thedrifter
04-11-09, 07:29 AM
Chesapeake Marine turns a page with his book on war
Editor's note: This story contains profanity.
CHESAPEAKE
During breaks in fighting in Iraq, Sgt. Clint Van Winkle would battle boredom by writing in his journal - the back section of a military-issued notebook used primarily for tactical note-taking.
Back home after his tour, his first semester of college, Van Winkle tried writing fiction. The backdrop was always war, and the fictional characters were always thinly veiled versions of himself and his fellow Marines.
Later, as an undergraduate at Arizona State University and a graduate student in Wales, Van Winkle ditched the guise of fiction and started writing his truth.
"Soft Spots," published last month by St. Martin's Press, is the story of combat in Iraq and Van Winkle's struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder and journey back into civilian life.
It's a brutally honest account of war and its aftermath: snapshots of firefights and doomed civilians caught in the crossfire; reflections of his instincts and impulses amid the chaos; unapologetic recollections of beer-, rum- and margarita-fueled hazes after he returned home.
Like most accounts of war written by veterans, it's unconcerned with politics. Van Winkle, who served with a Norfolk-based Marine unit, didn't care about the rationale for invading Iraq or the goal of spreading democracy.
He cared only about his buddies in Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines.
Other characters forced their way into his psyche, too.
An excerpt:
"Somewhere, sometime, in the heat of that first engagement, I saw her: a small Iraqi girl, black hair, wearing a striped shirt. She couldn't have been older than ten, just a little girl. We were both in the same situation, at different ends of the spectrum. I was there to kill her. She was there to receive the salvation I had to offer in the form of a .50 caliber bullet. Nobody else saw her, just me, and I fired on the building she ran into. I blew it to ****."
Van Winkle figures the little girl died but doesn't know for sure.
It is one of the details of war that civilians have a hard time comprehending: the not-knowingness. Did she die, or not? Can't you Google that? If she did live, would it matter?
Whatever her fate, the girl exists in Van Winkle's memory and his dreams. So does an unnamed Marine whose body he came upon after a battle.
It might have been in Shatra, Kut, Diwiniyah, Nasiriyah. He isn't sure. More not knowing.
What peace Van Winkle eventually finds usually comes at the ends of the chapters, when he acknowledges some hard-won perspective:
"When I'm an old man and all the dreams and sights have left my head, when the memories are stolen from me, then historians will tell us whether it was worth it or not - if the war really helped anybody," he writes. "Until then, I'll live with the dead. We'll carpool together. Do lunch and late-night snacks. Slumber parties and drinking binges. It really won't matter what anyone says, or if the whole stinking operation finally gets labeled a 'good war.' "
Van Winkle coped with civilian life by living hard and fast. He got married. He drank a lot. He finished a four-year college degree in two and a half years. And he went to the mental health clinic at a veterans clinic, desperate for assurances that he wasn't crazy.
Inevitably, he would leave with a prescription for drugs and a growing sense of bitterness about what he calls "second-rate treatment" at the VA in Arizona. After unhelpful appointments with nurses, doctors and counselors, Van Winkle finally found some salvation in Joseph Little, a combat vet and counselor at the Phoenix Vet Center.
Little treated Van Winkle using a therapy called EMDR - eye movement desensitization and reprocessing - a form of psychotherapy that has shown some success as a PTSD treatment.
Van Winkle, 31, says he has recovered. He drinks infrequently, and only with his Marine battle buddies. "I can't get anything done if I drink," he said during a recent interview at a Chesapeake bookstore. "I want to make a career."
Two years ago, an essay Van Winkle wrote for a small literary magazine sparked the interest of literary agent Nat Sobel. Van Winkle thought Sobel's call was a prank. Sobel asked whether he had a book.
"I lied and said yeah," Van Winkle said.
He put together a book proposal, with a couple of published essays forming the backbone. He sold the proposal to a publishing house at an auction.
Then, he said, "I just started writing."
He wrote for a year, working 12 to 15 hours at a stretch.
He calls his process - which includes lots of editing while he writes - "painfully slow."
The book has allowed him to share his experience in combat with his wife and family. He still doesn't like talking about it.
His wife, Sara, has not been able to read much of the book. He is sort of glad about that.
"She knows it was bad. She knows it was war. I think she prefers to try to move forward with our lives. Not forget about it, but not dwell on it, either."
Van Winkle currently lives in Chesapeake but acknowledges that since Iraq, he doesn't like staying too long in one place.
He lived for a time in Abu Dhabi, where his wife is working as a kindergarten teacher. They're considering returning to Swansea University, in Wales, so Van Winkle can earn a doctorate. That might be the topic of his next book: expatriate war veterans who feel more comfortable living overseas.
But all that is still undecided. For now, he's concentrating on promoting his first book and thinking about his next one.
Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com
Ellie
Editor's note: This story contains profanity.
CHESAPEAKE
During breaks in fighting in Iraq, Sgt. Clint Van Winkle would battle boredom by writing in his journal - the back section of a military-issued notebook used primarily for tactical note-taking.
Back home after his tour, his first semester of college, Van Winkle tried writing fiction. The backdrop was always war, and the fictional characters were always thinly veiled versions of himself and his fellow Marines.
Later, as an undergraduate at Arizona State University and a graduate student in Wales, Van Winkle ditched the guise of fiction and started writing his truth.
"Soft Spots," published last month by St. Martin's Press, is the story of combat in Iraq and Van Winkle's struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder and journey back into civilian life.
It's a brutally honest account of war and its aftermath: snapshots of firefights and doomed civilians caught in the crossfire; reflections of his instincts and impulses amid the chaos; unapologetic recollections of beer-, rum- and margarita-fueled hazes after he returned home.
Like most accounts of war written by veterans, it's unconcerned with politics. Van Winkle, who served with a Norfolk-based Marine unit, didn't care about the rationale for invading Iraq or the goal of spreading democracy.
He cared only about his buddies in Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines.
Other characters forced their way into his psyche, too.
An excerpt:
"Somewhere, sometime, in the heat of that first engagement, I saw her: a small Iraqi girl, black hair, wearing a striped shirt. She couldn't have been older than ten, just a little girl. We were both in the same situation, at different ends of the spectrum. I was there to kill her. She was there to receive the salvation I had to offer in the form of a .50 caliber bullet. Nobody else saw her, just me, and I fired on the building she ran into. I blew it to ****."
Van Winkle figures the little girl died but doesn't know for sure.
It is one of the details of war that civilians have a hard time comprehending: the not-knowingness. Did she die, or not? Can't you Google that? If she did live, would it matter?
Whatever her fate, the girl exists in Van Winkle's memory and his dreams. So does an unnamed Marine whose body he came upon after a battle.
It might have been in Shatra, Kut, Diwiniyah, Nasiriyah. He isn't sure. More not knowing.
What peace Van Winkle eventually finds usually comes at the ends of the chapters, when he acknowledges some hard-won perspective:
"When I'm an old man and all the dreams and sights have left my head, when the memories are stolen from me, then historians will tell us whether it was worth it or not - if the war really helped anybody," he writes. "Until then, I'll live with the dead. We'll carpool together. Do lunch and late-night snacks. Slumber parties and drinking binges. It really won't matter what anyone says, or if the whole stinking operation finally gets labeled a 'good war.' "
Van Winkle coped with civilian life by living hard and fast. He got married. He drank a lot. He finished a four-year college degree in two and a half years. And he went to the mental health clinic at a veterans clinic, desperate for assurances that he wasn't crazy.
Inevitably, he would leave with a prescription for drugs and a growing sense of bitterness about what he calls "second-rate treatment" at the VA in Arizona. After unhelpful appointments with nurses, doctors and counselors, Van Winkle finally found some salvation in Joseph Little, a combat vet and counselor at the Phoenix Vet Center.
Little treated Van Winkle using a therapy called EMDR - eye movement desensitization and reprocessing - a form of psychotherapy that has shown some success as a PTSD treatment.
Van Winkle, 31, says he has recovered. He drinks infrequently, and only with his Marine battle buddies. "I can't get anything done if I drink," he said during a recent interview at a Chesapeake bookstore. "I want to make a career."
Two years ago, an essay Van Winkle wrote for a small literary magazine sparked the interest of literary agent Nat Sobel. Van Winkle thought Sobel's call was a prank. Sobel asked whether he had a book.
"I lied and said yeah," Van Winkle said.
He put together a book proposal, with a couple of published essays forming the backbone. He sold the proposal to a publishing house at an auction.
Then, he said, "I just started writing."
He wrote for a year, working 12 to 15 hours at a stretch.
He calls his process - which includes lots of editing while he writes - "painfully slow."
The book has allowed him to share his experience in combat with his wife and family. He still doesn't like talking about it.
His wife, Sara, has not been able to read much of the book. He is sort of glad about that.
"She knows it was bad. She knows it was war. I think she prefers to try to move forward with our lives. Not forget about it, but not dwell on it, either."
Van Winkle currently lives in Chesapeake but acknowledges that since Iraq, he doesn't like staying too long in one place.
He lived for a time in Abu Dhabi, where his wife is working as a kindergarten teacher. They're considering returning to Swansea University, in Wales, so Van Winkle can earn a doctorate. That might be the topic of his next book: expatriate war veterans who feel more comfortable living overseas.
But all that is still undecided. For now, he's concentrating on promoting his first book and thinking about his next one.
Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com
Ellie