope and underlying causes of future wars must be a part of the very foundation on which we build the future.  We will need all the creative energy we can harness to confront the challenges in the years and decades to come.  That is the one thing we should never forget.  No more Northern Irelands, no more Bosnias, and no more 9/11s.

 

Well, about my experience, it illustrates how you can become something you never thought you would become, without being aware of the transformation. That there is evil in you, or violence in you, or both—which you’re not fully aware of—and that it can sneak up and in effect possess you, or snatch your soul.

My old editor at the National Geographic Adventure magazine used to be a Golden Gloves fighter in Ohio, and he was talking about the young interns they had working at the magazine. He said, “You know the trouble with a lot of these people, a lot of them have never been cut.”

—Philip Caputo¹

Of course war needs to be written about, and, from time out of mind, it has been. From the earliest rendition of the Iliad to the latest showing of Blackhawk Down or Jarhead or Generation Kill, war and art have reflected one another. War frames our lives. Look behind or ahead and war will find you. Though war has been convincingly written about by outsiders,² I believe we turn to insiders—combatants—for our weightiest insights. A soldier’s response to war lays claim to a special visceral authority. Tim O’Brien puts it this way: “True war stories don’t generalize. They do not indulge in abstraction or analysis”:

For example: War is hell. As a moral declaration the truism seems perfectly true, and yet because it abstracts, because it generalizes, I can’t believe it with my stomach. Nothing turns inside.

It comes down to gut instinct. A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe. (84)

Experienced soldiers speak from an earned location. Here Paul Fussell explains what he learned from combat: “I suddenly knew I was not and never would be in a world that was reasonable or just” (War, 43). I should point out that when I use a term like combatant I hardly mean to restrict the term to uniformed troops. Consider this “noncombatant” Nicaraguan mother:

“The three of us crouched in the corner of the house, trembling and crying all at once, thinking that surely we would die here as the bullets and shrapnel were destroying our small wooden home. We decided to leave and find a safe place to hide. So we went through the back, through the kitchen, my husband carrying our young daughter in his arms. A plane flew very low and seemed to be coming directly at us and firing rockets all over, striking my daughter in the back and my husband as he carried her. From where I was, only a few paces behind them, I saw only the heart and the entrails of my child. She seemed to have been blown apart, completely destroyed. My husband stumbled some thirty steps with his arms torn away, blood pouring out of him till he fell dead. There was a great hole in his chest. Part of it was still smoking, a smoking rocket was still in one leg. The other was stripped of all flesh to the bone. I wanted to pick up my daughter, but there were only pieces of her. . . . I ran and found her arm and tried to put it back on her, tried to put back everything that had spilled out of her. But she was already dead. She was my only child and it was hard for me to have her. I dressed her myself for parties. Spoiled her. I don’t know what I’m going to do.” (Mattison, 227)

What is this but moral authority?—a voice that merits and demands attention—a voice that knows.

Felt threat is a constant for any soldier, especially those on the front lines. To put it another way, in war there is the sense that one is available for death, which is a notion that will alter forever any competing notion of invincibility—the more common vision for a nineteen- or twenty-year old. War is for all soldiers, as it was for young Paul Fussell, an “introduction to the shakiness of civilization” (44). The possibility of death is something that sticks. From an interview, Tim O’Brien:

There’s a passage where Paul Berlin is going to war and he looks at his own hands, “my hands, my hands.” Love of one’s limbs. Love of their presence, because in war there’s always the proximate danger of their absence. No hands. No legs. No feet. No testicles. No head. That passage in Cacciato was written with a real purpose in mind: “my hands.” Those are things we take for granted. We don’t look at our hands and take a shower and say “my hands.” But war teaches you to value those hands. (Herzog, 108)

Soldiers are witnesses and there is a false belief that they should recover from what they have seen and done, and had done to them. Combat is so separate, so distant from normalcy that to expect soldiers to return easily from battle during or after war is a dreamy prospect. All to say that much of what propels a soldier’s world view and living must stem from war-learned behavior—reliance on instinct and the ugly effectiveness of violence—controlled and uncontrolled, scheduled and unplanned. In his essay “My War,” Paul Fussell quotes the poet Louis Simpson, who wrote, “The war made me a foot-soldier for the rest of my life” (40). About himself, Fussell writes, “My war is virtually synonymous with my life. I entered the war when I was nineteen, and I have been in it ever since” (40). Soldiers possess knowledge, a hard-earned and acute disillusion:

Those who actually fought on the line in the war, especially if they were wounded, constitute an in-group forever separate from those who did not. Praise or blame does not attach; rather there is the accidental possession of a special empirical knowledge, a feeling of a mysterious shared ironic awareness manifesting itself in an instinctive skepticism about pretension, publicly enunciated truths, the vanities of learning, and the pomp of authority. Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it’s not very nice. (48)

The source of a soldier’s secret is what he has seen and done and had done to him. It is a commonplace that war makes men. “But if it makes men,” Samuel Hynes (himself a veteran) writes in The Soldiers’ Tale, “it also isolates them from other men, cuts off the men who fought from older and younger men who did not share that shaping experience. . .” (5). In Trained to Kill: Soldiers at War, Dr. Theodore Nadelson,³ writes that “The soldier’s privilege to kill is unlike anything most other individuals have ever experienced, and the soldier who kills is permanently changed, fixed to the death he has made” (38)—a notion Nadelson further establishes when he writes, “[The soldier] is disturbed in peace partly because he is not able to give up memories of war’s wonder and of a contest survived” (78). Hynes replaces Nadelson’s term wonder with strangeness—both writers aiming to get at that reaction soldiers have to war: astonishment. “War is . . . continually strange and unexpected. . . . When Rod Kane arrived in Vietnam, he expected a war of ordinary violence; he didn’t expect to be attacked immediately by a child with a sack of hand grenades—but he was” (18-19). Hynes provides other such scenarios:

From the First World War—a soldier marches through a ruined village:

Just past the last house on the left was a small pond, whence protruded the grey-clad knee of a dead German. The water around him was green and on his knee was perched a large rat making a meal.

From the Second World War—a German infantryman is retreating on the Russian front:

We had just passed a bunker in which we noticed a body lying at the bottom. Two emaciated cats were eating one of its hands.

From the Vietnam War—a young officer remembers:

A man saw the heights and depths of human behavior in Vietnam, all manner of violence and horrors so grotesque that they evoked more fascination than disgust. Once I had seen pigs eating napalm-charred corpses—a memorable sight, pigs eating roast people. (19-20)

And Sharon Allen, an Iraq War veteran:

I’m very cognizant of the crowd when I speak about Iraq. Some stories that make veterans laugh cause civilians to slowly back away, scanning for the nearest exit. Sometimes we really just found these stories funny. Sometimes it was a coping mechanism. And sometimes it was absolutely inappropriate and we didn’t even know why we did it.

A sergeant who lived in the building next to mine was first on the scene when one of my friends died. I saw her right when she got back from the convoy. She came to me to tell me what she had seen, I guess because I knew the kid. He didn’t feel a thing. The IED had blown his head off.

“He was just sitting there. His head was gone. But his hair was still there. It was like his face, and his head, had been scooped out. But his hair was still there. I don’t know what was holding it up. It was kind of funny.” And then she looked into the distance and kind of laughed. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I just laughed at that. I am so sorry.” Then she started crying for the first time. I told her this had just happened. I didn’t expect her to follow some bullshit protocol, and that I didn’t even know what the protocol would be when you see someone’s head blown off.

Then she told me about the other casualty, who was still alive, but later died of internal injuries.

“When we picked him up, his leg just . . . came off. It was like it was cut with a laser. He was missing his hand, but it wasn’t bleeding. I remember thinking that was weird. And then when we picked him up his leg just . . . fell off. I had half of his leg in one hand, and the other half in the other. And it just . . . came apart.” She laughed again.⁴

How not to recall Tim O’Brien’s soldiers shinnying up a tree to remove Curt Lemon’s bones and skin and intestines after he’d stepped on a mine, singing “Lemon Tree” as they threw down the parts?⁵ Though this example comes from a “fictional” story, we should remind ourselves that it was written by a veteran. In the spirit of “Lemon Tree,” Frederick Downs, another soldier-writer,⁶ writes about counting bodies, or parts of them, to sustain the American policy of attrition. Some Vietcong, accidently or not, had detonated their own landmine:

There were three penises, two complete faces, which looked like masks they were so complete, five soles of feet, their hands, and few other parts. The largest body part was a section of a rib cage with parts of four rib bones connected to a small section of the shoulder. (Hynes, 191)

After counting, Downs’s men situated one of the hands into the soft ground and stuck a cigarette between two fingers. “It looked great,” Downs said.

It looked like someone lying underground had paused in the motion of moving his cigarette from his mouth to his side. Everyone took pictures of this bizarre construction. We never thought it was ghoulish. (191)

Dr. Nadelson:

Years after, veterans still find memories of combat victory and killing exhilarating. Soldiers as yet “uncooked” by combat often scrutinize the face and body of the killed enemy in wonder at their ability to create something as profound and enduring as death. Soldiers tie themselves to the dead by photographing dead enemy soldiers or by taking the possessions of the dead as trophies to preserve the moment. (37)

One of Dr. Nadelson’s patients puts it more crudely: “You could do anything you wanted—shit, I was eighteen—kill anyone or anything in Vietnam and get away with it. It was like being drunk and walking around with a hard-on” (104). As cold as such a reaction might be, it is also true, as Nadelson points out, that if soldiers “cannot be aroused to kill to avoid their own death and that of their comrades, they are a detriment to the safety of others” (43). There is a complicated cost, however, both to soldiers and their nation when they are “properly” trained to kill. In a letter to Harriet Moore, D.H. Lawrence, referring to WWI, wrote, “The war is dreadful. It is the business of the artist to follow it home to the heart of the individual fighters” (233). More important is to hear the reports from those individual fighters, and not all reports are negative. Tim O’Brien in a recent interview:

That little tirade I gave earlier about government lying—what you just heard was a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome resulting from witnessing the consequences of deceit, incompetence, and blundering. The consequences are your friends dying, and your watching Vietnamese die and houses burned down. And it stays with you, and it affects you in ways that aren’t all terrible. It’s good to have a little post-traumatic stress syndrome, so you won’t get stressed again, so you won’t get traumatized again. It’s like putting your hand in a fire. You do it enough times and you’re going to be careful of fire. So although there are negative things associated with post-traumatic stress syndrome, there are positives, too, that are very rarely written about. You learn to survive, and you learn what moral behavior is. (Herzog, 112)

“It’s a judgment call,” a marine corporal says in The Forever War, Dexter Filkins’s memoir of the current  war in Iraq. Corporal McIntosh is a twenty-year-old sniper who must decide if or when to shoot when the enemy mixes with civilians, employing women and children as shields. “Cowardly but effective,” says McIntosh’s partner Sergeant Schrumpf. Schrumpf is twenty-eight. As Filkins reports it, it had been a good day for the sharpshooters (90).

“We dropped a few civilians,” Sergeant Schrumpf shrugged, “but what do you do?”

To illustrate, the sergeant offered a pair of examples.

“There was one Iraqi soldier, and twenty-five women and children,” he said, “I didn’t take the shot.”

But more than once, Sergeant Schrumpf said, the odds were in his favor. One of the fedayeen fighters would be standing among two or three civilians. Usually it worked out: Schrumpf shot him. Not always. He recalled one such moment, in which he and some other men in his unit opened fire. He watched one of the women standing near an Iraqi soldier drop to the ground.

“I’m sorry,” Sergeant Schrumpf said, shaking his head. “But the chick was in the way.” (91)

Filkins also reports an instance of the killing of an Iraqi family who, as it turned out, was fleeing the fighting in Baghdad. When they failed to stop at a checkpoint, American soldiers opened fire, killing six of the ten occupants of the car.

“My whole family is dead,” muttered Aleya, one of the survivors, careening between hysteria and grief. “How can I grieve for so many people?”

The marines had been keeping up a strong front when I arrived, trying to stay business-like about the incident. “Better them than us,” one of them said. The marines volunteered to help lift the bodies onto a flatbed truck. One of the dead had already been partially buried, so the young marines helped dig up the corpse and lift it onto the vehicle. Then one of the marines began to cry. (116-117)

The military, it seems to me in my forty years of affiliation, works overtime to emphasize for its soldiers the notion of The Ultimate Sacrifice—that is, dying—far more than it works to emphasize the soul’s erosion that accompanies killing, and certainly more than how to continue damaged when you don’t die. Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman makes the essential point in his book On Killing:

The resistance to the close-range killing of one’s own species is so great that it is often sufficient to overcome the cumulative influences of the instinct for self-protection, the coercive forces of leadership, the expectance of peers, and the obligation to preserve the lives of comrades.

The soldier in combat is trapped within this tragic Catch-22. If he overcomes his resistance to killing and kills an enemy soldier in close combat, he will be forever burdened with blood guilt, and if he elects not to kill, then the blood guilt of his fallen comrades and the shame of his profession, nation, and cause lie upon him. He is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn’t. (87)

Grossman further confirms the burden of killing when he writes, “The dead soldier takes his memory with him, but the man who killed him must forever live and die with him” (93).

An observant 19^th-century cardiologist noted that a Civil War combatant’s cardiovascular system could be altered by battlefield experiences. Named for the cardiologist, “Da Costa’s Syndrome” manifests a set of symptoms like those of heart disease and anxiety, though a physical examination will not present physiological abnormalities. Perhaps because of its parallel psychological manifestations, “Da Costa’s Syndrome” became more commonly known as “Soldier’s Heart.” What with World War I’s constancy of barrage on crammed trenches, the medical term for seemingly intact though maimed soldiers morphed into “Shell-Shocked,” to be followed by World War II’s and Korea’s familiar “Thousand-Yard Stare.” The term since Vietnam, of course, is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. Our current war’s injuries, an odd consequence of effective body armor and blasts from explosive devices, are contributing as never before to “closed head wounds”—invisible damage contributing strenuously, as you might expect, to PTSD. These are soldiers who in previous wars would have died and not become mental health statistics. Improved battlefield medicine has also preserved soldiers with severe physical damage, soldiers who might have been better off dead. A particular case is Lewis Puller, Jr., the son of Chesty Puller, the Marine Corps’s most decorated general:

. . . a thunderous boom suddenly rent the air, and I was propelled upward with the acrid smell of cordite in my nostrils.

When I landed a few feet up the trail from the booby-trapped howitzer round that I had detonated, I felt as if I had been airborne forever. . . . I thought initially that the loss of my glasses in the explosion accounted for my blurred vision, and I had no idea that the pink mist that engulfed me had been caused by the vaporization of most of my right and left legs. As shock began to numb my body, I could see through a haze of pain that my right thumb and little finger were missing, as was most of my left hand, and I could smell the charred flesh which extended from my right wrist upward to the elbow. I knew that I had finished serving my time in the hell of Vietnam. (Hynes, 198-199)

Lewis Puller suffered for twenty years until 1994, when he killed himself. How to live, much less twenty years, with such wreckage?—where is the graduate course for that? John Wolfe, who himself lost a leg in Vietnam, was medevaced and nearly died three times (surviving two open-heart massages and the infusion of 39 pints of blood) before being delivered to a hospital ship where, sometime after, he underwent the following:

Semiconscious and strapped into a wheelchair, I was wheeled down to a physical therapy room with various exercise bars, tables, and gym equipment around. Weights about the size of baby rattles were placed in my hands. Just a few feet away, a physical therapist was busy balancing something on a table that at first looked liked a sack of potatoes. When I focused, I saw that it was a young Asian man, probably Korean, who had lost both arms and both legs close to the torso. No sooner would the therapist balance the torso on its buttocks than it would topple over on its face with a painful-looking impact, and then the process would be repeated.

The Korean’s eyes met mine, and for a long moment the presence of everything and everybody else in the room blurred, faded out, dematerialized, leaving only his mind and mine on the that spatial plane in an uninterrupted convergence, and then we both started to laugh hysterically. (109)

As former paratrooper John Wolfe well knows and has written, “Few things in this world are as unforgiving, pitiless, ungovernable, and irrecoverable as lead and steel loosed from a weapon”:

The transfigurations they effect on the bodies of friend and foe alike form a permanent backdrop to all of a soldier’s future visions. While others experience intervals of silence between thoughts, a combat veteran’s intervals will be filled with rubbery Halloween mask heads housing skulls shattered into tiny shards, schemeless mutilation, and shocked, pained expressions that violent and premature death casts on a dead face. These images are war’s graffiti. (103)

In The Soldiers’ Tale, Hynes takes on the issue of “truth problems”—he knows that any individual’s perspective, especially in the carnage, chaos, and fog of war, is limited, not only by one’s place in the field (a trench, a tank, a cockpit), but by the “infidelities of memory” and the “distortion of language.” But, nonetheless, the individual’s vision, confined or not, helps make up the larger, more accurate picture, the truth of war “being the sum of witnesses, the collective tale that soldiers tell”:

We don’t need to call that convergence of witnesses historical truth, if that seems too confident; call it instead the recoverable past of war. Such recovery is possible; it is more than possible: it is imperative. What other route do we have to understanding the human experience of war—how it felt, what it was like—than the witness of the men who were there? (25)

Though the individual soldier’s vision and perspective is limited, even suspect, there is nothing obscuring the hardest truths of combat:

In the stories that Vietnam narrators tell, the killing, which was the point of the strategy, appears to be random, accidental, arbitrary, often brutal. The army printed up rules of engagement and distributed them among the troops; but in the field there were no rules. The enemy was invisible, or indistinguishable among civilians, and all Vietnamese looked alike to the young short-timers; how could he avoid killing wrongfully? Robert Mason⁷ tells of a training question that was asked of all prospective grunts: What would you do if you were the driver of a truck loaded with soldiers, traveling very fast down a muddy road, flanked on both sides by steep drop-offs, and a child suddenly walked into your path? Would you try to avoid the child, and drive off the road to certain death? Or would you run over it? Everybody knew the right answer: kill the kid. Mason tells the story to illuminate his account of flying his helicopter over a village where an innocent-looking crowd of Vietnamese is bunched around a man with a machine gun. What do you do? You kill the kid. Mason’s gunner machine-gunned the whole crowd. (Hynes, 189-190)

It isn’t much of a slide to move from what seems a legitimate moral dilemma to the reduction of a personal moral universe, especially when that young soldier is tired, misled, scared, angry, and armed. The real problem for surviving soldiers is to live with what they’ve experienced. O’Brien puts it mildly when he writes,

You can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth; if you don’t care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty. (77)

Doug Anderson, a medic in Vietnam and author of two poetry collections⁹ dealing with that war and violence, has just published a memoir, Keep Your Head Down, in which he recalls a young soldier shooting a dead man.

I see Jeter firing into a corpse with his M16. The corpse is dancing. Jeter is red-faced, like a thwarted child. His eyes are all pupil. This is the kid who most often makes me laugh, who makes me feel most protective, the eighteen-year-old whose parents had to sign for him when he joined up at seventeen. He empties one magazine and slaps in another. He fires again into the corpse. The corpse dances, arms and legs flail, the flat face peeling off the shattered skull, the pink-blue brains scattering, the ground black with blood. Jeter stops suddenly, looks dazed.

I say, “You all right?” He stares at me. Then he kicks what’s left of the corpse, and it flops over like a doll. He runs toward the stream where they’re still fighting. I don’t see the ones begging for their lives. (104)

Upon his return home, Doug Anderson protests the war. Like many sentient veterans (in particular those who in time meet their former enemies as fellow humans), Anderson is painfully conscious that although 59,000 Americans died in Southeast Asia, some three million Vietnamese were killed, two-thirds of whom were civilians. “The reasons,” as he puts it, “I have become adamant against the war hold the smell of blood and the vision of mangled flesh” (173).

Soldiers more than anyone know what they are capable of destroying and I believe when they write about war (or paint it or photograph or film it), they are trying to preserve the world. Sadly, though, we are often forced to accept W.H. Auden’s conclusion that “poetry makes nothing happen,”⁸ that nothing he ever wrote saved one Jew from the gas chambers. If art were as powerful as we might wish it to be, war should have ended after Homer. Still, art markets authority. Why else did officials at the United Nations decide to cover the tapestry of Picasso’s Guernica, as council members met to discuss the start of Gulf War II? There is an obligation—is there not?—as Neruda advised, to “Come and see the blood in the streets”?¹⁰ It is dishonest to create art that does not reflect the world that art exists in. To ignore what we do in war and what war does to us is to move willfully toward ignorance and pretense. At their best, soldier-artists affirm the power of word and image and the human craving for meaning. And if one of the functions of such art is to disturb the status quo, to force us to view the world anew, to consider our capacities to build or tear down, then we must welcome these disturbances.

We hear of, say, My Lai or Abu Ghraib, and want to believe—don’t we?—that our choices would have been different from those who will find their place in history as moral dwarfs. Except: as the Milgram and the Stanford Prison experiments uncomfortably disclose—humans are only too willing to obey authority, even when that authority conflicts with their conscience. As we should by now know, it is in this way that ordinary folk, by merely “doing their jobs,” become agents in persecution, “cleansing,” and genocide. Now and again during the Milgram experiments, someone would refuse to “obey,” either to start or to continue to administer what they had every reason to believe was debilitating, if not fatal, electrical shock to unseen but screaming recipients. But such forswearing individuals were always in the minority. It’s Paul Fussell who wrote, “If you can’t imagine yourself an SS officer hustling the Jewish women and children to the gas chamber, you need to be more closely in touch with your buried self” (Bomb, 113). To scorn such reminders carelessly imperils ourselves, our communities, and nations. Soldiers have much to tell us. Samuel Hynes heard a man at a dinner party suggest a solution for the siege of Sarajevo: “We could take those guns out with a little napalm.” Hynes, a former marine pilot, thought, “You have never seen napalm dropped, you don’t know how it flows and spreads like a wave of fire and burns everything (2).” Hynes also records a French foot-soldier from the First World War who said it this way: “The man who has not understood with his flesh cannot talk to you about it” (1-2).

Remember.

Listen.

Notes

1. from an interview with Tobey Herzog in Writing Vietnam, Writing Life, 2008, pp. 16 & 40.

2. Stephen Crane, of course, comes to mind (The Red Badge of Courage). Then there is Cynthia Ozick’s extraordinary short story “The Shawl,” a strafing account of a death camp murder of a stick-limbed child. Though born in time to have been interned in a death camp, Cynthia Ozick wasn’t; she was, at the story’s fictional time, a cheerleader in high school in New Jersey.

3. Theodore Nadelson, M.A. M.D. (1930-2003) was a clinical professor of psychiatry and vice chair for psychiatric education at Boston University School of Medicine and chief of psychiatric service at Boston Veterans Administration Medical Center.

4. Sharon Allen’s work appeared in Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front in the Words of U.S. and the Their Families, Random House, 2006. The text in this essay is from a personal email, March 26, 2008.

5. from “How to Tell a True War Story.”

6. Frederick Downs, a Vietnam veteran, is author of The Killing Zone, 1978.

7. Robert Mason, a Vietnam veteran, is author of Chickenhawk, 1983.

8. from Auden’s poem “In Memory of W. B. Yeats.”

9. Doug Anderson’s poetry collections are The Moon Reflected Fire and Blues for Unemployed Secret Police.

10. This line is repeated three times to conclude Neruda’s war poem “I’m Explaining a Few Things.”

Works Cited

Anderson, Doug. Keep Your Head Down: Vietnam, The Sixties, and a Journey of Self-Discovery, New York: Norton, 2009.

Filkins, Dexter. The Forever War. New York: Vintage, 2008.

Fussell, Paul. “My War.” Harper’s January 1982: 40-48.

—. Thank God for the Atom Bomb. New York: Ballantine, 1990.

Grossman, Dave. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. New York: Little, Brown, 1995.

Herzog, Tobey C. Writing Vietnam, Writing Life. U of Iowa P, 2008.

Hynes, Samuel. The Soldiers’ Tale. New York: Penguin, 1997.

Mattison, Harry. “What Makes Us Think We Are Only Here.” Writing Between the Lines, eds. Kevin Bowen & Bruce Weigl. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1997.

Nadelson, Theodore, M.A. M.D. Trained to Kill: Soldiers at War. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 2005.

O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Penguin, 1990.

Wolfe, John. “A Different Species of Time.” When War Becomes Personal, ed. Donald Anderson. U of Iowa P, 2008.

Zytaruk, George L. and Boulton, James T. The Letters of D.H. Lawrence. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.

Whenever I travel, especially by train, I try to bring along a book written about the region I’ll be visiting. There’s something about watching the countryside zip by, immersing me moment-by-moment, a little deeper into the world outside my window—a place I’m discovering in a new way—which makes the words and stories resonate in a way they don’t when I travel by car or plane.

High Speed "Bullet Train"

A few weeks back, I was fortunate enough to celebrate Mother’s Day in Paris with my wife.  It was only the second time we’ve left our children in the care of others for a weekend away, and despite the guilt of not waking up to a breakfast of cold toast, runny eggs, and weak coffee prepared by our kids, my wife welcomed the time away.  My ten-year old daughter thought differently, though, and she made sure to organize a “surprise” brunch for her mom the weekend before.  Maturing all too fast, she’s in that precious place between a little girl and a big girl, and I find that I’m always a step behind, unable to keep up or accept the changes taking place before me.  I can feel it now, especially on trips away, this pervasive desire to hold on to a moment in time and keep it forever…a desire for life to stay the same.

Moving upwards of 150 mph, we glided through the Alcase-Loraine, a region which had been fought over again and again by countries bent on dominating the other.  How many lives, I wondered, had been sacrificed  over this small piece of earth?  I started reading For the Soul of France: Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus by Frederick Brown. The book reminded me of how little I know about this great nation.  Outside of the French Revolution, the two World Wars and their failures in Vietnam, my knowledge was limited to what I’ve gleaned from guidebooks.  As I read, I was surprised to learn that despite Napoleon’s tyrannical rule and his disastrous attempt to dominate Europe at the start of the 19th Century, the French didn’t learn their lesson.  The latter half of the century was marked by a war of aggression against Prussia by Napoleon III and attempts by the Vatican and the French aristocracy to limit rights, curtail education, stifle progress and reinstate the monarchy.  By 1871, the nation was on the verge of bankruptcy, and the hungry citizens of Paris, exhausted by war and marginalized by the elite, finally revolted against the government. A swift and decisive response by the French military broke the resistance, killing over 30,000 civilians and militiamen in what became known as La Semaine Sanglante (“The Bloody Week”).  Over 50,000 more people would be hunted down and killed in the weeks and months following the uprising.

The Hôtel de Ville (City Hall), site of the revolutionary headquarters in 1871. Below the clock, carved in stone, are the words, "Liberte, Egalite & Fraternite"

Reading on, it was clear how the confluence of events in the late 1800s had threatened the very foundation of democracy, putting the great ideals of the French Revolution—Liberte (Liberty), Egalite (equality), Fraternite (brotherhood) at risk.  By the time our train arrived in Paris, I was excited about the prospect of walking the city streets with a new perspective.  For me, the buildings, churches, great gardens and cobblestoned alleys would reveal themselves in a new way as I imagined the battle for the heart of Paris.  Outside the Musee d’Orsee, standing in line to see the great artwork of the 19th Century impressionists and sculptors, I couldn’t help but notice the well-armed French Gendarmerie guarding the building.  I considered taking pictures of them, but after observing the stern looks and their uncompromising demeanor, I thought better of it.  Were they there because of the French involvement in Libya, I wondered, or because the long shadow of Bin Laden’s execution had cast itself across much of the Western World, creating a kind of subtle darkness in which we find ourselves?

Inside the former train station-turned-museum, the arched ceiling towers above you, opening up the great hall to each visitor.  It’s inviting, and unlike many museums, the spacious open feeling calls out to you, asking you to linger and contemplate the various works of art.  I listened to the audio guide, hearing the stories of these artists and their work, many of them searching to capture the light and essence of an idyllic world that was losing itself to an era defined by The Industrial Revolution—a world that was crumbling around them and redefining what it meant to live and work in harmony—a society where craftsmen, skilled workers, and a variety of artisans were losing out in the struggle against mass production.

Later, after exiting the museum, I noticed the soldiers once again.  This time I used the pretext of photographing statues to capture an image of one.  Despite my efforts to push aside the thoughts of Osama Bin Laden for the weekend, the presence of the soldiers made me reflect on his death.  It had been a week since his body was dumped dutifully at sea to avoid future complications, and I wondered, after almost ten years of war, now what?  I’d intentionally not put much thought into his death, letting the pundits and supposed experts mull over the implications, the nuts and bolts of it all, and the foolish banter about what it all means.  In short, I don’t think we can begin to discern a meaning in such a limited time—it’s too soon—and even the notion of “meaning” is fraught with complications.  For me, though, it’s a time to pause, a time to reflect on the wars, a time to box up the numbers and statistics from across the last ten years and label it all as the Broken Decade—one for future generations to mull over and contemplate with chagrin and ironic observations which only they can see.

Guarding Art - Outside the Musee D'Orsay

From today’s perspective, though, locked in the present, all any of us can do is examine what’s in front of us—the shattered remains of a decade, lingering on in the shadow cast over the start of the Twenty-First Century.  Here’s my attempt to piece together the numbers from our military operations over the past ten years—an effort fraught with imperfection because, with the exception of the American fatalities, the data is anything but certain:

Over 6000 dead American soldiers, 50,000+ wounded, another 300,000+ with traumatic brain injuries, a million or more with post traumatic stress disorder, soaring rates of soldier suicides, the unclear number of wounded and dead mercenaries (re-branded as “contractors”), trillions of dollars borrowed from future generations, a decimated American military, an underfunded-understaffed-underequipped Veteran’s Administration given the impossible role of piecing together what remains of those returning from war, and then there are the wives, parents and children left to care and share their world with soldiers who can’t walk, speak, or see…  the repercussions already being felt, and which will reverberate for generations to come.

And these, of course, are the ethnocentric thoughts endemic to a society that looks inward all to often, wrapped for much of the decade in sanctimonious decrees meant to divide instead of reach out to those who might help to ensure a more harmonious future—to avoid setting the stage for future wars.  We don’t consider the hundreds of thousands dead Iraqis and Afghanis (estimates between 600,000 and 1.5 million), or the millions scarred by war, two broken nations ripe for revolution once our military support ends, and of course many of us refuse to recognize or try to comprehend how and why we’ve made it easy for a generation of Muslims around the world to see the U.S. as a crusader, an occupier, and an evil empire.

Maybe I sound a bit jaded, a bit uncertain and a bit angry at all the loss and destruction, or maybe it’s just the lens through which I see the world.  War begets war, after all.  If there is anything our leaders need to know, it is this, and that the toll it takes on everyone breeds hatred and insecurity.   As a boy, my father once described combat to me in the terms a child could understand—a camping trip into the deep woods where a horrible beast lives.  It was, he told me, a struggle to kill a beast that’s been freed from it’s cage—a beast which never sleeps… one that’s hunting you and gets more powerful every day—one which we can never return to the cage.  If there is a something that the literature and art of war should teach us, it is that when we free the beast from its cage, we sacrifice our young warriors by casting them into the jungles, deserts, cities and seas of war to fight it.  Many will be devoured in one way or another and many more will be forced to become beasts in order to survive.

“Is the war over?” my son asked me a few days before we left for Paris.  Some kids at his German school were discussing the topic after learning of Bin Laden’s fate.  The German military, after all, has a presence in Afghanistan and they share in the burden of that war.  “Which one?” I asked, before realizing that he, like many people, consider the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to be the same war, each precipitated by the hurt, anger, and frustration harnessed when we watched the two towers burn and then fall, crumbling into broken shards of concrete and twisted metal.  I’d like to tell him that the wars are almost over, but instead, I do my best to let him know that these wars are not the same, but rather, two distinct “Operations” and not even “officially” declared wars, but simply part of a broader War on Terror.  I continued explaining, but he seemed confused, and after all these years, I think maybe we all are.

Recently, a good friend of mine deployed to Iraq.  He’s there as a Public Affair’s Officer, and considering the combat mission is supposedly complete, it’s unclear what exactly his role is.  From my perspective, I imagine he’s part of a broader effort of finding a narrative to express the final attempts at picking up the pieces and salvaging what we can from a country devastated by our invasion, a civil war, and years of occupation.  I’m certain that some are working diligently to frame the War in Iraq as a victory—the embodiment of democratic ideals triumphing over tyranny and oppression—as if that was the goal of our invasion.  People need a story to believe, after all, a story to hold onto—a story to accept and mask the uncertainty welling up inside us all.  I wonder what will finally emerge from these wars… what stories will we be telling and teaching our children in the years to come?  As for the discussion with my son, I didn’t say what I was thinking, that the war’s not over, that it will continue in many ways, transforming itself into many different forms in the years to come.  Instead, I simply said, “no, it’s not over yet, but soon I hope…soon.”

On our last day in Paris, I made sure to stop at Shakespeare and Company, the famous bookstore where the American expat, Sylvia Beach, worked with the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, as well as publishing James Joyce’s Ulysses when no one else would.  During the German Occupation, Beach’s devotion to the power of words made her a threat to the Nazis, and she was forced to close the store in 1941 or sacrifice her library of books.  Years later, it would be reopened by a new American expat, George Whitman, who ensured every inch interior overflowed with books and creative energy.

Upstairs in the Children's Library at Shakespeare & Company

Considering that my daughter is both an avid reader and budding writer, I wanted to buy a book for her there (they stamp each purchased book with an official seal). Once inside, I found myself drawn upstairs to the small, old library with wooden beams dividing the children’s section from the adults.  The haunting poster of The Great Gatsby lingered there behind a sketch of famous children’s books, most of which my daughter has either read or outgrown by now.

Searching for something timeless and classic, I found an old book of Nursery Rhymes.  Flipping through the pages, I marveled at how the beautiful illustrations helped to impart both understanding and meaning to the words.  The lessons in those old rhymes were varied, but clear, and I found myself sitting there, content as a child, rereading Humpty Dumpty again and again.  It’s such a simple piece, one that’s been reinterpreted in books, films and music across the years.  Although I haven’t researched it, to me, it seems clear

Corner of the small upstairs Library Shakespeare & Company

that the old egg of a man also represents the soldier whose life was shattered by combat.  Carrying the book with me to the other side of the library, I paused to sit at the table where so many brilliant writers once lingered and wrote.  Humbled in the presence of their ghosts, I thought of Hemingway’s great story, Soldier’s Home, about the internal struggle soldier’s face when they return from war.  As I sat there, looking out the window onto the street below, I imagined Ernest Hemingway arriving out front in his Jeep in 1944 with a few other soldiers armed with machine guns.  How appropriate, I thought, that it was Hemingway himself, as a Major in WW II, who’d shown up to liberate Sylvia Beach and her library from the fascists.

On the train ride back home, I read more about France and began to notice how this past decade in America feels like the years leading up to La Semaine Sanglante.  And lately, as I observe all the uprisings taking place across Africa and the Middle East, I’m reminded of all the pent up frustration and insecurity of those years preceding World War I, when workers revolted across Europe and Russia, setting the stage for that war.  It’s clear to me that the leaders and politicians of today have forgotten (or never knew) that coupling the seeds of war with widespread discontent puts us all on dangerous ground.  As a student of politics steeped in the Cold War Era rhetoric of good and bad—the Evil Empire vs. the Shining City on the Hill—it’s easy to see how many politicians cling to an all or nothing discourse without being aware of the consequences of a polarized and broken dialogue.  It’s everywhere, this absurd posturing which masks the true narrative of history—that insecurity in all its manifestations is the breeding ground for revolution and war.

As a cadet in 1988, for my senior project in International Affairs, I wrote about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the war that ensued, and the effects on both the Soviet economy and their image as a superpower.  Despite my own Manichean view of the world back then and my desire for an end to the Soviet Union, I could never have imagined that their economy and infrastructure were crumbling from the inside and that the war in Afghanistan merely accelerated their demise.  And, of course, nobody could have predicted the speed in which the Berlin Wall would fall and mark the end of communism in Europe.  For me, masked by my own fear of communism, the Soviet rhetoric of invincibility, and the lingering images of America’s humiliating withdrawal from Vietnam, I believed what General Gromov, the Russian commander, said about their departure from Afghanistan:

“The completion of an international mission and the fulfillment of the Geneva Accords; none of our units, even the smallest one, have retreated.  That is why there is no talk of a military defeat.”

His words were part of a story meant to linger on in Soviet history, embedding itself in the national consciousness for years to come, but it was not to be.  The reality was far different.  The soviet military had suffered a tremendous defeat on multiple levels, and the puppet government installed in Kabul fell quickly and violently after they departed, spawning a civil war that would open a door for the Taliban and Al Queda.

Twenty years later, in the fall of 2008, while working at CENTCOM in the J5 (Planning) for Afghanistan, I was tasked with a similar project—to write a short, yet comprehensive, historical analysis on past wars in Afghanistan and give my observations on courses of action.  It was something to acquaint new senior staff officers with when they arrived at CENTCOM.  I concluded the paper by stating that regardless of our noble efforts, at some point we have to leave Afghanistan to it’s own devices, and that any attempts at enforcing democracy from the outside are doomed to failure.  Although not exactly what the senior staff wanted to hear, it was consistent with my research.  I wrote the paper in the last week of the presidential elections, and I watched Obama’s victory being celebrated across Europe and much of the Second and Third world.  What is it, I wondered, that they saw in this man… the possibility or hope that American leaders might see the world in a new light?  I couldn’t know, but the enthusiasm for his victory, I noted in my final analysis, was something that we could tap into—a way to regain the support we’d lost by invading Iraq.  Maybe, I imagined as I wrote, just maybe we could harness the good will of the world to re-frame the story of our War on Terror.

That was two and a half years ago, and now, here we are, nearing the end of this Broken Decade.  I wonder as I look around, forcing myself to see beyond the numbers, is it possible to imagine what victory might look like?  Yes, Bin Laden’s gone, but can we ever define victory in a war which propagates itself through the rhetoric of hate and lies, the narrative of good vs. evil, and the illusion that we can solve the world’s problems by sacrificing our children to fight every possible enemy on foreign soil?  I’m far from a pacifist, but I am weary of all the destruction, weary of all the costs on society and the world, and weary of the empty dialogues and half-baked efforts to engage in other solutions to the problems we face as a nation.  There has to be another way to imagine the future, a story free of deception and based on the realities of a world changing

My Daughter Playing With Her Toy Horses

faster than we want to acknowledge.  Like many parents in America, I’m concerned that we might fail, that we will continue to be locked into a skewed perspective that feeds on fear and hatred.  Will we continue on the same path, re-inventing reasons to uncage the beast, and dismissing the lessons of the past while “leaders” choose over and over again to break ourselves upon the shards of history?

Liberty & West - Ground Zero

If I know nothing else, it’s that my ten year-old daughter has lived most of her life in the shadow of war—one lasting longer than the Civil War, longer than World War II or even Vietnam (Based on the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution).  While visiting New York this past fall, I toured the reconstruction site at Ground Zero.  Standing at the corner of Liberty and West, I realized that despite my desire to hold onto a world defined in pre 9/11 terms, it’s no longer possible, just as it’s not possible to expand on the failed policies of this broken decade.  No matter how many cranes, bulldozers, or ironworkers fill the space between that horrible September day and the future, we can never put the Towers back together again.  We can only re-imagine and rebuild the space occupied by those buildings, cognizant of the past, unconstrained by insecurity, and embrace the courage to accept a new way of seeing the world.  War always leads to far more suffering and destruction than was ever intended, and no matter how much politicians cling to the contrary, we must understand in the simplest of terms, that all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men can’t mend the broken people, the crumbling edifices or failing nations of the world on their own…  no, they can’t…they just can’t.

Until next time,

James A. Moad II

A week or so after posting my last blog, I learned that Frank Buckles, the last American Veteran of the First World War, had passed away at the age of 110.  I was surprised to learn he’d also served in World War II and survived three and a half years in a Japanese P.O.W. camp.  If there was ever a person who had seen and experienced the brutality and suffering of war in all its manifestations, it must have been Frank Buckles, I thought, a kid from Missouri who lied about his age and enlisted at the age of sixteen.

Frank Buckles

At the time, I was reading Tony Judt’s amazing book, Postwar, about the challenges faced by the Allies to piece together what remained of Europe after World War II.  Undertaken amid the vast destruction and the chaos of displaced persons, where death, hunger, rape, and reprisal killings were common, the task was a daunting one.  The scale of the devastation throughout the continent was unprecedented, and despite all the books I’ve read, the photographs and documentaries I’ve seen over the years, it’s difficult to truly grasp the widespread suffering and destruction detailed in the book.  I’m not sure it’s possible, unless you were there.

While the work of historians like Judt are often engaged at the macro level, attempting to frame the past with notions of cause and effect, I’ve always been drawn to the individual perspective on war.  While interested in examining the root causes—the hate, greed and divisiveness—which lead to conflicts, it’s the toll on the singular soldier that calls out to me.  I’ve never experienced combat on the ground, but as the son of a Vietnam Vet and a C-130 pilot who’s delivered soldiers into war zones, I feel compelled to try and understand the plight of all those who’ve been asked to fight and kill for a nation, a cause, or a religion.  I know, of course, that I’ll never be able to fully grasp the complexities of their struggles, but I feel it’s crucial to try.  For me, examining war solely through the lens of historians is a disingenuous endeavor at best and far too limiting.  While their work is important, in the end, it’s the individual experiences of war—the manifestations of those internal conflicts which reverberates through each soldier and across society in one way or another—whether we know it or not.

In my last post, I mentioned a letter my father had written to me—a first attempt to articulate his thoughts on paper about his experiences in Vietnam.  “Not all prisoners of war were locked in cages or cells,” he wrote.  “All soldiers who have been in combat know what I mean.”  His reflections were a lament to the continual suffering that combat veterans endure throughout their lives—suffering that remains long after they lay their weapons down.  From World War I to the present conflicts, he spoke of men he knew as a boy, men he worked and served with in Korea and Vietnam, and those younger men who have come back from the Middle East after multiple combat tours.  His words were clear and simple, an implicit call for understanding—a need to recognize that the trauma of combat resonates with soldiers for the rest of their lives.  I’ve asked him to write more.

Whenever I taught Hemingway’s, A Farewell To Arms, to third-class cadets (sophomores), I devoted a lesson to the writer’s experiences and the reality of combat.  The cadets knew the statistics from Hemingway’s war—the number of American casualties, the basics of trench warfare, that Germany was the aggressor, and how technological developments led to the incredible death toll—8 million plus—and another 21 million wounded.  But most of their knowledge ended there.  I wanted them to understand the plight of the individual soldiers both during and after the war.  One of the articles I had them read was from the Smithsonian, an essay about the masks of war and the accompanying video.  It details the attempt to recreate the faces of soldiers who’d been horribly disfigured by shrapnel and machinegun fire—lost jaws, faces shredded away and empty sockets where eyes should be.  In one British park where those who wore the masks would sit, benches were marked in blue to let locals know what to expect of the men sitting atop them.  If there was any way to show the cadets the layered affects on the individual soldier—the loss of their former identity—it was through the story about masks.  After all, without a face, who are we?

“He lay with his profile to me,” wrote Enid Bagnold, a volunteer nurse (and later the author of National Velvet), of a badly wounded patient. “Only he has no profile, as we know a man’s. Like an ape, he has only his bumpy forehead and his protruding lips—the nose, the left eye, gone.”

History, of course, has a way of boxing up the devastation of past wars into graphs and statistics, as if they will help us understand the complexities in some tangible way.  For me, though, statistics are part of the arsenal of those who fight from a distance—those who’ve never endured combat, and yet are drawn to the concrete nature of numbers to define war.  In teaching War Lit to senior cadets, the current wars regularly drifted into the class discussions.  The statistical comparison to past wars would usually arise, and cadets would share their perspective on the conflicts.  An economics major would see the wars as a percentage of GDP compared to WW II; a management major would quote the numbers of soldiers killed in comparison to Vietnam; or an aero major would highlight the use of precision bombing to contrast the minimal number of civilian casualties with past wars.  And there were more, of course.  It’s an easy trap to fall into, one in which I’d been caught years ago as a cadet in the 1980s, studying the Vietnam War.  There was a push at the time to shift the narrative of that war, and I remember comparing American deaths (58,000+) to those of the 3+ million Vietnamese who died… didn’t that seem like a victory of sorts?  And the Dominos never really fell that far beyond Vietnam, did they?

While educating students to see beyond metrics is a key reason for teaching War Literature, it wasn’t always part of the curriculum.  In my first semester teaching at the Academy, I remember being confounded by a former colleague’s discussion of A

Gravestone in Arlington National Cemetery

Farewell to Arms.  In a presentation to new instructors, he highlighted the numbers killed in a battle from WW I and used it to dismiss the relatively few deaths in the early years of the Iraq War.  I was new in the department back then, and didn’t challenge him, but in retrospect, I wish I had.  The death of an old flying buddy of mine, Brian Downs, was still fresh in my mind at the time.  He’d died in a plane crash in Iraq the year before, leaving a wife and three small children.  Yes, he was one of those relatively few, but I couldn’t possibly minimize his death by comparing it to past wars.  So, looking back, I wish I’d asked my former colleague if he had ever engaged in significant combat operations.  I know the answer to the question, and I would have reminded him that no one who’s ever edured combat or has a friend die in a war sees the experiences or deaths in statistical terms.

Last week, as the spring weather arrived here in our German village, I took my children out on a walk through the forest and to the war memorial I’d written about in an earlier blog.  The memorial used to be on my way to the coffee shop where I write, but since moving apartments, I hadn’t ventured past it in months.  I wanted my children to see the monument, to let them experience a small town memorial, and show them how names of

WW II Plaque #1

the dead from World War I matched those of our closest friends in town.  Inside, I was surprised to discover that two large metal plaques had been added since my last visit.  They listed the casualties from World War II—something that had been conspicuously absent before.  While my children looked for our friend’s name on the original plaques, I found myself doing the same on the new ones.  “There’s five of them,” my ten-year old daughter said softly as she joined me on my own search.  I’d already found them, though, three dead and one missing.  “Were they related,” my son asked, as if grasping the reality of the wars for the first time.  I found myself unable to answer the question as I tried to imagine who they were and what they looked like.

WW II Plaque #2

I took photos of the new plaques, and as we left the memorial, I noticed an old woman on one of the benches.  I’d seen her before, sitting in the same spot, back in the fall when I would pause there to reflect and take in the view of the village below.  I remember wondering if she was there to recall a person whose name was on the memorial—a husband, a lover, a childhood friend, or maybe a father or brother.  If so, I thought, what images was she recalling from across the years, and what thoughts were moving through her mind.  I’ll never know the answer, of course, but seeing her was a reminder of something that’s always fascinated me about Germany—how the past seems to be ever-present, waiting on the edge of conversations with an undeniable authority.  It’s easy to understand why Germans today are so hesitant to commit their soldiers into combat.  Sometimes I feel as if the ghosts of those who died and suffered in past wars are here on the continent, still with us, moving through the memories of all those who were touched in one way or another by war.

A few weeks after Frank Buckles passed away, the French government announced the death of Lazare Ponticelli, the last French Veteran of WW I.  The two deaths prompted me to reflect on what those men had experienced on the fields of France so many years ago, and ultimately to write this post. President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the death of Ponticelli, expressing “infinite sadness.”  I was struck by that phrase, wondering if he or anyone like him could possibly know what infinite sadness might mean or feel like.  The deaths of the last two veterans from France and America led me to wonder if any German soldiers from WW I were still alive.  A quick search on the Internet led me to Dr. Erich Kästner, the last veteran who passed away over two years ago.  His death wasn’t remembered or highlighted in any special way at the time because, as reported in Der Spiegel, “World War I is seen as part of a historical line that led to World War II.”  And who wants to celebrate that?

The day after visiting the memorial I had dinner with a friend and showed him the new photos.  He was shocked at the sheer number of names on the plaques, something that hadn’t occurred to me.  Considering the greater scale of devastation from the Second World War compared to the First, I’d accepted the disparity without much thought.  His reaction made me pause and wonder why I hadn’t been more affected by the disparity between the two wars.  Months ago, I’d taken the time to count the number of casualties from World War I, but hadn’t bothered to count those on the new plaque.  There were simply more—a lot more.  For him, though, they represented something personal—his father’s generation.  These weren’t just numbers to him, but people whose lives had been lost and whose absence reverberated still through a community and a nation that has chosen to embrace pacifism.

My friend’s reaction to the photos made me consider if I’d missed out on an opportunity at the memorial.  I hadn’t spoken to my children about the connections between wars and how the blood spilled in the trenches, the lingering animosity, mistrust and national pride gave rise to a second, more destructive one.  If there was ever a time to use statistics, it was in that moment, I thought, a chance to see the power of numbers to drive home a point.  They’d counted the missing and the dead who shared a common name with our friends—nine in total, but the more I thought about it, I realized that my children hadn’t seen the numbers the way I had.  They didn’t have the historical context in which to compare and contrast one war against another.  Instead, the solemn, reflective looks on their faces told me that they recognized how each name was once a living person—a young child like them, who’d run through fields and across playgrounds, dreaming of a life denied by war.  No, I didn’t need to drive home the point of statistical differences.  That lesson would come.  They were seeing what many couldn’t or had forgotten, and what I had been trained and taught for years to look past.

For me, it took the death of an old flying buddy in Iraq to remind me that each soldier’s passing reverberates through every person who ever knew him or her.  It’s an easy thing to forget, though, when you’ve been trained to deal with death by using acronyms and numbers.  In the Air Force, the abbreviation, HR, stands for Human Remains, and it’s the term I used as both a pilot and an airlift planner to describe specific cargo—the body parts collected and deposited in silver boxes for the final trip home.  It’s not a man, woman, son, father, daughter or even a body being loaded onto airplanes—it’s an HR—one of many routine terms used to distance and deny us an emotional connection to the realities of combat.  While I understand the military necessity to use terms of this nature, I also understand that the role of art and literature is to free us from the constraints of routine thoughts and to remind us of what we’re all taught to forget.  While some might consider these two notions to be contradictory—the inherent conflict between art and war—I would argue that without both perspectives, it’s too easy to distance ourselves from the realities and repercussions of war on the individual and society as a whole.

Last spring, near the end of the semester, I showed the cadets a slideshow by the brilliant war photographer, Ashley Gilbertson.  Entitled, The Shrine Down The Hall, I didn’t tell the cadets what it was about.  I let the slideshow speak for itself.  Instead of depicting graphic images from the war zones, each photo is of a fallen soldier’s childhood room, kept as a shrine by their parents.  Considering that the dead soldiers were often the same age or younger than the cadets in my class, the photos resonated in a way that few images had all semester long.  The absence of boys and girls from those well-kept rooms, filled with stuffed animals, posters, and old trophies have a profound silence all their own.  Whenever I look at Gilbertson’s photos, it’s as if I’m there, able to see the faces of parents as the open a door and contemplate the emptiness inside.

But what about the majority of Americans who aren’t exposed to war literature or acquainted with the small percentage of citizens who’ve borne the brunt and suffering of war over the past decade?  Without a connection—a person or a face to represent the suffering and the toll of combat—can they see beyond the numbers?  Have we as a society been taught to simply support the troops without really understanding their plight or what “support” might ultimately entail?  Is it merely a coincidence that photographers were denied the right to take pictures of caskets returning home from war or that the news coverage from Iraq was often sanitized into statistical analysis?  Without the images of war, how are they to see the toll on the individuals who fight on their behalf?  Last fall, on a trip to New York to see Ground Zero, I toured the city streets and attended the small museum outside the construction zone.  I was struck by the stark images inside—photos of the utter destruction and a wall of faces—pictures of those who were lost when the towers came crashing down.  It’s difficult to let go of those faces once you see them, and I can’t help wonder why we’re meant see and remember one set of photos and not the other?

Fliers of the Missing

NYC Fire Dept Casualties

Wall of the Missing

Every morning at the Army hospital in Germany where I attend physical therapy, the buses arrive, filled with the wounded soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq.  I see them, the scarred, empty faces of men without arms and legs, freshly bandaged wounds, and missing hands and fingers—clear reminders of the severity of wounds from these wars.  And those are the wounds I can see—the external ones which demand our immediate attention.  Inside the walls, soldiers are treated and stabilized at the trauma center before being sent home to start new lives.  Drawn from across our nation, often from poor and underprivileged segments of society, I wonder if they will disappear into the vast American mosaic of patchwork towns and cities, cared for by wives or parents, or will they end up on the streets, in the homeless shelters or Veteran’s hospitals across our country.  How many of them will live past the age of 100, like the last veterans of World War I, and share their stories with future generations?  What will our nation see of them in the years to come?

WW I Memorial in Chamonix, France

I’ll close this post with a final reflection on a memorial I visited this past winter in Chamonix, France.  Built to honor the fallen soldiers from World War I, additional plaques were added to list the casualties from WW II and the Algerian conflict.  The statue atop it, like many of that era, is of a soldier striding earnestly, as is if he’s marching off to save Heaven itself.  Seeing this photograph made me reflect once more on President Sarkozy’s expression of “infinite sadness” at the death of France’s last WW I veteran. Beyond articulating the simple statement that war is sad— infinitely so—or that he feels an intense sadness for those who suffered, I’m not sure I understand what he was trying to impart.  His words, of course, can’t help but fall short.  It’s the statement of a politician, after all, attempting to frame, in simple terms, the suffering of 8 million men who died for nothing.  And, like statistics, acronyms and memorials themselves, attempts by those who’ve never endured combat almost always fail to express the suffering wrought by war.  In the end, it is the stories of the soldiers and victims that impart true understanding—the artistic and literary expressions of their experiences and suffering on the personal level which resonate and work to dismantle the artifices of war.

Maybe Frank Buckles, Lazare Ponticelli, or Erich Kästner understood what infinite sadness was, or the men who sat on blue benches, hiding their scarred faces behind copper masks, or the veterans who fill the homeless shelters across America, the men my father wrote about, the old woman resting in the park, the wounded who pass through Germany on their way home, or the parents of those young soldiers who’ll never return home.  These are the faces of war, imparting their implicit stories to us all, each reverberating through the past and present to help us see beyond the names inscribed on brass plaques.  If there is anyone who could possibly understand what infinite sadness is, it must be them… I know I don’t.

Until Next Time,

James A. Moad II

Sing to me of the man, muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy…
- The opening line of The Odyssey by Homer

I’ve been an absentee blogger for longer than I planned. A fall on an icy incline did enough damage to warrant rotator cuff surgery back in the U.S.  A single visit to the the military hospital near me in Germany made me realize that I wasn’t a priority there, and nor should I be.  While the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center—serves the local military community, it has another mission as well.  It’s the first stop outside the war zones for many of those wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As I left the hospital, passing by the ER, I watched a crowd of medical personnel gather around a bus that had just arrived. They began offloading stretchers, one after another, filled with the wounded warriors who’d arrived at Ramstein Air Base just a few hours before on C-17s. I examined their faces, and after twenty years of service, many looked like little boys to me. With IVs hovering above blanketed bodies, the stretchers moved briskly past me toward surgeons and doctors waiting to treat the physical wounds of war. After watching the scene unfold before me, returning to the U.S. for surgery seemed like a modest inconvenience.

A few weeks later, after a four-hour procedure to piece together my shoulder with seven screws, I spent a dozen days convalescing at a friend’s condo in Colorado Springs.  It was a perfect setting on the eighth floor overlooking the city and the mountains beyond. There were only two limitations:  no internet access, and the TV’s tabletop antennae provided reception to only six local channels. Knowing I wouldn’t be inclined to read in the first week or so following the surgery, I’d checked out a stack of DVD’s from the library—documentaries on the Greeks and Romans, a biography of Winston Churchill, a few movies, and the Ken Burns’ histories of Jazz and World War II. Each of them meant to augment my research for a collection of short fiction I’m writing on the peripheral effects of war on society.

I started with the Greeks, reintroducing myself to the myths and warrior culture depicted in the epic poems of Homer. Like many students of literature, the Odyssey has always held a special fascination for me.  I was reminded that The Trojan War lasted ten years, but what I’d forgotten was that it took another ten years for Odysseus to find his way back home to Ithaca. Homer’s narrative imparts the return of the warrior-king in such a magical way that it’s easy to forget the poem is also (metaphorically) about the struggle warriors endure as they assimilate back into society. The trials that Odysseus and his men faced echo the challenges that all warriors endure as they attempt to adjust back into the life they once knew.

In addition to watching DVD’s, occasionally I’d surf aimlessly across those six local channels. Mostly for the local and national news, but on one of my last night’s there, PBS re-aired an episode of Frontline, entitled, The Wounded Platoon. Tired and low on sleep, I came across it toward the end of the episode, and almost skipped over it. Before I could switch the channel, though, the narrator mentioned Fort Carson—the army base on the outskirts of Colorado Springs—grabbing my attention. One scene of the skyline looked exactly like the view outside the condo.

The documentary tells the story of the Third Platoon, Charlie Company of the 1/506 infantry—a forty-two man unit that spent two tours in Iraq. It details their struggles after returning home to Colorado Springs.  About the same time, on the north side of town, I was using the Literature of War to highlight the mental challenges soldiers endure after the wars are fought. As future leaders, my colleagues and I considered it imperative that the cadets understand the complexities of those challenges and the need for moral leadership in the conduct of war.

View of Colorado Springs from the condo

In contrast, The Wounded Platoon recounts the disintegration of the unit over a four-year period and a failure of leadership. By 2009, seventeen members of the platoon had “been charged or convicted of murder, manslaughter or attempted murder.” And that was what they did back home. The documentary also highlights (in the words of the soldiers themselves), the murder of innocent Iraqis, the widespread abuse of illegal drugs and those prescribed by army doctors to help them cope with the pressures of war—many of which have highly suspect side effects that don’t warrant their use in a combat zone.

None of this, of course, is new to me or to the cadets I taught in my four years at the Academy. The actions of these soldiers both in the war zones and back at home echo the same experience of veterans from the Civil War to Vietnam. The literature of war—stories, letters, essays, and poetry reflect this in vivid detail. Within the psychiatric community, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has been accepted since the 80’s as a condition that warrants professional help—one which continues to plague a military culture that stigmatizes the warrior in need of mental help. As for the misuse of legal and illegal drugs on the battlefield, there’s no surprise there, either. In World War II, a variety of methamphetamine drugs were used by all participants (the U.S. included) to keep soldiers and airmen focused on the mission. In Vietnam, beer was airdropped to units in the jungle and amphetamines were issued to soldiers to keep them alert. Not to mention all the illegal drugs used by troops to suppress the horror of what they’d seen and done.

So, while shocked at the level of violence occurring in my own backyard, the rampant drug and alcohol abuse seemed almost a given to me. All of this and more is detailed in, and can be seen in the documentary online. It also didn’t surprise me that the commander of the 1/506, Colonel David Clark, said that he was unaware of his soldier’s mental status. There are over 200 men in an infantry unit, and a there’s a necessary distance between a commander and junior soldiers, as well as a distinct difference between what a Colonel experiences on the battlefield compared to a young enlisted man. Col Clark’s assessment is that if a soldier seeks solace in alcohol or drugs, he’s ”wrong minded.”  He may be correct, but it’s as if he doesn’t understand the temptation to silence the demons through alcohol and drugs.  Odysseus, as the great captain and leader, forced himself to listen to the sweet Siren’s call so that he would know the power of temptation on the men he fought beside.

As a commander, there’s no question that Col Clark is expected to accomplish the mission first, but there’s more to being a leader than accomplishing the mission alone.  In his words, “the army can’t cure all the ills of society… you still got a mission to do and you can’t do it with this guy. He came from society, he needs to go back to society.” Somewhere, though, Col Clark either forgot, or never understood, that the person the Army recruited from society and then sent off to war, is forever altered by what he or she is asked to do on the battlefield.  They aren’t the same person anymore, and many of them need the dedication and help from a leader committed to their recovery.

Lastly, it made sense that the Army, under pressure from the media, decided to conduct an investigation to get at the root cause. What did surprise and astound me, though, was the reaction to the Army’s investigation, which highlighted a “failure of leadership” as a major contributor to the events. Many of the soldiers failed to get treatment for conditions that leaders were aware of (some were simply kicked out of the military), while others acquiesced to a cultural code of silence, built on the notion that only the weak seek help for mental problems. When asked whether anyone should be held accountable for this failure of leadership, Col George Brandt, the head of Behavioral Health at Ft. Carson said, “If I had fought this war before and had learned these lessons before, I might hold people accountable.”

Let me stop here and take a long, deep breath before I go on…

The question was asked of an Army Colonel who specializes in Behavioral Health. And his answer was that if only the army “had learned these lessons before?” Hmmmmm… I wonder if he’d heard of the terms Shell Shock, Battle Fatigue or PTSD before.  If so, does he consider them to be convenient phrases with which to paint, in broad strokes, the suffering of soldiers in the last hundred years of war, but not “this war.”  Is this really the perspective of someone in charge of Behavioral Health in the Army, and if so, how is this possible? Is there something else at work here? The artist, writer and Veteran, John Wolfe, wrote in his essay A Different Species of Time (for WLA) about being wounded in Vietnam. At the end of the essay he reminds us that those who study the human psyche, have, for the past hundred years, defined the trauma of war in many ways and that:

Each reappearance [of this trauma] is confronted by a psychological community that, though perhaps more sophisticated, is less in touch and familiar with the forces unleashed than our ancestors who painted themselves blue and pranced naked in the snow before Caesar’s legions, challenging the absolutism, the dominion, of Rome.  There is a criminal, spiritual cowardice in this evasion, because in examining the effects of war, we might well discover just what inveigles humanity to its blackest deeds.

Yes, writers have been telling the world for thousands of years that war consumes those who engage in it, and it is the role and obligation of leaders to understand this. It’s why it’s imperative that we teach the Literature of War.  The lessons are not for the faint of heart, but necessary for those who will one day be in command. When I retired in 2010, West Point didn’t have a core English course teaching War Lit to their corp of cadets . It was an elective, usually for English majors. I don’t know if they have one now or not, but I hope so. When I directed the course at the Air Force Academy, the course motto was expressed in the words of the Greek historian, Thucydides: “The state which separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.” It’s a statement I believe in with every fiber of my being.

Thinking back on The Wounded Platoon, I realize that if nothing else, the army’s report on transgressions by members of the Third Platoon was spot on in many respects. There was clearly a failure of leadership, up and down the chain, and if the chief of Behavioral Health needs to learn more lessons, then the failure is more widespread than I would have guessed before seeing the episode. As the poet John Balaban, who served as a civilian in Vietnam during the war, wrote for an essay in the most recent edition of War Literature and the Arts:

In ancient China, generals returning home with their armies re-entered the capital through a so-called Gate of Mourning. This was true whether the campaign had been a success or a defeat, because war is a pollution and ceremonies are required to protect the living from the inevitable spiritual consequences.

While the complexities of this war may be unique, the effects on the individual are not, regardless of how effective the military is at dehumanizing the enemy. This is not a new field—a new science—or a new phenomena in which the individual soldier needs to be studied to discern the emotional toll wrought from killing another human being or watching a friend die beside them. The war poet of this era, and dear friend, Brian Turner expresses the natural human reaction to accomplishing what is asked of the soldier in this amazing poem. He read it (or rather, yelled it) to my class a few years ago.

SADIQ

“It is a condition of wisdom in the archer to be patient because when the arrow leaves the bow, it returns no more.” —SA’DI

It should make you shake and sweat,
nightmare you, strand you in a desert
of irrevocable desolation, the consequences
seared into the vein, no matter what adrenaline
feeds the muscle its courage, no matter
what god shines down on you, no matter
what crackling pain and anger
you carry in your fists, my friend,
it should break your heart to kill.

Despite all the education and training over long careers, I wonder, how is it still possible for military leaders to deny or minimize the toll that war demands of the individual soldier. As we enter the tenth year of the proclaimed, War on Terror, headlines abound on the problems associated with treating the hidden wounds of war in both the physiological and psychological manifestations. Here are links to three articles published in the last week or so—stories that still astound me, though I guess they shouldn’t by now:

- Abuse and death of soldiers by drugs prescribed to them

- The Army’s mistreatment of soldiers suffering from PTSD

- The epidemic of homelessness among veterans of war

Last year at the Association of Writers and Publishers (AWP) conference, just up the road in Denver, I was fortunate enough to meet two poets associated with the Warrior Writer Project, Lovella Calica and Laren McClung. In short, they’ve worked with veterans at writing workshops, helping them to impart their wartime experiences on the page as part of the healing process, and they’ve published the work in a book, Warrior Writers: Remaking Sense (see WLA Book Review). Like many, they find that the creative process is a powerful way to combat the effects of war on the individual—creation as a cathartic antidote to the destructive nature of war.

When I learned that Laren and I have fathers who fought in Vietnam—men who both became carpenters after the war, I could understand the shared commitment to our own art and the central role it plays in our life. We know, as the children of Vietnam Vets, that the burden our fathers carry is borne by us, as well. If the nation and it’s military continues to dismiss, underfund, or minimize the need to address the effects of war on those who fight them, they do a disservice to all of society, and especially the spouses and children of those wounded warriors. (Laren’s poetry about her father is in the 2010 WLA).

As for my own father, I always thought that the act of building and creating things as a carpenter was a way of keeping the memories at a distance, but not a means of confronting or moving beyond them. On trips along the highway, he would point, with a sense of pride, at buildings and tell my siblings and me he’d built that school, house or church.  Over the years, I’ve sent him copies of our journal, my favorite war books, and some of my own work, all in the hope that I could persuade him to write about his experiences, but to no avail. He doesn’t own a computer and has never read my blog, but he knows I’m writing some computer thing that has to do with war.

A few weeks ago, healthy enough to depart Colorado Springs and attend this year’s AWP conference, I received a phone call from my father. He said he was writing some things down about the war. Things he needed to put down on paper and that he wanted to send them to me. It’s been over forty-five years since he left the military, and I was overjoyed for him—for finding the courage to sit alone and reacquaint himself with that eighteen year old boy who joined the military and lost a part of himself in a war that none of us will ever fully understand.

When I was a kid, I remember him telling me about being a weapons specialist, taught to disassemble and then reassemble any weapon while blindfolded. For some reason that story always stuck with me, and last year when I was reading the poetry from the Warrior Writers: Remaking Sense, the words of Nathan Lewis brought that story back to me. Nathan asks a simple question in his writing: “Why did I know the difference between an M-16 and an AK-47 before I could compare a Hindu to a Muslim or a sonnet to a Haiku?” It’s a great question, I think, isn’t it?

At this year’s AWP conference in Washington D.C., I met up with several old colleagues from the Academy—those associated with the Journal. On our last night together, I turned the conversation to some of my ideas for this blog, and I was reminded about a recent attempt to get the troops at Fort Carson to engage in a writing program. Like the Warrior Writers project, it was meant to help them work through their problems, but it never got off the ground. Evidently, soldiers were quietly dissuaded from taking part in the program. Needless to say, I wasn’t surprised.

As for me, I’ve been back home for over a week now. Between the travel time, surgery, visiting friends and attending the conference, I was gone for nearly a month. I start therapy in a few days to rehab my shoulder. They say it’s the first part that’s the most difficult—just getting started—fighting through the pain of scar tissue, getting movement back, and pushing the muscles to remember what they are capable of.  It’ll takes a lot of time and patience before I’ll be able to get back to flying, but I will recover.

Shortly after I returned home, the letter from my father arrived in a package along with other mail my mother has been collecting for me. The letter was marked in my mother’s handwriting:  “James from Dad.” At the time, I was outlining this blog, fighting the jetlag and shoulder pain, but also trying to focus on spending time with my wife and kids. I told myself that I’d open the letter once I finished writing this blog. After a few days, though, realizing how much writing I was doing on this and other projects, I finally picked up the letter and turned it over, prepared to open it. On the back, written in the thick, chalk-like print of carpenter’s pencil are the words from my father: “Correct my spelling and add whatever it takes. I could have said more about what these men went through, but one memory is enough.” I put the letter back down, deciding that I needed to finish this before I opened it. The letter has been sitting beside my computer ever since.

As I come to the end of this way-too-long blog, I realize that ultimately, each soldier ever sent to war begins his own personal odyssey. Driven by the call of a nation or by the desire for adventure, many will be searching to find themselves in the shattered ruins of a life forever altered. Some may never find their way home, while others might cope and assimilate quickly after they return from war. The process can begin well before they go off to fight or it might take forty-five years for a person to start.

Nothing is certain, but a failure of leaders to understand the complexities and repercussions of inaction or to address the problems with honest conviction is both unacceptable and an abdication of responsibility. This mission, though not accomplished on the battlefield, may be the most challenging of all. It may require the military to heed the lessons that the poets offer us, and a new generation of commanders with compassion and a willingness to truly lead. To abandon or marginalize our wounded warriors is to abandon ourselves as well.

You’ll have to excuse me now. I’ve written far more than I meant too, and it’s taken longer than I planned. I’ve got a letter to open.

Until Next Time,

James A. Moad II

Greetings All.  Below is the list of books that were sent my way.  Thanks to all of you who took the time to make a suggestion during this busy time of year.  Some people sent in a name or two, with or without a description, while others wrote a lengthy recommendation.  I edited a few of the recommendations, and when only the name was listed, I took the liberty to add a sentence or two to describe the book.  There were many repeat suggestions, as well, which served to highlight the power of certain books to resonate for many of us.

Considering the fact that we’re all reading and discovering new books all the time, I want to make this into a living list.  If there is ever a book you think is worth adding, please let me know.

Rather than organize the books by year or by the war, I simply put them in alphabetical order.  In total, I received twenty-eight different books, and I added two of my own to make it an even thirty.   Hopefully this will add to your own list in some way.  Happy Holidays to all!

Until Next Time,

James A. Moad II

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

- The classic story of trench warfare.  The authors descriptive gifts and vivid imagery linger and resonate like poetry.

Behind the Lines: Powerful and Revealing American and Foreign War Letters ed. by Andrew Carroll

- One of several books of war letters edited by Andrew Carroll, unique in that it shows a variety of views from across the world.  We discover how the experiences and sentiments surrounding war are similar across all cultures.

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

- The great satire, in which everything happens twice—the absurdity of war shown through the experiences of an American flying unit in World War II.

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

- Students loved the book, and noted that reading it in college was a far different experience than reading it in high school, as many had.  They were profoundly shaken by the thought of this mind, this girl, being taken by war.

Dispatches by Michael Herr

- An amazing collection of stories, dialogue and prose poetry on the Vietnam War.

Fateless by Imre Kertesz

- Written by a Nobel Prize winner about the Holocaust, it is considered by many to be one of the most powerful and touching books ever written about this theme.

The Forever War by Dexter Filkins

- An amazing and beautifully written collection of short vignettes, cataloging Filkin’s experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq prior to 2006.  It opened the eyes and shattered the illusions of many cadets at The Air Force Academy.

The Forsaken Army by Heinrich Gerlach

- A novel depicting the disintegration of the German Army in Stalingrad.

Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves

- Some students hated this book, but others “got” it, understood that the reserve and ironic distance with which it is written was a deliberate, if not unavoidable, response to a meaningless and brutal war.

The Good Soldiers by David Finkel

- The Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who follows the members of an Army infantry battalion during the Surge in Iraq.  If you’re like me, you’ll be haunted by the images that Finkel imparts through his experiences alongside these soldiers.  Although, published a little late for me to include in my syllabus last year at USAFA, I read excerpts of it to my senior War Lit class shortly after it came out.  Afterwards, many of the cadets were actually motivated to go out and purchase the book on their own.

Here, Bullet by Brian Turner

- The war poet of our age.  His words take us into the heart of the pain and suffering that transform all those touched by war.

Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam by Linda van Devanter

- This book, hands down, was the students’ favorite.  They trusted the voice of the writer, her candor and clear-eyed descriptions of her experiences.  I paired this book with the documentary “Vietnam Nurses” and the two together formed a vivid portrait of this war.

The Hunters by James Salter

- The story of a fighter pilot in the Korean War who is pushed to the limits.  Considered by many to be the best war literature to emerge from that war.

In Pharaoh’s Army by Tobias Wolff

- An engaging and often humorous look at the Vietnam War by one of the great writers of our time.

If I Die in a Combat Zone Box Me Up and Ship Me Home by Tim OBrien

- This book, a nonfiction precursor to The Things They Carried, has the signature O’Brien eye for detail.  The book tells stories in such a way that you feel you are reading not simply personal history, but something of a mythic scale.

Jakob the Liar by Jurek becker

- From one of Germany’s greatest contemporary writers, a disturbing, original novel of the Holocaust about the virtue of lying.  The film with Robin Williams is well-done, as well.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl

- This book chronicles Frankl’s experiences as a concentration camp inmate and describes the ability of humans to transcend and cope with a situation of that magnitude.

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes

- This Vietnam War novel was written forty years ago, and he could find no one interested in or willing to publish a long novel about Vietnam.  The book tracks the wartime development of a marine lieutenant who in discovering the fool’s errand he and his fellow marines have been sent on, also discovers himself and the worth of his comrades.  It’s a visceral book that takes you into the insanity and difficulty of fighting in mountainous jungle terrain that is virtually isolated from any reliable supply chain or intelligent support from superiors.  Mark Bowden (of Blackhawk Down fame) reviewed Matterhorn for the NY Times.  He concluded his review: “Vladimir Nabokov once said that the greatest books are those you read not just with your heart or your mind, but with your spine. This is one for the spine.” Highly recommended.

Night by Elie Wiesel

- It feels, as one student noted, drained of all hope.  However, this book serves as a powerful reminder to anyone engaged in reading about war that beyond the stories of heroism, and adventure, and drama, and transformation, there is a central feature of war: the banality of evil, as Hannah Arendt would have it.  From my perspective, it is this that we must work against.  Whether it is a complacent distance or a complicit engagement, no one is off the hook.

Operation Homecoming ed. by Andrew Carroll

- An amazing project from the current wars.  It is written by the troops, enabling a range of voices to speak in a variety of tones.  This anthology, paired with the film of the same title, shook my students out of any kind of complacent distance from the ongoing “conflicts” in the Middle East.

Peace Meals: Candy Wrapped Kalashnikovs and Other War Stories by Anna Badkhen

- Yes, it’s about both war and food. Badkhen points out that “there is more to war than the macabre–the white-orange muzzle flashes during a midnight ambush; the men high on adrenaline scanning the desert through the scopes of their machine guns as their forefingers caress the triggers; the scythes of razor-sharp shrapnel whirling through the air like a lawn-mower blades spun loose; the tortured and the dead. There are also the myriad brazen, congenial, persistent ways in which life in the most forlorn and violent places on earth shamelessly reasserts itself. Of those, sharing a meal is one of the most elemental.”

A Rumor of War by Phil Caputo

- The definitive memoir of the war in Vietnam.  Caputo served as a Marine and later covered the war as a reporter.

Stones From The River by Ursula Hegi

- The engaging and rich story of a dwarf in a small German village amid the societal changes of WW II.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

- It’s really the first and the last, disassembling narrative itself, the great lie that allows the tragic, banal chaos of war to become a “story” at all, and so to acquire interest and meaning and all the related thrills—climaxes, suspenses…. I don’t know that the message or sophistication of delivery has ever been surpassed.

Tempered Steel: The Three Wars of Triple Air Force Cross Winner Jim Kasler by Perry D. Luckett and Chuck L. Byler

- A rare biography on this list about an amazing experience and an impressive man.

Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War by Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss

- The Pulitzer Prize winning story of atrocities in Vietnan and the cover-up that followed the investigation.  Riveting and engaging, it shows the disintegration of a unit in the jungles of Vietnam.

Vera Brittain: Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900-1925 by Vera Brittain

- The behind the scenes portrait of WW I and her experience as a nurse—compelling and engaging.

War by Sebastian Junger

- A brilliant story of Junger’s experience with the Army in the Korangal Valley of Afghanistan.

World War One British Poets: Brooke, Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg and Others

- A comprehensive collection of the best war poets from World War I.

The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman

- A true story of perseverance and determination amid the German occupation of Warsaw in WW II.

After a few conversations regarding my last blog, I found myself thinking of what it was like to live in Berlin during the war years.  I couldn’t shake the images from several of the museums or the stories in the Topography of Terror book I’d purchased.  I found myself reading from several websites, short accounts of life in Berlin at the time, and then I remembered a book recommended to me at the AWP conference in Denver on that very subject.  Or at least, I remembered a conversation about a book.

I’d spoken with the book’s publisher at the AWP book fair, and I can still remember his enthusiasm.  Of course, all publishers are enthusiastic about what they choose to publish, but there was something different in his intensity and the way the conversation didn’t want to die.  Somewhere along the line, we exchanged business cards, and I scribbled down the name of the book on the back.   After a few modest attempts at finding the card recently, I finally found it two weeks ago.   The publisher was Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House, and the name of the book is Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada.  I ordered it, and the book arrived today.  It’ll be under my Christmas tree—a well-chosen gift from…well, Santa, of course.

I won’t go into detail about the book, other than to say it was written by a prominent German writer who was interred at a Nazi insane asylum during the war.  He wrote the book in a twenty-four day period after his release, but died before seeing it published.  The current edition from Melville House is the first English translation.

Considering that bookshelf space is at a premium in our small German apartment (we only have one), not to mention the logistics of bringing the books back to the U.S. when we move, I began thinking about some of the best War Literature books I’ve been exposed to over the years.  We all have certain books that we return to over and over again, whether to teach with, write about, use in discussions, or simply ponder as we reflect on current and past conflicts in search of perspective.  But which ones would we choose to occupy a single, precious bookshelf or highly recommend to a close friend?

That’s the question I hope we’ll answer through this blog.  So, In honor of my colleague, Donald Anderson, WLA’s senior editor, who has an affinity to the beauty and power of a good list, and of course Tim O’Brien’s great work, The Things They Carried, I’ve decided to make a call for one or two recommendations.  In short, I’m requesting a war-related book or two that you would highly recommend, coupled with a one or two sentence statement (or none, if you wish) about the book.  It’ll be a way of adding to the conversation of War Literature that this blog is all about—a discussion about the books we love and want others to share, and if nothing else, a little list to carry with us.

I’ll compile your recommendations and publish the complete list here on 15 Dec, in time for you to casually hint to someone that this or that book might be a better gift than a scarf, tie, or gift card to _____ (fill in the blank).

Please send your recommendation to Allamoadjam@aol.com with the subject Book Recommendation

Until Next Time,

James A. Moad II

Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church - A reminder of the cost of War

It’s been over fifteen years since I walked alongside the decayed buildings in Berlin’s old East side—warehouses and old tenement houses that marked the edge of the former East.  I remember thinking how the city exemplified the toll and cost of war in the 20^th Century like no place I’d ever been.  The ruins of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church and the remains of bullet-riddled buildings near the former East-West border kept the memory of WW II alive. Reminders of the division between East and West were marked by dozens of construction cranes hovering above old buildings.   Inside them, squatters, young entrepreneurs and hippies sold what they could, while others setup makeshift bars and discos that kept the night alive—the lingering celebration from November 1989—a party that didn’t want to end.

Brandenburger Tor (gate) - former dividing line between East and West

As I strolled through the city this time, I was amazed at the transformation.  The old East had been rebuilt and re-imagined in a way that made everything from the Soviet era seem to disappear.  With the exception of key landmarks such as the Brandenburger Tor, The Checkpoint Charlie Museum, and a few buildings waiting for destruction, I found it nearly impossible to distinguish where the city had been divided.  With a few exceptions, The Wall has been disassembled and carted away with only a modest imprint of its foundation marked on the ground by a line of stones near the Brandenburger Tor.

Amid all the new construction, the city has added to its mix of amazing museums and monuments.   Many of them are stark reminders of the city’s dark past:  The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, The Topography of Terror and the Glass Dome of the Reichtag—all added since I’d last been to Berlin—were on my list to see.

In the heart of The Memorial to the Murdered Jews in WW II

I wasn’t sure what to think when I arrived at The Memorial to the Murdered Jews.  It’s an array of 2711 concrete blocks, each a different size, and resting on an undulating surface.  They’re arranged in no particular order on a site near the Brandenburger Tor—the very heart of the city.  The memorial seems simple enough at first, but as you move deeper into the center of the space, the blocks climb higher and higher until they rise above you.  It’s easy to get disoriented and lose your bearing inside.  By the end of my time there, I sensed how the entire area itself was devoid of life, a reminder of such a tragic loss—of what can never be—a barren landscape in the heart of the city where nothing will ever bloom.

A view of the Jewish Memorial looking south toward the Tiergarten

A few blocks away, on the ruins of the former Gestapo Headquarters lies The Topography of Terror, a newly built museum depicting the atrocities that were planned and perpetrated by the SS from 1933-1945.  The exhibit begins with a wall-sized photograph of the decimated cityscape of Berlin in 1945.  From there, it depicts the methodical efforts of

From the Topography of Terror Exhibit

the SS as they rolled across all of Europe, east and west, killing anyone who opposed them.  Outside, next to the only foundation wall to survive, is an exhibit depicting how the Nazi’s worked to harness the anger and frustration of a proud nation in desperate times. Far from depicting the German people as victims of Fascist extremism, the words and photographs tell a story of a society all too willing to target scapegoats— immigrants, Jews, homosexuals, and socialists—anyone to blame for the problems plaguing a nation in desperate times.   Note: An exhibit at the German Historical Museum exploring this phenomenon, opened the day I left.  Sadly, I was unable to see it, but the NY Times had this to say:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/16/world/europe/16hitler.html

It would be easy to get consumed with Berlin’s tragic, lost Century, but there is much more to this great city.  I took my time to explore the new sections that had emerged in the last few decades.  The bustle of activity, thriving shopping centers, architectural blending of old and new, coupled with a quiet, cosmopolitan rumble of life in the city was energizing and inspiring.  Over dinner at a Thai restaurant, a former colleague of mine remarked that Berlin had become one of the most progressive and interesting cities in Europe with an international flair on par with Paris or London.  As I experienced the energy and vitality of the city, it was hard to disagree.

Reichstag (German Parliament Building) with it's glass dome

Mirrors inside the Reichstag Dome

On my second-to-last day, I visited the Reichstag with its magnificent glass dome and climbed the spiraling ramp to gaze out upon an unobstructed view of the city.  The dome was built with an elaborate series of mirrors and glass windows rising up through its center to literally shed light on the legislative chambers below.  It is an inspiring piece of architecture, meant to represent the need for transparency in government.  The circular area inside the base of the dome details the storied history of the Reichstag, including the infamous fire in 1933 which led to the suspension of civil liberties and seizure of power by the Nazis.

By the end of my trip, I began to understand that the citizens of Berlin, past and present, have chosen to embrace the city’s role as a crucible of memory—the repository of everything that war, in all its horrific manifestations, inflicted on their citizens, the nation and the world.  They’re not afraid to confront the legacy of a war that took the lives of one in nine German.  It’s as if the city wants the suffering and devastation to be embraced—for their experiences to be shared and understood by those fortunate enough to have been untouched by war.  They can’t imagine Berlin outside of the context of it’s past, and they don’t want the rest of the world to do so, either.

But, there’s much more to it than that.  Whether conscious or not, I became aware of something even more powerful—the absence of division.  The city has become whole, endeavoring to erase the dividing lines between people and places, East and West, Germans and immigrants in a way that seems new to me in this country.   It’s as if the very fabric of the city has evolved to become an example of what is possible in this new century—an impressive endeavor, indeed.

By the time I left Berlin, it was clear to me, that if there is any place that can offer itself up as an experiment and beacon to hope and progress—to shed light on the ever-present struggle between imagination and fear—then Berlin is that city.   After all, that may be the struggle we face in the century before us.  Maybe John F. Kennedy said it best in 1963 “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin.”  It’s been twenty-one years since the Berlin Wall fell.  May we all continue to support the dreams and aspirations of a city that can lead us onward–a city that has suffered and learned the price of division.

Until next time,

James A. Moad II

I’m writing from 35,000 feet, midway across the Atlantic.  It’s pitch black outside, and I can’t sleep because I’m thinking about this blog and trying to frame my thoughts on the War Literature Conference.  It was exhilarating, inspiring, and unquestionably the most amazing thing I’ve been a part of professionally.  Fittingly, it was my last official duty in the Air Force.

Across the aisle from me is a former Army Ranger, who, despite the vodka tonics can’t sleep either.  But he’s got a real reason.  He says he was on the ground in Afghanistan in 2001-2002, but can’t talk about it, even though I know there’s something he wants to tell me.

Resting on one knee in the aisle, his voice rises and falls as he tries not to wake the sleeping passengers beside us.  He’s spills a bit of his drink, loses his focus, and I takeover, doing the talking for him, telling him about the conference.  Like many who attended, he’s a bit stunned that the Air Force Academy is engaged in such an endeavor, and I smile because it’s fun to see that confused look on the face of a Ranger.  Like most people, he assumed West Point would be doing this sort of thing, but they’re not.

I give a snapshot of the conference, things I’ve been thinking of, like Benjamin’s Busch’s rousing presentation to 1600 cadets in Arnold Hall, informing them that bravery is fraught with limitations and consequences.

I describe Dexter Filkin’s stories, framed by Ashlee Gilbertson’s provocative    photographs, depicting the reality of Afghanistan—images of a society decimated by thirty years of continual war on its soil.   He asks the difficult question, how do we rebuild a devastated country that defies our attempts to modernize.   And then there was the haunting phrase that Filkins casually tossed out near the end of his presentation, “If the world ends, it will be in Pakistan…”

I tell him about the soldier, turned poet, Brian Turner, whose brilliant poetry and powerful voice were matched only by his soft words between poems—words reminding us with a quiet conviction of how war transforms, destroys, and forever alters everything it touches.

I don’t ask if he’s seen The Hurt Locker.  Instead I tell him of my conversation with Mark Boal, the writer, who expressed his own astonishment at winning the Academy Award.  I tell him how, despite all the difficulties and limitations of a small budget, Boal was able to capture the essence of war, and like any true war story, get at the emotional complexities of those who experience combat.

And then there was Dale Ritterbush’s honest and heartfelt acknowledgment of Donald Anderson’s brilliant vision when he started the journal, nearly twenty-five years ago.  Without Donald’s passionate devotion and artistic convictions, none of this would have been possible.   We all owe him a debt of gratitude.

But most of all it was the amazing level of scholarly discourse both on the panels and throughout the conference that lingers with me still.  Whether poetry, fiction or nonfiction, film or photography, each panel seemed to inspire and elevate us all.  I only wish I would have been able to attend every session.

And lastly, to my former colleagues at the Air Force Academy, I am reminded of how lucky I am to have worked beside you, to learn from you, and be a part of something that is both unique in academia—a camaraderie bent on mutual understanding and the unselfish commitment to the sharing of ideas and experience…  I salute you and all those wonderful people who attended the conference.

By the time I finish telling the Ranger about the conference, he finally feels free to say more.  He tells me he was there, standing beside poppy fields, planning to burn them, when he was ordered not to.  He shakes his head, looking for an answer to the question why.  I imagine he’s trying to reconcile the death of friends and the thousands of men and women who’ve died there… “Stand down, don’t burn the poppy fields…”   He looks away, unable or not choosing to say more.  Instead he tells me he can’t sleep on airplanes anymore.  “It’s because I always wake up thinking I’m heading back there,” he says.   I can sense the unanswered question in his mind, what was it all about if we couldn’t burn those fields? I have my own thoughts, but no real answer, and I watch him stand up and walk away, working his way nervously down the aisles while the rest of the passengers sleep.

I put aside my computer and close my eyes.  But I think about how he can’t sleep, and that maybe we should all be weary of sleep.   Where are we being taken in the dark when we close our eyes?  Maybe we all need to be on guard, because in some ways, we’re always being directed back there… back to war in one form or another.  It’s why this conference was so important, I realize, why those discussions are so necessary.  We must keep the dialogue alive, each of us, in our own way—each of us telling our stories, studying the consequences of war, and debunking the myths and glorification of war with all the words we can bring to bear.  These are the only weapon we have, after all, words—words that can illuminate— words that can guide us through the night.

Until next time,

James A. Moad II

Greetings All,

Due to a few unforeseen circumstances, I had to delay the interview with the German WW II Vet.  I won’t be able to do it until I return from my trip in the U.S.   I’m attending The War Literature & The Arts Conference at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and will be on the road for a week after that before I make my next entry.

Until next time,

James A. Moad II

A busy week writing non-blog stuff and contemplating what topics to engage on the blog, when something fell into my lap.

Our German hosts had a party over the weekend and introduced me to a woman whose father fought for the Germans in Stalingrad during World War II.  The gentleman is in his mid eighties now, and his daughter said he’s never spoken about the war to anyone. Like many veterans of wars throughout history, he boxed it up and let it sit there inside him. Recently, though (we’re talking the last month), he’s decided that telling the story is something he needs to do.

Of course, this was something I couldn’t let pass me by, so I asked, and he agreed to an interview. I’ll be doing it this Friday afternoon, and I thought I’d throw it out to all of you and see if there was a question you thought worth asking him. I’ll be busy reading up on the battle of Stalingrad and coming up with my own stuff in the meantime.

Let me know what you think.

JM

It was over a nine-hour drive south to Montpelier, France to visit my brother-in-law and his wife in their new apartment.  It rained much of the way, and I kept thinking about how I could fit in a trip to the WW II American Cemetery in the time we had there.  It only looked to be a hundred and fifty miles away or so on the map.

En route, I saw a couple signs for Verdun.  Of course, simply the name, Verdun, evokes the insanity of WW I and I tried to picture what kind of memorial could possibly recognize the million-plus men and boys who died there.   I’ve added it to my list of places to see in the year ahead.

In short, the trip to the Rhone Cemetery in France didn’t happen.  It was too long of a drive in the midst of the August tourist season.  So, no blog information from the cemetery, instead I spent time with the extended family, drinking wine, playing games, reading, and eating French food at the in-law’s chateau.  Not such a bad thing, after all, and a needed respite after my twenty years in the Air Force.

Back in Germany, on a walk through our village, I noticed a modest war memorial in a small park.  It was tucked in between two old houses on a patch of land overlooking the village.  My curiosity drew me in.  The words “Unsern Kriegsopfern” are written in iron letters on the stone monument.  Translated, it means “Our War Victims”.   The years of the two World Wars are listed below the title, but only the names of those from the First World War are displayed on the pillars inside—fifty-three dead and missing from this small village (current population is approximately 4100 with an estimate of about 1600 at the outset of WW I).  There’s no display of those who died in World War II, though, and I found the absence of names to be odd.   After several discussions with a few German friends, I failed to find a definitive answer as to why the dead from World War II aren’t there.

By the time I left the memorial, I realized that there was a time when I would have said (and did say) that the Germans who died in World War I deserved what they got.  Germany is, after all, considered by many to be the aggressor in that war alongside Austria-Hungary.  But that was before I would study the literature of war and challenge those simple assumptions and ideas I’d been taught since I was a boy.  As a cadet and junior officer I’d come to accept the notion that the young men who died fighting against America were part of a greater evil and deserved death.   That was years ago, though, long before I would realize that the young soldiers are exactly what the memorial says, “victims” of war.  Young men manipulated by the illusion of a God on their side, a flag to carry, a shared past, revenge, or of fear concocted by politicians and an aristocracy who see war as a game to be played out for their own selfish ends.

As I write, I’m still wondering why the “victims” of World War II are conspicuously absent from the monument to the dead and missing?  Maybe there is no clear answer, or maybe it’s because the definition of victims in that horrific war was considered too broad, cutting across all veins of society, and sparing few.  There wasn’t enough space on this modest monument to list all the “victims” of that war.   More than anything else, it’s become easier for me over the years to understand why Germany tend to be a nation that recoils from the thought of war.

It’s clear to more than ever why an old German woman in the spring of 2003 asked me to tell George Bush not to invade Iraq.  She, like her whole generation and the children of those who took part in World War II, understand the legacy and the repercussions of war in a way that most Americans can’t.  Had Germany’s cities been decimated in World War I or had the ghosts of those whose names are inscribed on the pillars been able to speak, then maybe things would have been different.  Just maybe there would have been no need for the years 1939-1945 to be a part of the memorial at all.

Until next time,

James A. Moad II

Greetings.  James A. Moad II here, known by many as Jay.  Until recently, I was a Professor of War Literature at the United States Air Force Academy, and now I’m starting the blog for the Academy’s Journal, War, Literature and the Arts (online version http://wlajournal.com).  I’ve  left my teaching position and moved to Europe for a year to write, to linger, to travel, to read and just see what happens along the way.  Among many other endeavors, my goal is to post this blog at every month or so and help engender further discussions around all forms of art that shed light on the tragic human endeavor we call War.  So, let me begin…

I’ve returned to a familiar place—Eulenbis, a hilltop village overlooking Ramstein Air Base, Germany, but everything feels so different.  The view from this gasthaus, nestled in the heart of the Rheinland Pfalz, hasn’t changed in the years since I last stayed here, but I have, and so has the gasthaus itself.  A new patio extends from a recent addition, and I’m dining at the modest restaurant, added a few years back to cater to the military and civilian contractors who’ve come to execute the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Its growth is tied to these conflicts—a reflection of the tenuous prosperity that war often brings to the villages and towns around military bases.

It was my intent to start this blog after visiting an American Cemetery in Southern France, my second stop on this year-long adventure—sabbatical—whatever you want to call it, but instead the view on this beautiful evening has made me change my mind.  Eight years ago I arrived here with my National Guard unit, enraged and focused after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  I was here to fly in support of our fledgling war in Afghanistan and later to plan part of the invasion of Iraq.  And now I’ve returned with a new perspective.

The view before me is of the evening sky and clouds framing the silhouettes of C-17 Globemasters and 747s flying to and from the Middle East.  I can hear the rumble of engines on the ground from here—a clear reminder of the missions I’ve flown and planned from Ramstein.  It is there on the extensive and rebuilt runway where many of those coming to and from the wars arrive and depart.  They pass through this base—a revolving door—to and from their first, third, or even fifth tours.  Transiting the base alongside them are the bodies—Human Remains—HRs in silver boxes at the midway point to be re-iced and outfitted for their final trip home.

Over the past four years teaching War Literature to Air Force Academy cadets, I’ve come to understand the complexities of war in a more profound way.  As a pilot and a graduate of that institution, I acknowledge the allure of flight, of war itself, and of losing oneself in the power and illusion of technological superiority and moral certainty.  More than anything, though, I’ve discovered how easy it is for each generation to get manipulated by the lies and promises hidden behind the veil of patriotism and the flag.  I wonder as I watch a new C-17 turning onto final approach, is it at that midway point en route to Iraq or Afghanistan, and if so, do those inside know what awaits them at the end of that flight.

As for me, I’ve dragged my family across the ocean for a year, stored our belongings, and am determined to continue delving within myself to examine the questions that war demands we ask of ourselves.  What will be the promise of this year ahead?  I’m jet-lagged and tired, enthused and uncertain about what’s in store for me as I order dinner and my first beer of the trip.  My wife and children are off visiting friends, and I pause to watch an old German couple strolling past me.  The man is older, in his late-seventies or early eighties, and his wife is guiding him along a path winding past fields of sheep and goats down toward the forest.  This hill was barren at the end of World War II—it’s forests stripped of wood to keep the people from freezing to death while the machines of war consumed a nation.  I wonder if this man was here then, and if so, what he recalls from a time when his country began a war that would devour more than sixty-million lives.

So I’m here, not at an ending point—a cemetery in France—where the dead lie in wait, but at the midway point—a transient place for those coming and going from these wars… a stop for those who’ve fallen or are returning from combat.  We are, after all, in the very midst of the struggle of our time.  It is here and across Europe where I’ll write and observe as a military outsider for the first time, to contemplate and engage in the dialogue that must take place.  It is what War Literature and the Arts is meant to do, and what the upcoming conference in September is about—to provide a venue for creative minds.  More clearly than ever, we need the modest creative antidote to war that art can provide.  Without it, we would be more lost than we already are.

Check out the link to our conference:  http://wlajournal.com/conference/ to see who’ll be there.  The conference is free, so if you’re interested in coming out to Colorado, please do.  I’ll be there along with the people headlining the conference.

Okay, so I’ve written enough for now.  There are other things to write, and besides, I want to hear what you have to say.  My Weizen Bier has arrived, the first of many on this year ahead.  Time to put down my pen.  Next stop Southern France, visiting relatives, and if time allows, a trip to the Rhone American Cemetary there.

Until next time,

JM