Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families (Hardcover)

~ Andrew Carroll (Editor)
Key Phrases: Air Force, Middle East, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. This beautifully edited compilation of writings from modern warriors and their loved ones contains a wonderful range of voices and experience. Culled from an NEA call for the personal stories of service members and their families-a call that resulted in some ten thousand pages of material-the writing on display might make one think war transformed these untrained writers into fearless poets, ready and able to tackle the big topics: heartbreak, courage, sheer pluck and God-awful horror. Divided into six sections, including "Heading into Combat," the "Daily Grind" and "Life on the Home Front," Carroll has pulled together dozens of unique voices to achieve the "integrity and authenticity ... of a full spectrum of viewpoints and experiences." The results, a series of short, charged narratives that generally range from one to ten pages, are heartening and heartbreaking. In "Reclamation," a seasoned marine is ordered to clean a cemetery, "little more than a sunken acre of rotting garbage and donkey carcasses... a nasty task that seemed to have no direct benefit to the Iraqi people," which would become for him a pivotal experience in building hope and honoring sacrifice. In "Shallow Hands," a 27-year-old Marine attempts to explain the bitter divide between those who've fought and those who have not, while confessing, "I've been drinking steadily since coming back from the war." In the remarkable "Dover," readers go into the enormous military mortuary in Deleware that receives home-bound bodies, learning how one of the war's "politically sanitized phrases" like "the fallen hero" can reclaim its meaning. This collection provides a truly multi-faceted and agenda-free look at the ongoing conflict from the Americans who lived it, and deserves a large audience.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* This history-making project records feelings about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan even as conflicts continue in those nations. Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the project brought together some of the nation's most distinguished writers, including Tobias Wolff and Marilyn Nelson, and the men and women (and their spouses) fighting in the Middle East. The result is an incredibly wide range of opinions and emotions about U.S. policy in the Middle East, the war on terrorism, and the duties and responsibilities of citizens and the military. In 100 pieces of poetry, essays, letters, e-mails, plays, and journal entries, soldiers recall the awful thrill in the threat of killing or being killed, the deaths of buddies, and the cultural and psychological adjustments to a strange land. The book is divided into sections, including the war in the beginning, when 9/11 fueled certainty among the military; the campaigns to win the hearts and minds of Afghanis and Iraqis; the daily terror and boredom of war; efforts to sustain family life on the home front; and the joy and anxiety of homecoming. Intimate perspectives from the people on the frontlines. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (September 12, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400065623
• ISBN-13: 978-1400065622
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #419,860 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poor food, long hours, lousy working conditions, the off chance of violent death - all for minimal pay, September 23, 2006

By	Robert Leahy (Tustin, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

With the demise of the draft, and the decline in the size of the military, we now have about 1.5 million people in uniform and a population of 300 million. Military service has become something that someone else does. This is a book about those people - and how their service affects their wives, husbands, mothers and fathers.

This is not a political book. In it you can find something that supports your view of the war in Iraq - no matter what it is. And you can find something that rebukes that view.

It also is not a war book. Although some of the contributor's stories deal with combat, most deal with the ever-present danger of serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although 99% of the people might be nonhostile, they look exactly like that other 1% who would be absolutely delighted to kill you.

The stories also deal with the troops experience in helping to rebuild the destruction from a starting place of overwhelming poverty. These stories tell of the culture shock - on both the Iraqi side and the American side.

There also is plenty on the ironies of having both men and women in the military. A Marine and helicopter pilot wrote about how difficult it was to say goodbye to his wife - when she deployed to Iraq and he stayed home.

To help the military contributors, teams of professional writers went to military bases and conducted classes on writing. They weren't trying to slant the contributors' content, but to show them how to write and to encourage them to contribute their journals, letters and e-mails. The result was a flood of over 12,000 pages of source material.

The book really is a tribute to Andy being able to persuade the military hierarchy to allow him to have access to the troops. Since the end of the heavy fighting, the media has gone out of its way to portray the military as a bunch of idiots who, when they aren't torturing prisoners, delight in killing civilians. Such coverage doesn't persuade military commanders that you are an exception to this rule. Andy's track record - two other books on this subject - opened doors that would have been welded shut had Andy been employed by, say, The New York Times.

Andy also had to persuade the troops to write about what they had done and seen. The military culture is one of "soldier on and shut up." Troops are not encouraged to talk about their feelings - or their experience. When Andrew asked one military group why they were participating, one person said that no one else had asked them to write about what was going on.

I was glad to see that the troops have retained a warped sense of humor that is uniquely American.

While in Iraq, one staff sergeant wrote in his journal, "I'm going to kill my travel agent!"

Another soldier commented about a friend, "I don't think Jeff could say a good word about [President] Bush with a gun to his head - and some of us have, trust me, entertained the thought."

Several stories were contributed by wives who described their suffering and anguish on the home front. One wife (whose husband flew a Kiowa helicopter) talked about the terror she suffered when the media reported that a Kiowa helicopter had been shot down in Iraq. The other wives called one another to see if anyone had heard more details. She described the relief she felt when it turned out that the crashed helicopter crash was not from her husband's unit. She also described the guilt she felt, because although her husband was safe, several other military wives were about to learn that their husbands were dead.

One mother described the nightmare that she had long dreamed about: the arrival of a casualty notification team that had come to tell her that her son was dead.

One man commented on how Afghanistan had disappeared from the media reporting, and wondered if civilians realized that the war still was going on. Several troops wondered what kind of reception they would receive when they got home, and made worried comparisons to Vietnam.

Most people don't realize that Vietnam started as a popular war. Only as the war dragged on did people start spitting on the returning troops.

I was lucky when I came back from Vietnam. No one spit on me. I hope these troops fare better.

This book can give you an idea of what it means to be in the armed forces - poor food, long hours, lousy working conditions, the off chance of violent death - all for minimal pay. It also can show you the terrors their families suffer - whether or not their loved ones come home.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-have collection of war writings, September 14, 2006

By	Quang X. Pham (Orange County, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Last year I had the privilege of serving on a distinguished editorial panel to select the entries in this unprecedented anthology. (I have no financial ties to this book.) Sifting through the submissions then deciding on the final slate was no easy task. Andy Carroll, Mr. "War Letters," did a fabulous job of sewing together the book, a much more difficult assignment.

The entries were moving and instantly gave me complete snapshots of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq through 2004, sans the Iraqi perspective. Short stories, poems, letters, emails encapsulate the mindset of the soldiers and the families they left behind.

No journalist can capture the feelings of the men and women serving in harm's way the way they can themselves. Politics aside, these writings deserve to be widely read based on their own literary merits. This is a must-have collection for Americans to better understand the wars of our time.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bringing us closer to the experience of the troops, September 25, 2006

By	A Customer - See all my reviews

I want to thank Amazon for the opportunity to share my thoughts after finishing this book at 4 am this morning. I have been reading 5-10 entries in this book each night for the last week. I purchased it in an effort to draw closer to and to better understand the experience of my youngest brother, SGT Jason Boesen, Army combat medic currently deployed to Iraq until July 2007, and my brother-in-law, Major Chris Hanna, recently returned from his deployment to Iraq in May 2006. During the course of reading this book, I laughed, I cried, I clenched my fingers around the pages at intervals, afraid to turn the pages for fear of what I might read next. I was enveloped in waves of pride, fear, dismay, grief, love, longing, frustration, and at times, guilt.

The soldiers who shared their insights, as well as those family members who included entries from their perspectives on the homefront gave the America public a gift in sharing their thoughts and emotions, unfiltered by media exposure. They contributed germane information to the communal American experience as we have watched this war take on a life of its own. It is now embedded in our American psyche, and through their stories, I have been better able to understand the experience of the Iraqi national citizens through the eyes of the soldiers serving them, and our country.

It is evident that the included essays were carefully selected and ultimately chosen for their core, all of which were well crafted and forthright. I am honored to have been one of the first people to have read this anthology, and I am not the same having taken in the "real time" experiences of the American military as included in this book.

I would love to see the National Endowment for The Arts produce another anthology on this topic, and perhaps include submissions from the Peacekeeping troops from other countries serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and each country's national citizens as well, in an effort to broaden our knowledge of the war from many fronts. Finally, I thank the NEA for bringing the soldiers' voices and those of their families to light.

Again, THANK YOU to Amazon for promptly shipping this item to me, it was like receiving a long letter from my brothers, allowing me to share a small window into their lives while in combat. I cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone interested in learning more about the human experience in times of war, political affiliations aside.