thedrifter
10-05-06, 08:47 AM
Book Review | A military Web log telling stories straight from the front
The Blog of War
Front-Line Dispatches From Soldiers
in Iraq and Afghanistan
By Matthew Currier Burden
Simon & Schuster. 291 pp. $15
Reviewed by Mark Yost
If you're tired of negative media reporting coming out of Iraq (and, increasingly, Afghanistan), Matthew Currier Burden's The Blog of War: Front-Line Dispatches From Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will be a welcome respite.
The author is a former Army intelligence officer who has kept in touch with many of his former comrades. One of them, Maj. Mathew E. Schram, was killed in a May 2003 ambush while escorting a supply column to a forward operating base in Iraq. His death, like so many in Iraq, was truly heroic.
"Major Schram ordered his driver, Specialist Chris Van Dyke, to accelerate from their position in the convoy into the insurgents' position," Burden writes of his friend's last action as a soldier. "The Iraqi grenadiers recognized the threat and shifted their fire from the rear truck to Schram's Humvee."
You've probably never heard his story - and many others like it.
The shortcomings of news coverage and the emotional trauma of Schram's death led Burden to start www.blackfive.net. It became one of the best milblogs - Internet shorthand for "military Web log" - that feature the writing of soldiers and their families. The book is a best-of collection of postings, and Burden's selections make clear from the opening pages that there is much to tell, and celebrate, in the tough, day-to-day work that our soldiers are doing in one of the most challenging environments any army has ever faced.
"Serving my country is not a 4-year contract," wrote Stephen Wilbanks, 35, a Marine veteran who reenlisted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "It is a lifelong commitment. Nor is it a 'due' to be paid like some cheap membership fee. It is a deeply personal obligation. And it is certainly not 'time' that has to be 'done' like some felony prison sentence. It is nothing short of an honor that I hold in the highest regard, an honor that I must prove worthy of, an honor that must be earned every single day."
Lest you think this is merely a collection of hyperpatriotic rants, it is not. If it were, it would be no better than the reportage pumped into the 24-hour news cycle every day. No, unfettered by editors or agendas, these soldiers tell both the good and the bad of the war on terrorism. In short, they're free to tell the truth about what they see and live every day.
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Heidi S. Kraft created "The List," which detailed the good things about life in Iraq ("Sunsets over the desert") as well as the bad ("Ushering a sobbing Marine colonel away from the trauma bay while several of his Marines bled and cried out in pain").
Navy corpsmen wrote about saving lives as well as seeing too much.
"Do I really need more images of rent flesh, of people in pain to have dreams about?"
The postings also remind us that the war on terrorism includes a home front, where spouses and children struggle with separation from their loved ones. It's also where soldiers return less than what they were, physically and emotionally, and struggle to find their place in a world that seems oblivious to the one they just left in Iraq.
"This year has been the worst, and it's been the best," wrote Wendy Marr as she waited for her Iowa National Guard husband to return from Afghanistan. "I've been so fortunate in life. A wonderful husband, two great kids, lifelong friends. But now I've added more, another family so to speak. A group of wives and children that I can't imagine me surviving this last year without."
Would that we all remembered that.
Mark Yost, a writer in Lake Elmo, Minn., is a former associate editorial page editor for the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
Ellie
The Blog of War
Front-Line Dispatches From Soldiers
in Iraq and Afghanistan
By Matthew Currier Burden
Simon & Schuster. 291 pp. $15
Reviewed by Mark Yost
If you're tired of negative media reporting coming out of Iraq (and, increasingly, Afghanistan), Matthew Currier Burden's The Blog of War: Front-Line Dispatches From Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will be a welcome respite.
The author is a former Army intelligence officer who has kept in touch with many of his former comrades. One of them, Maj. Mathew E. Schram, was killed in a May 2003 ambush while escorting a supply column to a forward operating base in Iraq. His death, like so many in Iraq, was truly heroic.
"Major Schram ordered his driver, Specialist Chris Van Dyke, to accelerate from their position in the convoy into the insurgents' position," Burden writes of his friend's last action as a soldier. "The Iraqi grenadiers recognized the threat and shifted their fire from the rear truck to Schram's Humvee."
You've probably never heard his story - and many others like it.
The shortcomings of news coverage and the emotional trauma of Schram's death led Burden to start www.blackfive.net. It became one of the best milblogs - Internet shorthand for "military Web log" - that feature the writing of soldiers and their families. The book is a best-of collection of postings, and Burden's selections make clear from the opening pages that there is much to tell, and celebrate, in the tough, day-to-day work that our soldiers are doing in one of the most challenging environments any army has ever faced.
"Serving my country is not a 4-year contract," wrote Stephen Wilbanks, 35, a Marine veteran who reenlisted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "It is a lifelong commitment. Nor is it a 'due' to be paid like some cheap membership fee. It is a deeply personal obligation. And it is certainly not 'time' that has to be 'done' like some felony prison sentence. It is nothing short of an honor that I hold in the highest regard, an honor that I must prove worthy of, an honor that must be earned every single day."
Lest you think this is merely a collection of hyperpatriotic rants, it is not. If it were, it would be no better than the reportage pumped into the 24-hour news cycle every day. No, unfettered by editors or agendas, these soldiers tell both the good and the bad of the war on terrorism. In short, they're free to tell the truth about what they see and live every day.
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Heidi S. Kraft created "The List," which detailed the good things about life in Iraq ("Sunsets over the desert") as well as the bad ("Ushering a sobbing Marine colonel away from the trauma bay while several of his Marines bled and cried out in pain").
Navy corpsmen wrote about saving lives as well as seeing too much.
"Do I really need more images of rent flesh, of people in pain to have dreams about?"
The postings also remind us that the war on terrorism includes a home front, where spouses and children struggle with separation from their loved ones. It's also where soldiers return less than what they were, physically and emotionally, and struggle to find their place in a world that seems oblivious to the one they just left in Iraq.
"This year has been the worst, and it's been the best," wrote Wendy Marr as she waited for her Iowa National Guard husband to return from Afghanistan. "I've been so fortunate in life. A wonderful husband, two great kids, lifelong friends. But now I've added more, another family so to speak. A group of wives and children that I can't imagine me surviving this last year without."
Would that we all remembered that.
Mark Yost, a writer in Lake Elmo, Minn., is a former associate editorial page editor for the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
Ellie