Chapter commentary: This section, to be perfectly candid, is the one I thought the NEA would never allow to be published. It is by far the most raw and graphic chapter in “Operation Homecoming,” and it deals with the sheer brutality of warfare and the psychological and physical impact of combat on our troops. I often refer to it as the emotional crescendo of the book. To their credit, the NEA didn’t try and censor any of this material, and, as we all discovered from early reviews, perhaps no other chapter has resonated as deeply with readers as this one. What this chapter does so powerfully is emphasize the real sacrifices our troops are making. If we had whitewashed or sugarcoated the harshness of their experiences, it only would have diminished these sacrifices. The following two excerpts are not the most explicit ones in this chapter, but they offer a sense of what “This Is Not a Game” is all about.

PROLIFERATION
(Journal)
Captain Robert Swope

Commentary: U.S. Army Captain Robert Swope shipped off to the Middle East in the early spring of 2003 and served in Iraq for more than fourteen months, pri­marily with the 1st Armored Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team. Swope was stationed mostly in Baghdad, and he and his unit were scheduled to re­turn home in March 2004. But with more troops needed to combat the ris­ing insurgency, their final homecoming was delayed for several months. Swope kept a journal during his deployment, and in the fall of 2003 the twenty-five-year-old infantry officer began writing about the most lethal new threat to U.S. forces -- Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs. The following is a short excerpt from one of his entries published in “Operation Homecoming.”

November 9
I’m woken up early this morning by two fellow officers talking outside my room, discussing the death of one of the soldiers from the company…It had been a sunny day at the airport and my gunner helped carry the stretcher. When he came back, his arms were covered in blood and he couldn’t stop shaking. He put his hands to his head and then jerked back after he touched his face and realized his fingers were still wet. I helped him wash it off with a bar of soap from my toiletry kit, and poured water over him. I gave my extra uniform to one of the medics who attended the injured, and whose uniform had to be burned in a trash pit with all the other bandages and clothes. He spent the next day and a half being saluted as an officer. After the medevac helicopter left, I remember watching the dead soldier’s squad leader walking back to his platoon area carrying his weapon cradled in both arms, a blank, uncomprehending and expressionless look on his face.

…Later that day on my way back from the base post office, I stop by the head­quarters building and inspect the Humvee hit by the IED. There are gashes in the steel of the vehicle and it’s still wet from when some soldiers cleaned it up at 0200 in the morning. Because they didn’t have a hose to spray down the vehicle with and flush the blood out, they ended up pouring five-gallon water jugs over the inside, soaking up the crimson liquid with strips of cloth torn from Army-issue brown T-shirts.

Next to the Humvee is a silver metal trash can with the smoldering re­mains of the rags and bloodied equipment that couldn’t be cleaned, such as the dead soldier’s boonie cap and his used compression bandages. A thin plume of white smoke rises up from it.

It turns out the soldier died before the medevac helicopter even landed to pick him up. A fragment from the bomb hit him in the back of the neck, sev­ering his spinal cord. I can’t imagine how scared he must have been in those final moments as he saw his life slowly slipping away, bleeding to death and be­ginning to lose motor function. He was a private, twenty-two, and had only joined the unit about eight days earlier. It was his first mission out into the city.

© “OPERATION HOMECOMING: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families” (Random House, 2006), edited by Andrew Carroll. Reprinted by permission.

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ALARM RED
(E-mail)
Captain Lisa R. Blackman, Ph.D.

Commentary: Dr. Lisa R. Blackman, a thirty-two-year-old U.S. Air Force captain from New England, worked as a clinical psychologist at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, with the 379th Expeditionary Medical Group, 379th Air Expeditionary Wing, from September 2004 to February 2005. During her six-month deployment, Blackman regularly spoke with in­dividuals who were suffering from the mental aftershocks of combat. Al­though she was limited in what she could reveal, occasionally she would offer her family and friends a glimpse of what the troops were going through in her (often short) e-mails home.
 
Lately I have had a string of combat trauma evaluations. Several have been Army troops passing through for R & R -- they come here for a bit and then go back to Iraq or Afghanistan. As if this is a glamorous vacation site….

Each evaluation started with the typical questions: “What brought you in today?” “When did the problem start?” “Have you ever experienced these symptoms before?” “How’s your sleep?” etc. etc. etc. I kept asking questions and thinking that the symptoms did not add up. Something wasn’t right. I wasn’t getting the right reactions. Stories were incomplete. Affect was blunted. Level of distress did not match presenting complaint. Alarm red, people, alarm red.

At home I ask people if they have ever experienced or witnessed a trau­matic event or abuse. But out here I ask, “Have you ever been in combat?” Apparently, this is a question with the power to unglue... because all four of these troops burst into tears at the mention of the word “combat.”

And when I say burst, I mean splatter -- tears running, snot flowing, and I literally had to mop my floor after one two-hour session. In other words, I mean sobbing for minutes on end, unable to speak, flat out grief by an other­wise healthy, strong, manly guy who watches football on the weekends and never puts the toilet seat down.

Each time I sit there with not a clue what to say... offering tissues... saying I’m sorry... trying to normalize...trying to say, “It was not your fault that so and so died” and “If you could have done differently, you would have” and “You had a right to be scared.” And even worse, “You had to shoot back” and “Yes you killed someone, and you still deserve to go back to your family and live your life.”

Next time you are hanging out with a friend, think about what you would do if he turned to you and said, “My boss made me kill someone, and I know I’m going to hell for it so why bother?” What would you say to “normalize” that?…

I can’t stop thinking about the fact that these folks have lost something that they will never get back -- innocence (and a life free of guilt). My heart hurts for them.

Wish us well,
Lisa

© “OPERATION HOMECOMING: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families” (Random House, 2006), edited by Andrew Carroll. Reprinted by permission.

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NEXT WEEK: Excerpts from Chapter Six of OPERATION HOMECOMING -- “Home: Returning to the United States”