Andrew Carroll - Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U. S. Troops and Their Families

CONTENTS

1. And Now It Begins
Heading into Combat

2. Hearts and Minds
Interactions with Afghans and Iraqis

3. Stuck in This Sandbox
Gripes, Humor, Boredom, and the Daily Grind

4. Worlds Apart
Life on the Home Front

5. This Is Not a Game
The Physical and Emotional Toll of War

6. Home
Returning to the United States

To our nations troops and their families
and to all who went before them

OPERATION HOMECOMING

PARTICIPATING WRITERS

Operation Homecoming Director

Jon Parrish Peede

Editorial Panel

Donald Anderson

John Barr

Andrew Carroll

Richard Currey

Joe Haldeman

Barry Hannah

Andrew Hudgins

McKay Jenkins

Stephen Lang

Erin McGraw

E. Ethelbert Miller

Marilyn Nelson

Kathleen Norris

Quang Pham

Dan Rifenburgh

Jeff Shaara

Cindy Simmons

Larry Smith

Karen Spears Zacharias

Workshop Teachers

Richard Bausch

Mark Bowden

Andrew Carroll

Lawrence Christon

Tom Clancy

Judith Ortiz Cofer

Richard Currey

Joe Haldeman

Barry Hannah

Victor Davis Hanson

Andrew Hudgins

McKay Jenkins

Stephen Lang

Bobbie Ann Mason

Erin McGraw

E. Ethelbert Miller

Marilyn Nelson

Wyatt Prunty

Dan Rifenburgh

Jeff Shaara

Larry Smith

Evan J. Wallach

Tobias Wolff

Audio CD Participants

Will D. Campbell

Shelby Foote

Barry Hannah

Victor Davis Hanson

Bobbie Ann Mason

Marilyn Nelson

James Salter

Louis Simpson

Richard Wilbur

Tobias Wolff

PREFACE

Dana Gioia
Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts

T here are countless books of military history and wartime reminiscence, but I dont believe that there ever has been a collection quite like Operation Homecoming. This volume contains writing by members of the U.S. military who have been involved in the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is not an official publication. The writing did not emerge from an armed forces or congressional history project but grew out of a series of workshops sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and conducted by a group of distinguished American writers. The volume was edited by a civilian panel of writers, editors, and historians. Most important, the writing was not composed after the conflicts it describes had concluded. It was created in the midst of the war, sometimes even on the front lines. Finally, as Operation Homecoming is published, the war it discusses is still under way.

The idea for Operation Homecoming emergedoddly enoughin a tavern full of poets. In April 2003, at the first gathering of the nations state poet laureates, the conversation turned to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Marilyn Nelson, poet laureate of Connecticut, talked about the stress and uncertainty faced by the troops being mobilized for combat. The daughter of a Tuskegee Airman, Nelson knew the pressures on military families. Having recently taught as a visiting writer at the United States Military Academy at West Point, she suggested that the enlisted men and women might benefit from the opportunity to write about their experiences. We spoke about how separate the worlds of literature and the military are in our society, and how crucially important the art of literature might be to military personnel undergoing huge changes in their lives. What would happen if the nation fostered a conversation between its writers and its troops?

The National Endowment for the Arts exists to bring the best of the arts to all Americans, but up to this point, the agency had never done anything to serve the more than three million Americans in the military or military families. Perhaps this omission reflected a sort of unexamined cultural snobbism. At the very least, it reflected a failure of imagination on the agencys part. The new project, which was soon named Operation Homecoming, allowed us to both democratize and extend the reach of the agencys programs.

Operation Homecoming is a unique program in American literary history. It invited troops and their families to discuss and write about their wartime experiences while the events were still happening, rather than years later. Participants were encouraged to write in any formfiction, poetry, drama, memoir, journal, or letters. Most of the workshops were conducted among troops who had just been rotated out of frontline combat. These sessions were also open to spouses, to discuss their experience on the home front. (This may be the first American war in which many of those spouses are male.) In some cases, workshops were held with military personnel still serving in combat zones, such as the sessions on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in the Persian Gulf. The writings contained in this book are not retrospective accounts of a completed conflict, but rather episodes from a war still unfolding and unfinished. Furthermore, these accounts did not emerge from a traditional military history program but grew out of a unique series of lectures, seminars, and workshops conducted by a distinguished group of American writersnearly three dozen novelists, historians, poets, dramatists, and journalistswho operated free from any official constraints other than basic security guidelines.

There seemed many good reasons to create Operation Homecoming. First, the program met genuine human needs by providing people facing enormous challenges with the opportunity for reflection and clarity that the reading and writing of literature afford. Second, the program had historic importance, creating personal accounts of the warfrom the combat zone to the home frontby individuals who would not normally be heard. The reports on the war from politicians and journalists were printed and broadcast daily. Now there would be an opportunity to give voice to the troops themselves. Third, the project had literary potential: Some new literary talent would almost certainly emerge from the hundreds of novice writers engaged in the NEA workshops. Finally, the workshops themselves had a social and cultural importance by bringing together writers and military personneltwo groups who do not customarily mix in contemporary America.

The original plan for Operation Homecoming was to offer ten workshops on five bases. Each base would host two visiting writers, who would teach and lecture. To prepare for the workshops, each base would receive copies of books by visiting writers and a CD audiobook featuring selections of American war literature from the Civil War through the Vietnam era. So that this new program would not divert funds from other Arts Endowment grants, we secured private support from The Boeing Company. We then chose one of the agencys regional partners, the Southern Arts Federation, to help administer the program.

Assembling the writers to conduct the workshops, the Arts Endowment consciously sought a faculty of distinction and diversity. We wanted writers who represented a variety of literary genres and who spanned the political spectrum. Virtually everyone we invited agreed to participate. Our initial faculty represented an impressive sampling of Americas finest writers, including Richard Bausch, Mark Bowden, Tom Clancy, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Barry Hannah, Victor Davis Hanson, Bobbie Ann Mason, Marilyn Nelson, Jeff Shaara, and Tobias Wolff. Meanwhile, a number of other writers were interviewed and recorded for the audiobook, including Shelby Foote, James Salter, Louis Simpson, and Richard Wilbur. Since we planned to publish the best of the writing in an anthology, the project also needed an editor. Once again we were fortunate to secure our first choiceAndrew Carroll, editor of