Full Description
Approximately 2.5 million men and women have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in the service of the U.S. War on Terror. Marian Eide and Michael Gibler have collected and compiled personal combat accounts from some of these war veterans. In modern warfare no deployment meets the expectations laid down by stories of Appomattox, Ypres, Iwo Jima, or Tet. Stuck behind a desk or the wheel of a truck, many of today's veterans feel they haven't even been to war, though they may have listened to mortars in the night or dodged improvised explosive devices during the day.
After Combat bridges the gap between sensationalized media and reality by telling war's unvarnished stories. Soldiers, sailors, marines, and air force personnel (retired, on leave, or at the beginning of military careers) describe combat in the ways they believe it should be understood. In this collection of interviews, veterans speak anonymously with pride about their own strengths and accomplishments, with gratitude for friendships and adventures, and also with shame, regret, and grief, while braving controversy, misunderstanding, and sanction.
In the accounts of these veterans, Eide and Gibler seek to present what Vietnam veteran and writer Tim O'Brien calls a "true war story"-one without obvious purpose or moral imputation and independent of civilian logic, propaganda goals, and even peacetime convention.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Enlist/Commission
2. Mission
3. Every Other Day
4. In Country
5. The Best Job I Ever Had
6. Explosion
7. Low Points
8. Close Call
9. Combat
10. Comrades
11. Chain of Command
12. Did You Kill Anyone?
13. Enemies
14. Homecoming
15. Loss
16. Nostalgia
17. Struggling
18. Thank You for Your Service
19. True War Stories
20. Out of Sync
Glossary
