Sydney Lea: Living History
I was not quite ten years old the day we traveled
To one site of the D-Day invasion nine years before.
I asked what the trouble was. His words sounded cryptic:
“We lost a lot of men here.”
Video: Souvenir Souvenir
Souvenir Souvenir tracks the efforts of the French filmmaker Bastien Dubois to learn more about his grandfather’s time as a French soldier in the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62). Sixty years later, that conflict is little-discussed by many of those who fought it, leaving members of younger generations, like Dubois, to speculate about their family’s role in the notoriously brutal war.
Richard Levine: Disturbing the Peace
“Do you want to know what war is about?”
Jake asked the talkative one.
“Don’t say it, Jake,” I said.
Richard Levine: One Night in America
The first time I noticed my hands
trembling, I was still a young man,
just returned from a war…
Video: My Journey from Marine to Actor — Adam Driver
Before he fought in the galactic battles of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Adam Driver was a United States Marine with 1/1 Weapons Company. He tells the story of how and why he became a Marine, the complex transition from soldier to civilian — and Arts in the Armed Forces, his nonprofit that brings theater to the military. Followed by a spirited performance of Marco Ramirez’s “I am not Batman” by Jesse J. Perez and Matt Johnson.
W. D. Ehrhart: Paul Fussell — A Remembrance
While Fussell wrote on a wide variety of subjects over his long life—ranging from Augustan humanism, Samuel Johnson, and Kingsley Amis to the 2nd Amendment, the Indianapolis 500, and travel in between-the-wars Europe—war, the irony of war, the suffering and lunacy and permanent damage of war, the unfairness of war, lay at the heart of his writing and of his being.
Barrett Swanson: The Soldier and the Soil
Their prose often stood head and shoulders above the standard freshman drivel, exhibiting a certain rigor of thought and depth of feeling that perhaps comes from having witnessed whole anthologies of trauma—entire villages razed by fire, wide-eyed children draped in gore, wives screaming beside mutilated husbands.
John Samuel Tieman: Alert
a night in a bunker when we were
kids in fatigues getting high
listening to Hendrix and the cassette stops
Chris Hedges: War and Memory
I asked my grandmother after he left what was wrong with him. “The war,” she said acidly.
Steve Nolan & NJ DeVico: The Orchestration Of War
Steve Nolan writes: It’s one of the most common souvenirs of war, the constant ringing in the ears, or, in my case, a high-pitched squeal presumably caused by the Blackhawk … Continue reading
John Samuel Tieman: Strange Angels
the burnt torso of a monk an enemy monk tonight a cigarette glows in the dark and is crushed . I’ve been asked to teach a course in American … Continue reading
John Samuel Tieman: My War as a Clarinetist
“One time, the band played a welcoming ceremony for these grunts – and I mean they walked right out of the bush and into “Stars and Stripes Forever.” John Samuel … Continue reading
John Samuel Tieman: The Traveler
another gray road a homeless veteran stands at attention — You consider your obligations. You drive on. There is a running man, a shabby man. It would be easy to … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: After the War
. After the war, some of us had to have answers. Who were these people we’d had a war with? Where did they come from? Where did they learn to … Continue reading
