Customer Reviews

The Blog of War: Front-Line Dispatches from Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan

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As Matt says in the introduction "military blogs were ideal for filling in the gaps that both the media and the military left out."

My blog is one of those Matt excerpted for his book...but it wasn't until I read The Blog of War in its published form that I understood how powerful and eye-opening it is to bring so many voices together in one book.

This book brings into a single volume the straightforward, heartfelt expressions of Soldiers, their families and friends as expressed in military blogs during the unique period of time before the military clamped down on such dispatches from the warzone.

What this book accomplishes is also unique: it allows the reader direct access to the men and women with a personal stake in Afghanistan and Iraq, allowing the Soldiers and their closest confidants to represent themselves. These are the voices of those directly and heavily invested in the war - the messages are intensly candid and personal. And they are their own, unfiltered by wire services, media or the Pentagon.

The book excerpts numerous blogs to bring the reader a broad sampling of circumstance, perspective and voice in a single volume. The act of reading this book will immerse the reader into the often mystifying culture of the men and women of the United States Military. Not the Generals, but the Lieutenants, the Sergeants, their wives and husbands.

If you know a Military man or woman who has served, you will appreciate the opportunity this book brings to become more familiar with the circumstances and situations they faced.

If you've ever wondered how or why some men and women voluntarily sign up to put themselves in those circumstances and situations, you will likely find your answer here.

What I like most about this book is that the contributors (and yes, I too am one) wrote their segments months or years before this book was dreamed up. None of us knew our words would be immortalized; they were just our bare-soul thoughts at the time. Most of the accounts were written the day the "event" happened, so what you read is the freshest and rawest emotions. This was a book a few years in the making, but each contribution feels spontaneous and true.

Be prepared to laugh, cry, and be amazingly moved while reading this book. The bloggers do a fantastic job of telling the tales of war - on both fronts. Seeing the action through the eyes of the men and women there will change your life. Feeling the panic, fear, pride and joy on the homefront will move you in ways you never imagined.

Burden does a fabulous job of pulling together the posts and his segues are wonderful introductions and glimpses into who these amazing men and women are.

Reality TV? Who needs it. Read the book. You won't regret it.

I want to thank Matt for putting this book together. I know how much work went in to it, as we corresponded several times while he was writing it. He even managed to shoehorn a couple of my blog posts into the finished product.

It would be negligent of me, as one of the original "Live from the Sandbox" milbloggers, not to directly address CPT Kevin O'Meara's assertion that we can't be trusted because we are "under constant censorship by the US Government." While it's true that active duty military members have certain restrictions on the information they can disclose, I am pleased to report that after maintaining a military blog for almost four years I have never - not once - been instructed by anyone to remove or edit a single entry in my blog.

When I first blogged as "L.T. SMASH" in December of 2002, the technology was so new that there were no military regulations specifically addressing weblogs. We are always bound, of course, by military regulations concerning sensitive and classified information, as well as prohibitions against "contemptuous speech" towards our superiors. But I knew, as a milblogging pioneer, that I would be setting the standard for those who would follow in my footsteps.

Without any guidance from above, I did what any good officer would: I came up with my own set of rules, a little bit more stringent than those already in place for other forms of communication. Over time, I distilled these rules down to what I call the Golden Rule of MilBlogging:

*** Write every post as if you expect it to be read by the enemy, your commanding officer, and your mother. ***

Following this simple rule allowed me to convey to the people back home how it felt to be living and working in the Sandbox without endangering my men, running afoul of my command, or embarrassing my family. So to be fair to Kevin, you could say that I WAS censored, by myself.

I was under no obligation, during my 2003 deployment, to report the existence of my weblog to my chain-of-command. Nevertheless, it's impossible to keep such a thing secret for long. Eventually, somebody discovered that I was an anonymous milblogger, and passed the information on to my commanding officer.

The Golden Rule of Milblogging, it turns out, saved my hide. My C.O. reported the existence of my milblog to higher authority, and was directed to read every entry in my blog for possible security violations. He never mentioned it to me until several months after we returned home safely. When he finally told me about it - the day of his change-of-command ceremony - he gave me one of the highest compliments I've ever received.

"You're a very good writer," he told me. "Your concern for your sailors comes through in your blog. You should consider putting it together in a book."

Well, now some of my entries have been compiled as part of "The Blog of War." Not as many as I would have liked, but there are so many compelling stories out there, and I was just another Navy guy "in the rear with the gear."

But all of this misses the larger point. Milblogging isn't about politics. Milblogging is about story-telling, it's about trying to convey, to those who have never experienced it, the feeling of going to war.

So why doesn't Kevin want our stories told?

I just got my copy of "The Blog of War", a compilation of favorite milblog posts over the past few years, lovingly put together by Matty O'Blackfive. They are, in a word... mesmerizing.

I remember the first time I read many of these posts, and how emotional I was at the time. It's no less emotional now, and in some cases more emotional because of recent events that relate to the original posts.

I love the way Matt laid out the book, with bits of commentary about the authors and their situations, the follow-up stories to let us know what many of the authors are doing now, the mil-lingo glossary, and the detailed index. You did an AWESOME job narrowing down the posts and putting the book together, Matt. Thank you SO much for doing this.

Go buy the book, and a box of Puffs. The soft kind, but not with lotion because when you want to wipe the tears off of your glasses, they leave a slimy film on the lenses.

(oh... and anyone who thinks these posts were edited or sensored... you really don't know much about the authors, do you? Yes, milbloggers in theater are closely watched, but I would fall short of saying they are sensored like the Army used to do with letters home.)

I read The Blog of War, every page of it. This book does not glorify war, blow sunshine up your butt, claim that everything is going great, or that we never make mistakes. It presents an honest account of war, the good, the bad and the ugly, from not just the men and women doing the fighting, but from the families they leave behind.

Some of the stories in the Blog of War will stay with you for the rest of your life, they are that powerful.

This book captures the golden age of milblogging, from the period right after 9-11 to the implementation of restrictions and guidelines by the Pentagon on milbloggers.

Forget about the partisanship, the pundits and media spin, get it directly from the source. Do yourself a favor and buy this book.

Although Matt's name is on the cover of the book, you should instead think of him as the host at a banquet in honor of folks both in and closely related to the military. Aside from introducing the book and (briefly) each writer, most of the writing in the book is other people's stories, told in their own words and often taken directly from their own blog posts. These are arranged in chapters according to various aspects of the war experience, summarized below:

1 - "Some Must Go To Fight The Dragons" - Setting the stage for the rest of the book by dealing with the broad, philosophical reasons why some men chose to put their life on the line to answer their nation's call. This chapter - like many of the others - is hard to read. Not because it's poorly written, but because it's written so well. It's hard on the heart, and touches the reader's deepest core

2 - "Life In A War Zone" - Very earthy, very gritty, very you-are-there tales from the front line. I imagine that to civilians, some of the oddball, high-spirited antics in NCO Alley will seem incomprehensible, but those with military experience will be able to relate and will get a huge kick out of it. I don't know if I'll ever get that "like a coyote ravishing a housecat" line out of my head.

3 - "The Healers" - Tells exactly WHY war is hell, in heart-rending, blood-soaked detail. If you don't tear up, wince, or flinch away from the book at least once during this chapter, I'd suggest getting your soul checked, because I would question your humanity.

4 - "Leaders, Warriors, and Diplomats" - There's a lot of talk about "winning hearts and minds" in this war. The newspapers will never explain what that actually means. This chapter does. You'll see soldiers winning with a cool head instead of a hot hand, and perhaps you'll come away with a better understanding of the fact that war isn't all about killing. It's about accomplishing the mission, however that needs to be done.

5 - "The Warriors" - I'm going to be understated. This - in clear and disturbing detail - is what good men have to do to keep you safe. If you ever meet one of these men, thank him. Profusely.

6 - "Heroes of the Homefront" - Another "hard on the heart" chapter. This is the hell the families left stateside have to go through to keep you safe. If you ever meet them, thank them also.

7 - "The Fallen" - Unlike the other chapters, you KNOW how the stories in this one will end. There is no way to thank these men. They are gone. All you can do is honor them by cherishing the freedoms they bought for you with their lives, and never forgetting what they've done.

8 - "Homecoming" - As much as our troops want to be out of the war zone, the transition back to life in the safe, civilized United States is rife with mixed emotions and conflicting feelings. For our troops, it's one final battle to win the war inside themselves.

In the epilogue Matt wraps up with little snippets of "where are they now?" - an excellent idea to give some closure with the people the reader has come to know and care about. Well done.

I'll also mention that there's a handy glossary for military terms and acronyms. You probably won't need it, though, since Matt and the contributors did a pretty good job of defining the terms as they came up. Even the greenest of civilians will be able to avoid getting lost in the terminology.

So... were there any bad parts? Is this review going to be nothing but butt-kissing suck-uppery of Matt's brilliance?

Not really, and mostly. The only thing I could find to complain about is that a few of Matt's introductory paragraphs are written - for no discernable reason - in present tense instead of past tense. I realize that's a bit of nit-picking on my part, but I stand by it. I also lay the blame for it squarely on the shoulders of the book's editor, who should have corrected it before the book went to press.

However, that and the occasional minor typo (possibly in the original posts being reprinted) will likely pass completely unnoticed by the reader, since the stories themselves are too gripping to leave awareness left over for grammatical niceties.

Do I recommend this book?

Yes.

If you support the war, but don't know anyone personally who's serving overseas, you owe it to yourself - out of intellectual honesty, if nothing else - to read this to find out EXACTLY what it is you're supporting.

If you enjoy reading warbloggers, you will enjoy the familiar, blog-entry-like style of the tales contained within. It reads so much like a blog, I sometimes found my hand twitching to try to click a link. No book has ever cried out more to be published in a fully hyper-linked electronic format.

If you've served overseas, you should read it so that you can see whether you should nod your head in agreement or call "BS" over an inaccurate description (of which I suspect there will be very few). I'd be curious to see whether those in-the-know think Matt got it right.

Who would I not recommend this book to?

Those with delicate constitutions. There's plenty of coarse language and adult situations. I'd give it a good, solid R rating. Definitely not for children or the child-like.

But everyone else - drop it into your shopping cart.

This is a powerful book. As I was reading it, it would occasionally hit me that this isn't just some fiction book or a history book about people who would be long dead anyway, this is happening right now. To people I know.


If you're looking for war-stories full of shoot em up stories, this isn't the right book. This book is about the people and not about who they kill. There are a couple of battle stories, but most are more about helping the Iraqis and each other. "Powerful" is the best word to describe it.

I actually started tearing up when I read one story about bringing a Marine's body home, and I don't cry easily.

This should be required reading for anybody who has, or is working on having, an opinion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some people might be put off by the graphic language. Others might be put off by the graphic violence. This book is a compilation of the best military blog items (in the author's judgment) detailing the experiences of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The individual authors are from varied career fields. Sometimes they are coarse, sometimes they are funny, sometimes they are incredibly depressing, but all the time they speak from the heart.

These guys and gals are today's heroes. You will laugh at times and cry at others (yes, I mean openly weep). These are the tales of the volunteers in today's fight against evil.

An easy and vitally important read, very suitable for air travel time. No one should form an opinion on a subject matter such as the war in Iraq without getting first-hand accounts of what is going on there. Matt has done a magnificent job rendering this material as non-political as it gets; it's just personal experiences that are an emotional rollar coaster that leaves you in absolute awe of the quality of the people we have serving this country. Well done, Matt! And thanks to all the authors for your phenomenal service to this nation.