the things they carried

tony keeps it real in an interview with a paratrooper. It's a nice, informed piece of instant messenger journalism...when there is so little real information from the front lines and so much covertness that separates us from the day-to-day reality of these soldiers' lives.

SSG Chris Paul: I understand, I know people don't have to be pro-war to be pro-soldier
SSG Chris Paul: thanks for wanting us safe

It was only last week I finished The Pugilist at Rest. Now, there are certain manly authors I have just never gotten around to, while I have probably read, like, everything Toni Morrison has ever written. It was beautiful and rough, sad and hopeful. I am glad I finally read it.

Like their predecessors Thom Jones and Tim O'Brien, it is only a matter of time before the Iraq vets start coming into their own as authors and artists, piecing together their stories, and waiting for us to listen.

They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing -these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment. They crawled into tunnels and walked point and advanced under fire. Each morning, despite the unknowns, they made their legs move. They endured. They kept humping. They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground and let the muscles unwind and not speak and not budge until your buddies picked you up and lifted you into the chopper that would roar and dip its nose and carry you off to the world. A mere matter of falling, yet no one ever fell. It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards.

~Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried