President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.
Unforgotten in the Gulf of Tonkin is an outstanding contribution that recounts and analyzes the growth and development of combat search and rescue. In telling that story, Bjorkman weaves in a rich and critically important discussion of larger ethical and moral issues associated with war. Her commendable work deserves a spot in the libraries of all military aviators and students of the profession of arms.
There is an inviting quality to plain-spoken wisdom. We see it these days in succinct and quippy memes and social media posts that distill for us complex personal, national, and global challenges in 280 characters or less. Yet, as satisfying as it may be to blindly accept uncomplicated truths, one of the great dangers in having our biases confirmed is that we stop asking questions of a complicated world, which is how we actually learn, grow, and come to meaningful solutions to problems both simple and complex.
This novel is a powerful addition to the American canon. A stunning, short-paragraphed powerhouse that is both eminently readable as a thriller but can also bear the weight of a deep, close reading of the symbolism, rich with interpretative possibility and bold style choices. Yes, what Gallagher is talking about still does matter.
All For You satisfies the narrative requirements the Smithton readers demand from romance: it provides escape and a happy ending. But that assessment does not capture the full complexity of a novel that has its characters argue over how to provide for and take care of service members, how to prepare for deployment, and how to deal with its aftermath. And it doesn’t capture the full complexity of a novel that does all of that while pointing to dynamics of race, rank, and gender.
Incoming: Sex, Drugs, and Copenhagen. Jennifer Corley, Justin Hudnall, Francisco Martínezcuello, and Tenley Lozano (Eds). San Diego, CA: So Say We All Press, 2019.
Sex, Drugs, and Copenhagen is the latest iteration of the Incoming print and public radio series. Drawing on the work of So Say We All’s Veterans’ Writers Division, the book presents an eclectic collection of stories from veterans, their families, and the surrounding U.S. military community. Consequently, it seems only fitting the volume begins with a dedication to a member of that close-knit circle. A former serviceman, Gary Anderson, participated in writing groups throughout his life as a means of sharing and processing his experiences. Pondering the value of storytelling, his niece Kelly Patterson explains, “[Gary’s] writing gave him a vehicle to express joy, to honor the loves of his life…to show fondness, appreciation and gratitude to his friends and to share things that made him laugh or made him curious.”[1] She goes on to note that it equally provided him “with a place to air his frustrations, vent righteous anger and work through his difficulties.”[2] This is the second such anthology of stories to join the Incoming series and provides a similarly expansive opportunity for its own contributors to reflect on the impact of a life in uniform.
The book is part of a long American tradition of military memoirs and war literature that extends as far back as the War of Independence and can be traced through the nineteenth century to the Civil War.[3] During the first half of the twentieth century, veterans of the First and Second World Wars generated vast numbers of fictional and non-fictional accounts. In keeping with the realism of well-known nineteenth century authors such as Stephan Crane in The Red Badge of Courage, this generation of authors revealed the brutality and sometimes comic surrealism of modern combat in greater detail than ever before.[4] Moreover, their words have become synonymous with contemporary understandings of conflict, from John Dos Passos’ Three Soldiers to Joseph Heller’s Catch 22. American involvement in Vietnam cast a long shadow over the remainder of the century and irreversibly shaped public conceptions about what it meant to be a veteran and the challenges of returning home in the wake of an unpopular war.[5] Since the creation of the all-volunteer force in 1973, several additional generations of American servicemen and women have deployed abroad to places as far flung as Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Each in their turn has continued to shift and shape our collective consciousness of the military experience.
In keeping with this tradition, Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen reflects on combat, an experience that many feel lies at the heart of war. In the opening chapter of the book, contributor Colin D. Halloran vividly and unflinchingly compares the intimacy of killing, to the intimacy of sex. He observes that the:
…images are sharper, you can feel—sense—every bead of sweat…When a drop falls, from a forehead or a breast, and lands on your arm, you feel it shatter, feel it spread its saline shrapnel across every micrometer of your skin. It’s only when it’s over that you realize just how little or how much time has passed, a simultaneous moment and eternity.[6]
Expanding on this theme, Iraq and Afghanistan veteran Dan Lopez describes the hardship and unexpected joy of front line service in, “Smoking Weed with the Taliban.” Retelling his story to one of the book’s editors, Justin Hudnall, Lopez explains that while “Iraq was a bitter, bitter beast for me…I loved my job. I was a squad leader, infantry squad leader dude, how much more could you ask for?”[7] For others though, war is simply about making it through another day. In “Survival,” Dennis Williams focuses on one such harrowing encounter with a member of the Viet Cong, who he discovers is just as reluctant to kill as Williams himself. Ruminating on the life-altering moment, he concludes that “most warriors are not natural killers, but are forced to do so by war.”[8]
While the physical act of fighting remains pivotal for many veterans, it represents only one part of military life. The book deftly draws the reader’s attention beyond the field of battle to life on deployment, with all its associated boredom and absurdity. For example, in “Hurry Up and Wait,” Brooke King remembers the uneasy tension that accompanied troops as they waited to take part in the invasion of Iraq during the First Gulf War.[9] In “Pass the Hot Sauce,” Susanne Aspley evocatively describes her time in Bosnia, recalling that “on deployments, I missed something I never knew could be missed…I missed color…the warmth of red, the calmness of blue, the luxury of purple.”[10] Striking a lighter note, Joshua Callaway entertainingly muses on his efforts to break up the tedium of guard duties in Afghanistan by buying a pet monkey and getting far more than he initially bargained for.[11]
The book expertly weaves in stories that reflect the wide diversity of service life, including events that take place far from a theater of combat but prove no less traumatic or transformative for the authors. This includes Allison Gill’s “Rape Jokes.” One of the first women accepted to the U.S. Navy’s nuclear program in the early 1990s, Gill offers a harrowing account of being raped at a barracks party and the poor response she received from both the armed forces and law enforcement. Equally important and compelling, she describes how she coped over the subsequent years and eventually returned to her roots as a trained musician as a way of healing.[12]
The book strives to incorporate the stories of military families. Often absent from other accounts, this collection rightly recognizes the lasting impact a life in uniform has on both service personnel and the extended network of supporters surrounding them. In “New Traditions,” Delia Knight contemplates the superstitious rituals she adopted to keep her brother safe on deployment, from sitting in the same row at church to taking the same route to work each morning. What is more, she considers the depth of love required to help that same brother move forward on his return home.[13] In “Archaeology,” Wendy Hill offers readers a striking portrayal of what it’s like for the spouse left behind in the aftermath of a death. A deeply personal account, she describes the pain of losing a partner while struggling to help her young children connect with a father they were too small to remember.[14]
Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen is part of a growing body of literature written by and for veterans in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that portrays the joy, despair, boredom, and trauma of military life.[15] The book acknowledges both the ugliness and the beauty of the experience. Since the Vietnam War, popular culture in the United States and other Western countries has overwhelmingly depicted the veteran as a broken, scarred figure. Television shows and movies often portray ex-service personnel teetering on the edge as victims of politically contentious deployments.[16] This book does not shy away from that experience.[17] However, it asks readers to see the writers as multidimensional human beings with agency and a diversity of experience. It also brings together multiple generations of veterans and their families from Vietnam to Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.
War Art (Scott Olson/Getty)
In Brandon Lingie’s story “Graffiti,” the Afghanistan veteran describes the stencils and art that adorned the walls of the American-led Kandahar airfield and the wing of Leipzig-Halle’s airport reserved for returning American forces. Depicting the latter, he recounts in detail everything from the unit decals and logos to the names of fallen friends. As he poignantly recalls:
The lives of thousands of young people, in limbo, are condensed on these walls. Their words ambushed me. Mostly, these are walls of bravado. The wall writers’ friends could see them unguarded if they wrote honest. But how does one get more honest than a name and a date to prove your existence?[18]
All human beings are storytellers, and as writers we seek to leave behind a piece of that story for whomever may wish to pick it up. Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen is an important reminder of the therapeutic and communal power of storytelling and its continued centrality to understanding the modern war experience.
Meghan Fitzpatrick received her Ph.D. in War Studies from King’s College London. She is a Strategic Analyst and an Adjunct Professor for the Royal Military College of Canada. Her peer reviewed works can be found in such distinguished journals as War & Society. She has written extensively about operational stress injuries and psychological resilience.
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Header Image: Smoking in Afghanistan (Kabul, City in the Wind)
[1] Kelly Patterson, “Dedication to Gary Armstrong,” in Jennifer Corley, Justin Hudnall, Francisco Martínezcuello and Tenley Lozano, Eds. Incoming: Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (US: So Say We All Press, 2019), ix.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Yuval Noah Harari, “Military Memoirs: A Historical Overview of the Genre from the Middle Ages to the Late Modern Era,” War in History 14.3 (2007), pp. 297-298.
[4] David Lundberg, “The American Literature of War: The Civil War, World War I, and World War II,” American Quarterly 36.3 (1984), pp. 376-287.
[5] Frank Usbeck, “Writing Yourself Home: U.S. Veterans, Creative Writing and Social Activism,” European Journal of American Studies 13.2 (2018), p. 2.
[6] Colin D. Halloran, “Tracers,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), p. 1.
[7] Dan Lopez to Justin Hudnall, “Smoking Weed with the Taliban,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), p. 97.
[8] Dennis Williams, “Survival,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), p. 219.
[9] Brooke King, “Hurry Up and Wait,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), pp. 81-82.
[10] Susanne Aspley, “Pass the Hot Sauce,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), pp. 18.
[11] Joshua Callaway, “Monkey Business,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), pp. 6-15.
[12] Allison Gill, “Rape Jokes,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), pp. 177-181.
[13] Delia Knight, “New Traditions,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), pp. 89-94.
[14] Wendy Hill, “Archaeology,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), pp. 232-241.
[15] Examples include: Andrew Carroll, ed. Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families. Updated Edition (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006); “UC Student Veterans Writing Workshop.” Interdisciplinary Humanities Center UC Santa Barbara. Accessed 19 December 2019. Web; Veterans Writing Project. “Veterans Writing Project.” Accessed 8 December 2019. Web.
[16] Meghan Fitzpatrick, “Veterans, Victims and the ‘Culture of Trauma.’” Kings of War/Center for Company Leaders West Point Blog (2 March 2015).
[17] Brandon Lingie, “Graffit,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), p. 50.
[18] Brandon Lingie, “Graffit,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), p. 50.
This is the story of not only what war can do to a human brain, but what it specifically did to Brooke King’s brain. War Flower is a story of a child of a broken home going to war, getting spat out broken, and trying to piece her life back together for the sake of her sanity and the well-being of her children. It is a memoir of war.
This book reveals very little about national strategy or defense policy, or even about the effectiveness of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it is a worthwhile read for those interested in the ground-level experience of war and Americans who want to know more about the actions committed overseas in their name.
The experiences of American soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, sometimes over and over again, are central to this story, including consideration of the lasting impact of their time abroad. American culture is already rife with conversations about post-traumatic stress, veterans’ services, and treatments following deployments. Unfortunately, the voice of the veterans themselves is seldom heard with clarity in these conversations.
While Jonathan Shay’s connections between Vietnam and Homer’s literature of war are one way of exploring the perennial risk of psychological injuries in war, the history of another country’s wars and experiences might offer a promising avenue of approach. Canadian historian Adam Montgomery’s book should thus be of interest to a wider audience than its subtitle alone might suggest. While students of Canadian military history will welcome it as a concise history of psychological injury and treatment in Canada’s wars since 1914, Montgomery usefully broadens the scope of the discussion. American readers, understandably preoccupied with the U.S. experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, will find the treatment of an allied and culturally similar military illuminating. Montgomery’s findings point to the startling ubiquity of psychological injuries in military operations of all types.
Retire the Colors is a reference to the command given at the end of a service or ceremony directing the color guard to retrieve the national and unit colors and remove them from the ceremony. Rendering honors and retiring the colors marks the official end of the ceremony, and frequently, the transition to the informal social activities afterward. The reference is appropriate for this anthology of stories dealing with transition between military service and the civilian world.
We are locked in with Jake; we know his thoughts and feelings, or at least we know as much as Hemingway lets us know. Jake's inability to connect with those around him is as emotional as it is physical, and the first-person narrative allows the reader to experience some measure of that isolation. Fitz, however, is not alone in his head with the reader. His failing connections with those around him are not completely severed lifelines. The third-person omniscient perspective allows Morgan to explore not just Fitz's feelings but how his injuries affect those around him, those trying to help him, and those who depend on him. The shift in perspective from one to the other underscores a shift in our own perspective on the injuries of war since Hemingway's own experience: no one should have to travel the road alone.
After a few seconds, my driver and I looked at one another and burst out laughing. The MRAP-ATV (Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected All-Terrain Vehicle, one of those machines ordered by Robert Gates that saved my life and countless others) lay still, angled into a massive hole in the road. The hood had twisted up and over the top of the vehicle and radiator fluid leaked onto my gunner, who crouched beneath the turret in a vain attempt to avoid it. I felt surprisingly calm—it was a relief to finally get blown up—and my shoulders continued to roll with the laughter, the most vivid memory of my life.
This novel shows us all the scars, reminds us of the broken parts within each of us, and the fragile world on which we try to ground ourselves. It is a reminder that whenever we return, we listen for the call of our name, for some hint that we matter, an echo of who we were, always and forever searching for ourselves across the years in a place we’ve lost along the way.
