As much as I love long, never-ending stories, I also love short bursts of feeling that show you raw and impossible to deny realities. The best material for these kind of explosions are war stories, because their truth is not a very fictional one, you can't make it more romantic. It's painful and bare and it hurts in so many different ways that you can't contain it better than writing very directly about it. You can see that pain is not a very artsy thing and doesn't care for adorning; it is best to portray it as simply as you can, as close to your heart as you can and give it the ability to wake something up in your reader's mind.

Now, for the review. Warning: it won't be a very coherent one, I'm really tired.

You read memoirs of soldiers. Journals, maybe. You read their thoughts, black on white, recorded for the world to see. You get to know their aftermath. And you think about the thousands upon thousands of faces you have seen in documentaries, on TV, in photos. You think about those anonymous beings, strangers really, to you, sad-eyed and empty-faced, brown-haired, blond, black, white-skinned, caramel, doesn't matter. Dressed in that uniform that eliminates individuality and makes every soldier virtually the same single one, with their thoughts drawn out and inside, instead, hammered a bunch of worthless patriotic ideas that are supposed to make them feel like they're fighting that war for themselves, when they're just pawns on some rich man's ebony chess table.

The soldier of this book is not that man. I know he fought in a modern war (is there even such a thing? a modern war? it's been all about killing since the first one, what difference does it make if we do it with drones now, we still need flesh to kill, we're still murderers), but I like to envision him as the different one from the row of soldiers you can see in a vintage movie. I like to think he's the one whose eyes sparkle. I see him, in my mind, looking at the camera instead of looking at the flag (like all the others, like the herd), trying to send the viewer a message, a personalized one, not what the others want him to. I see he is young and that life has barely started to boil in him; I also see he is old, because war taught him to hunch over, to bow his head, to accept death, to be silent about it. He is separated from our world, he's so far away he can't come back to being normal. The kind of man who counts the dead and raises his head to acknowledge every other comrade's pain on the plane towards home. The kind of man who knows what he does is called survival, not living. You see that there's horror in his eyes, but he shades it away from your understanding, because he knows that once you've understood, you'll become like him. He doesn't hide from the world because he's afraid for himself, but he's sick of the lies we've all been told and sees that he can't change things all by himself, that his fight to fit in once more will be in vain.

I see a brave man; he was once empty. War made a man out of him. Getting out of war broke him down. And it hurts him that his only meaning seemed to be found when he was killing and afraid and hurt. He asks himself if that is normal life...

That soldier who, when he takes his garments off, when he steps out of his uniform, is actually, like a snake, slithering out of his own skin, without having a clue how to grow another one.

This book has been given to me by my History teacher, and because of the way he gave it to me I thought it would be just a filler book, the kind you read in between other major works. But I really, really liked it. I loved every minute of it and honestly thought it was beautifully written, very lyrical, very poetic for something so strong and raw. I happen to judge things, and I happen to judge them badly. I did it to this one too.

Without giving any spoilers, because I honestly don't want to, it goes like this: there's three main characters, Bart, Murph and serg. Sterling. Bart is 21 when he goes to war, Murph is 18 and Sterling is 24. They are deployed in Al Tafar, an area they have to conquer and protect, and experiment the horrors of what modern warfare means: shooting, bombing, etc. Bart and Murph are what you would classically call war-buddies, men who have met on the front and became friends on the basis of maybe saving each other or needing a friend before their imminent death. But this particular story is not about the positive part, it's not a story about friendship during fighting or how a man can surpass war, but rather the exact opposite: how you never, ever survive war.

Even if you live until the end of it. You'll never find your peace.

Once again, the writing I found perfect for a book like this. Very poignant, straight-forward, punctuated with swearing-words and in general a true description of normal human thought processes. There can be tens of quotes I can pick to make you see this, but I'll go for the monologue that almost made me give this book a 5-star rating. I found this to be one of the best confessions I have ever read in a war book, and by far one of the best written pieces in the stream-of-consciousness style that I have personally seen in literature.

“Or should I have said that I wanted to die, not in the sense of wanting to throw myself off of that train bridge over there, but more like wanting to be asleep forever because there isn’t any making up for killing women or even watching women get killed, or for that matter killing men and shooting them in the back and shooting them more times than necessary to actually kill them and it was like just trying to kill everything you saw sometimes because it felt like there was acid seeping down into your soul and then your soul is gone and knowing from being taught your whole life that there is no making up for what you are doing, you’re taught that your whole life, but then even your mother is so happy and proud because you lined up your sign posts and made people crumple and they were not getting up ever and yeah they might have been trying to kill you too, so you say, What are you goona do?, but really it doesn’t matter because by the end you failed at the one good thing you could have done, and the one person you promised would live is dead, and you have seen all things die in more manners than you’d like to recall and for a while the whole thing fucking ravaged your spirit like some deep-down shit, man, that you didn’t even realize you had until only the animals made you sad, the husks of dogs filled with explosives and old arty shells and the fucking guts of everything stinking like metal and burning garbage and you walk around and the smell is deep down into you now and you say, How can metal be so on fire? and Where is all this fucking trash coming from? and even back home you’re getting whiffs of it and then that thing you started to notice slipping away is gone and now it’s becoming inverted, like you have bottomed out in your spirit but yet a deeper hole is being dug because everybody is so fucking happy to see you, the murderer, the fucking accomplice, that at-bare-minimum bearer of some fucking responsibility, and everyone wants to slap you on the back and you start to want to burn the whole goddamn country down, you want to burn every yellow ribbon in sight, and you can’t explain it but it’s just, like, Fuck you, but then you signed up to go so it’s your fault, really, because you went on purpose, so you are in the end doubly fucked, so why not just find a spot and curl up and die and let’s make it as painless as possible because you are a coward and, really, cowardice got you into this mess because you wanted to be a man and people made fun of you and pushed you around in the cafeteria and the hallways in high school because you liked to read books and poems sometimes and they’d call you a fag and really deep down you know you went because you wanted to be a man and that’s never gonna happen now and you’re too much of a coward to be a man and get it over with so why not find a clean, dry place and wait it out with it hurting as little as possible and just wait to go to sleep and not wake up and fuck ‘em all.”

Perfection, I tell you.

 

Fraught with emotion, this is an achingly heartbreaking tale of war. Devastatingly honest and brutal in its images, it is hard to read without discomfort. It propels one to second guess their own thoughts about war and the reasons for the unnecessary sacrifice of life.
It feels like a series of random thoughts coming from Private John Bartle, with each series separated by approximately one year of time. The story moves back and forth, past to present, from 2004 to 2005, as, through his thoughts, we try to understand his confusion about who he is and why he still remains. Is he a hero or a coward? The absence of war is now an empty void within him that he cannot fill or explain nor can he stop reaching for his missing rifle. He is no longer defined by his past, his childhood or his youth, but now, he is defined by his brief, unbearable experience in Iraq.
In 2003, John Bartle and Daniel Murphy enlisted; in 2004, they went through basic training together and became friends; in 2005, Bartle is discharged and returns home to Virginia. John Murphy, 18, and Daniel Bartle, 21, served together in Iraq. This is their brief story. When one day, Bartle carelessly promised Murphy’s mother that he will protect him, the forward momentum of his life is changed forever. It was an unrealistic pledge that would not be easy to keep. In the end, his effort to protect Murphy’s mother, rather than her son, had drastic consequences.
Their superior officer, Sgt. Sterling, 24, perhaps the quintessential soldier, was demanding and brutal in his expectations of obedience and respect. They loved and hated him, at the same time. He was responsible for keeping them alive and his methods were often cruel but expedient. They were children, in a sense, playing a game of life and death for which they were poorly equipped, but then, who is equipped to commit murder with impunity, especially when punishment eventually lies in wait, in the prison of one’s mind or the prison of one’s peers who judge the crimes without the necessary wisdom to comprehend the reasons behind their commission, but rather with the need to simply hold someone, anyone, accountable, to make someone pay in order to justify the injustices they allowed and even requested be committed.
The book thoughtfully explores the choices we make, good and bad, those necessary and those perhaps not so much. It shows the effect of those choices on those who made them; it also shows the effect on those who had to follow the choices that were made by others, those who had no input, but were, nevertheless, expected to follow, and in so doing, were irrevocably changed.
Choices that were ultimately made for kind reasons were judged just as wrong as those made for cruel ones. Of their own volition, the young men and women chose to go into battle, but they had no idea what they would encounter in that foreign country thousands of miles from home, in more ways than mere distance. Some of the decisions they chose were made because they were driven by the horror of the atrocities they witnessed, by the sheer enormity of them. The magnitude of the death and destruction exhausted and wasted them. The nightmare of war, the madness of it, infected their minds in the daylight of their waking moments.
However, their choices determined their futures. Then too, their superior’s choices, also determined their futures. Ultimately, one is left to wonder if the means ever really justifies the end. Did Murphy find freedom? Did Bartle escape the prison of his mind? Both boys were lost to their families whether or not they returned home.
As the thoughts of the soldiers take life on the pages, the reader will find it hard to read on without respite. Only imagine for a moment, the soldier who cannot take respite when he is in the middle of the fray, and then imagine how their lives are forever altered by their experiences and how an unwitting public welcomes them back as heroes ignoring their scars of battle.

After reading a book recommended by one of my GR friends, I sometimes go back and read their review to see if it is close to what I'm thinking about the book.

I did that, reading my friend Jeff Keeten's The Yellow Birds review this morning (for the second time) and again read every one the 56 comments. The comments ranged from questions about the war in Iraq, slight comparisons to the Vietnam War and opinions in general on how we got into the Iraq War. Excellent review by Jeff and excellent comments. But take a cup of coffee with you.

Books about war are not on my "must read" list since I am clearly a pacifist. (Def: 1. The belief that disputes between nations should and can be settled peacefully. 2. a. Opposition to war or violence as a means of resolving disputes. b. Such opposition demonstrated by refusal to participate in military action.)

My conviction comes from having so many men friends from high school come back from the Vietnam War mentally maimed, with two killing themselves. As decades passed I saw America enter too many conflicts unnecessarily with the Iraq War being the most obvious.

However, I felt a necessity and made a personal challenge to read at least one book about this war and with Jeff's high praise I put it on my must read list.

Recently at the library, I saw it on the "Two Week" shelf which means it's a recent addition to the library, so I grabbed it. I'm not sure had it not been there that I would have hunted it down to read.

As Jeff mentioned, passages in the book were poetic and for good reason; the author Kevin Powers is a poet first and foremost. At times, well, many times, I found those passages simply too long, too descriptive, too full of adjectives. I found the book heavy on lyrical descriptions and light on dialog and I love dialog.

Perhaps it should it have been marketed as a memoir? The story was fiction but events in Powers' tour of duty in Mosul and Tal Afar as a machine gunner must have been some basis for the powerful story told in this book.

And yes, it was a powerful story but one that took (for me) much too long to tell. My reading patience without dialog just carries me so far. I found myself thinking "Only 75 more pages to go." That is not how I like to read a book. But, of course, some readers would love it, no question. Read Jeff's review.

But now I can say that I have read a book about the Iraq War and I'm glad I did and I'm glad I finished.

I cannot read many books that are that sad and disturbing about what I consider a senseless war that one Goodreads reviewer called "Daddy's War." I agreed and wish I had said that.

And I still feel ashamed that the American people were duped into a war which killed and maimed so many young Americans. President of the United States, President George Bush, in 2002 lied to the America people. I believe our involvement in Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

After weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq, I did nothing but storm around the house. What was there to do except vote? But I still carry some guilt because I did nothing; my job wouldn't even allow me to write a letter to the editor much less physically protest in any way.

So there. I said it all, I am a pacifist. I hate war. And I did nothing in 2002 to protest our involvement. Yes, I'll always carry some of that guilt.

Please, my apology if some of this is repetitive.

This was my comment April 9, 2013, on Jeff's review:
"Unfortunately, I can't read much about war; much to depressing and makes me sad. I simply hate war and this war more than others because it was so senseless. The thought of sending our kids, our future, to kill or be killed, disturbs me to the core."