Blogs and War

So I sat down at the computer earlier--like 2 hours ago!--to write a blog post.  But then I started looking around for books written by Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans...........2 hours later, here I am---with about 50 new books added to my Amazon wishlist! lol  If you've known me for any length of time you know that soldiers--especially the veterans of our current war--have a huge place in my heart.  I've read their blogs, with posts written while their hands were still hot from the last patrol.  That is the best way to read war stories--and I use that word "story" not because there is anything glamorous or "bedtime-like" about them, but because I can't think of a better word.  Maybe I should use the word "account", but that sounds sterile and boring---and their "stories" are anything but.  Those blog posts are the best war narratives---unfiltered, raw, heartwrending, and REAL.  To be able to read a story written by a soldier right after it happened to him/her gives you the truest picture of war you will ever read.  The books are good too, but they are stories written after the fact---maybe a long time after the fact--and that changes things.  Not intentionally, mind you, but time changes memories and wording.  I'd rather read their blogs.  Back when Iraq was in the heat of things I read a lot of blogs.  There were more then.  There aren't as many now.  Maybe because the war is long or because of too many OPSEC regulations.  I'm not sure.  It's not because things are not still hot and hard.  They are still hot--and hard--in places in Afghanistan.  The news just doesn't tell you anymore.  The main-stream media has moved on to more "interesting" stories.  The War "over there" is old news to them.  But once in a while a little news from soldiers will trickle out and you know it's still hot there.  But there seems to be little blogging about it.  Maybe it's because they are just tired.  10 years of deployment after deployment; 10 years of 18 hour days, patrols, danger, and adrenaline; 10 years of missing--and losing their families.  It makes me tired just to think about it.  I can only imagine how they feel.  Whatever the reasons, the current "milblogs" are few.  It's too bad.  I miss them.  I don't mean that I wish for soldiers to be in hot combat just so they can blog about it!  I mean that I know they are still in combat and I wish I could read their stories.  All of them.  The good, the bad, and the ugly---and I know that most of their stories are made up of those last two.  I still want to read them.  I wish I had saved all of the stories I read all those years ago.  I have a few that I saved, but I wish I had saved every single post. Some of their blogs are gone--pulled off the internet for one reason or another.  I hope the authors saved those posts.  I know for some they hold bitter memories, but they are a part of our history and should be saved and cherished and re-read.  I wish I had saved them all so I could go back and read them again.  Their stories, raw and uncut, changed me.  They gave me heroes in my generation, men and women of honor and courage and bravery in my own time.  It's a completely different perspective to have heroes of your own age and time, compared to having heroes from previous generations.  And I will always call them heroes, even in the midst of the ugly stories.  I think sometimes they are afraid to tell their ugliest stories because even soldiers have an idea of what a "hero" should be, and the ugliest stories don't seem to fit.  But I think that the ugliest stories should be told right along with the good and the bad, because they are what makes the "hero" human.  Those stories take the hero off the pedestal and put him in Real Life, and we find out that our "heroes" are just humans who have the strength to do the ugly.  I once told a Marine that I wished I could climb inside his head and read all his stories.  He replied "It's dark in there, CJ."  Dark or not, I still wish I could read all their stories.  Every.Single.One.  Over and over again. To remind myself of what they have gone through--and still go through, and what they relive every.single.day. They come home, but they don't really ever come completely home again. Part of themselves is left on the battlefield---wherever it was, and part of the battlefield goes with them--wherever.they.go.  I do not want to forget: who they are, and what they pay to keep us free.  I think of those previous bloggers and wish I knew where they were, if they were doing ok, if they have friends who care for them.  So many of our soldiers come home to no one.  They may have had family and friends when they left, but when they come home?  Sometimes the family is gone and so are the friends--or they will leave when the nightmares and flashbacks start to get bad.  They come home to what is supposed to be "the real world" and find that they just don't fit anymore.  They drink, do drugs, drive 125mph on their Harley, all kinds of things to try to forget or to try to make the world make sense again.  Sometimes all they can come up with is suicide.  The growing number of vets--especially Iraq/Afghanistan vets--who are turning to suicide is like a knife in the gut for me.  How I wish I could stop them, could show them that somehow there WILL be life after war, could remind them that they will Always, Always be Heroes of the best kind.  I wish I could make a safe harbor for them, where all their stories could be told, complete and uncut.  Because they--and their stories--are part of Our Story, and we can't afford to lose them.