(2007) The National Endowment for the Arts provided support for this documentary project - directed and produced by Richard E. Robbins - including published authors to help veterans write about their wartime experiences. Film footage from Iraq has been matched to the various stories narrated on the screen by the writers or by actors such as Beau Bridges and Robert Duvall.

These testimonies of transformative experiences of what was witnessed or participated in - "war and its accidents," "at war with others and with oneself," "the bloody mess" - are passages of survival or death. An ambush, a roadside bomb, a shrapnel wound, attending the mangled and dying, accompanying a corpse home for burial. "The youth had been taught that a man became another thing in battle." - Stephen Crane.

Commentary by authors from other wars - Second World War veteran Paul Fussell, Korean War veteran James Salter, Vietnam War veteran Tim O'Brien, Richard Currey, Tobias Wolff - complement and universalize the words of these new writers: Sgt Brian Turner's "What Every Soldier Should Know," US Army Specialist Colby Buzzell's "Men in Black," SSgt Jack Lewis's "Road Work," 1st Lt Sanjoon Han's "Aftermath," Capt and Doctor Ed Hrivnak's account of caring for a badly wounded soldier, seeing "sand fleas where his toes used to be" and struggling with the question, "Do I tell him the truth?"

(I watched this film immediately following President Bush's final State of the Union address - a commander in chief in front of his vice president, neither of whom have experienced combat, talking to an American public, most of whom have no comprehension of the reality of war.) A sure sign of decadence, notes one of the older authors, is when the public avoids the costs of war. As in the past the old send the young to fight their wars while civilians caught in between are slaughtered by the tens of thousands.

"What was it like?" a veteran repeats a question he's often been asked. "Where do I start?" How can he explain what it's like being in a convoy ordered not to halt that runs over children in the road? How can he communicate the utter boredom punctuated by intense, unimaginable events - death of a friend blown to bits, trying to decide if someone running away deserves to be shot down?

Everyone feels guilty. American fathers leaving fatherless children in Iraq. I heard nothing from these men and women suggestive of political posturing, spreading democracy and liberty, or expectations of victory - no grandiose language of glory on the battlefield. Occasionally sarcasm: "Biggest and greatest show on earth." Instead they wrote of their fear, uncertainty, hope for survival. Some say they'd be willing to go back, not out of red-white-and-blue patriotism but to be with their buddies.

Fear brings out ugliness and racism. Artillery barrages blast away at an invisible enemy while there are "civilians dying in their homes." "So much for honor and fair play," confesses a soldier, better "you, not me."

Paradoxes: reluctant soldiers hate the idea of war yet are anxious to start. The ideals of civilian life are turned into casualties: the good fight deteriorates into just fighting and dying, justice becomes revenge ("They've killed my friends," says Sgt John McCary), duty takes over personal decision making (nothing one could do about it), belief in a divine mission quickly decays into hatred and pain (How do the critically injured adjust and cope?), forgiveness is replaced by forgetfulness. "Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime." - Ernest Hemingway.

"War is quite disgusting," says another veteran: once one has been there, internally it's inescapable. In "Taking Chance" Marine Lt Col Michael Strobl narrates his journey to Dubois, Wyoming, with the remains of 19-year-old Marine Pfc Chance Russell Phelps. "Only the dead have seen the end of war." - Plato.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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