More veteran stories
“I’ve learned you have to control your story or your story controls you.” — Dario Dibattista
In an episode of “This American Life” last December, Michael Pitre, veteran and author of the war novel “Fives and Twenty-fives,” described the reactions he would get when he told stories about his experience in the Iraq war. Friends and family would get horrified, shocked looks on their faces. They would withdraw. He learned soon to tell funny stories if he could or to try to make his war stories funny.
It’s an experience many veterans face. If they haven’t faced it themselves, they’ve probably imagined it. So, they keep their stories to themselves, often to the detriment of their own mental and physical health.
Telling our stories is important. It’s how we process, how we get others to understand, particularly when we’ve been part of an intense experience, such as war. It’s also how we learn from each other.
Veterans in particular need to tell their stories, but for many, it is difficult to do so.
I wrote four years ago about projects that help veterans tell their stories. One was a Storycorps initiative, focused on returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. The Military Voices Initiative is over, but you can still use the Storycorps app to record your story and have it archived at the Library of Congress.
The Library of Congress also maintains the Veterans History Project, which allows you to record your story for posterity. But, there are other efforts, some of which have emerged since I wrote that earlier column. Modern technology allows the stories of today’s veterans to reach us faster than those of previous generations.
In addition to Pitre’s book, there are several others on recent wars. One of the earliest to come out of the Iraq war, in 2006, was John Crawford’s account, “The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier’s Account of the War in Iraq.” Crawford details the weariness and ambivalence so common among today’s military.
A more recent book was a collection edited by Dario Dibattista, quoted at the top of this column. Dibattista has recounted his own experiences, in the Guardian and elsewhere, describing the “effects of a war zone’s mixture of extreme danger and boredom” and the effect they have on the life of a soldier. He edited the collection “Retire the Colors: Veterans & Civilians On Iraq & Afghanistan.”
This book allows veterans, and those who work with them, to give first-hand accounts, not only of their experiences, but also of how difficult it is to adjust to civilian life after their service. Stories range from a veteran experiencing the bombing of the Boston marathon through the context of service, a pacifist who married a service member and tried to bridge their backgrounds, and art therapists and writers working with veterans.
It isn’t just prose writing. Songwriting with Soldiers is a project that pairs veterans and soldiers with experienced songwriters to get their stories out. Some are just for their own personal use, not to be made public. Others have been recorded by such talented musicians as Willie Nelson, Vince Gill, Faith Hill and Garth Brooks.
The songwriters involved are an equally talented group, including Beth Nielson Chapman, Radney Foster, Delbert Mcclinton, Amy Speace, Marshall Crenshaw and Darrel Scott, among others.
Military members and veterans are referred to the project through the VA hospitals, veteran centers or mental health counselors. So far, more than 300 have co-written songs.
One songwriter in the project is Mary Gauthier, who has a series of highly acclaimed albums to her credit and also teaches songwriting at various retreats. One veteran who worked with her said he’d been able to tell her things he’d shared with no one else.
Gauthier refers to the sacrifice veterans make as “a spiritual type of patriotism.” In a promo for her upcoming collection of songs from the project, “Rifles and Rosary Beads,” which will be out in January, she says the role of “art is to tell truths that are hard to tell.” In her workshop, she and three other songwriters worked with 15 soldiers and managed to get a song written for all 15, some of which will likely be on the upcoming album. She describes songwriting as “empathy, for self and for others.”
Whatever your medium and whether your desire is to honor their service or understand a loved one better, reading and listening to the stories of our soldiers and veterans is one of the best ways to do so.