George Packer reviews the literature produced by veterans of America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan here. I think it's fair to say that there is some distance between the sentiments expressed in Memorial Day speeches and what our enlisted men and women actually experience in war. For example, in a story called "Bodies," by Phil Klay, an Iraq veteran who worked in Mortuary Affairs returns home and, visiting a former girlfriend, finds he is unable to talk to her about his work--essentially, "processing" the corpses of the dead. Later in the evening, a little drunk at a bar, he tells the fellow on the next stool about "the worst burn case" he ever worked on. Not knowing what to say, the fellow tells the narrator, "I respect your experience" and the story proceeds:
I took a sip of my beer. "I don't want you to respect what I've been through," I said.
That confused him. "What do you want?" he said.
I didn't know. We sat and drank beer for a bit.
"I want you to be disgusted," I said.
The story is from the collection Redeployment, which Packer thinks is the best book yet written by a veteran of one of our recent wars.
Comments