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Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families Hardcover – September 12, 2006
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–Richard Bausch, author of Wives & Lovers
The first book of its kind, Operation Homecoming is the result of a major initiative launched by the National Endowment for the Arts to bring distinguished writers to military bases and inspire U.S. Marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen and their families to record their wartime experiences. Encouraged by such authors as Tom Clancy, Mark Bowden, Bobbie Ann Mason, Tobias Wolff, Jeff Shaara, and Marilyn Nelson, American military personnel and their loved ones wrote candidly about what they saw, heard, and felt while in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as on the home front. Taken together, these almost one hundred never-before-published eyewitness accounts, private journals, short stories, letters, and other personal writings become a dramatic narrative that shows the human side of warfare.
• the fear and exhilaration of heading into battle;
• the interactions between U.S. forces and Afghans and Iraqis, both as enemies and friends;
• the boredom, gripes, and humorous incidents of day-to-day life on the front lines;
• the anxiety and heartache of worried spouses, parents, and other loved ones on the home front;
• the sheer brutality of warfare and the physical and emotional toll it takes on those who fight;
• the tearful homecomings for those who returned to the States alive– and the somber ceremonies for those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their nation.
From riveting combat accounts to profound reflections on warfare and the pride these troops feel for one another, Operation Homecoming offers an unflinching and intensely revealing look into the lives of extraordinary men and women. What they have written is without question some of the greatest wartime literature ever published.
“Andrew Carroll has given America a priceless treasure.”
–Tom Brokaw, on War Letters
Proceeds from this book will be used to provide arts and cultural programming to U.S. military communities. For more information, please go to www.OperationHomecoming.gov.
- Print length416 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRandom House
- Publication dateSeptember 12, 2006
- Dimensions6.28 x 1.33 x 9.65 inches
- ISBN-101400065623
- ISBN-13978-1400065622
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER ONE
And Now It Begins
heading into combat
I remember the golden globe in the vast courtyard between the two buildings and a spattering fountain next to cold stone benches. Inside, I would look up in awe at the cathedral-like glass, the suspended walkways, and the grand, vaulted ceilings rising ten stories, crowned with a diadem of crystal chandeliers. I remember the large fabric hanging artwork. I can still smell the concourse level’s red carpets when they were new. I was eleven. I remember sitting on those red carpets, reading my schoolbooks, imagining I was in the city’s most elegant reading room.
Now, up there on floors so high no hook and ladder could ever reach, a man in a tattered and burned white business shirt stands in a broken window with flames licking at him and smoke billowing around him. I see someone let go, briefly flying. I read later hundreds did the same. Hundreds.
I remember spending many summer afternoons and twilights as a teenager sitting on top of the South Tower, sometimes reading poetry or a book, the raucous sound of the city muted and far below. I was listening only to the air passing by me, my mind wandering.
A second plane slams into the South Tower. The explosion sounds like thunder.
I remember closing my eyes outside in the open air up there and feeling the sun’s warmth on my face. No matter how hot it was on those city streets below, there were always cool breezes at more than a thousand feet up. The Tower would gently sway from the wind. It was unnerving at first, but after a while, I remember feeling comforted like a child being rocked back and forth. I wasn’t worried she’d tip over. Ever.
The president addresses the nation and the world. He says to us, the Armed Forces, “Be ready.”
I am.
— Forty-four-year-old Petty Officer First Class Gregory S. Cleghorne, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.
Antoinette
Personal Narrative
Captain William J. Toti
Just before 9:00 a.m., as word spread rapidly throughout the Pentagon, military and civilian personnel alike began huddling around television sets to watch breaking news about a plane crashing into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City. “I am sitting at my desk when I hear someone yell, ‘Oh my God!’” forty-four-year- old Captain William J. Toti wrote in a detailed, present-tense account of what he was doing on September 11, 2001. Toti had enlisted in the U.S. Navy at age seventeen, while he was still in high school, and eventually became a career submariner. In 1997, he was given command of the nuclear fast-attack submarine USS Indianapolis, based in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and named after the legendary World War II cruiser. On the morning of September 11, Toti was in the Pentagon, serving as the special assistant to the vice chief of naval operations. “I glance up at the television to see the World Trade Center on fire,” he continued in his narrative.
I walk into my outer office, turn up the volume, and hear the anchor theorize that the cause of impact is some sort of technological malfunction. We know immediately that there is no way navigational failure could cause an airliner to fly accidentally into a building on a bright clear day. By the time the second plane hits the Trade Center’s South Tower, we all realize this is a major terrorist attack.
What Toti and his colleagues did not know was that a third plane, American Airlines flight 77, was heading straight for them.
I quickly go back to my desk to call my wife, but nobody is there. I leave a voice message, telling her to take the kids out of school, stay home, and keep the telephone lines open.
As I hang up the phone and walk back to the outer office, I hear the sound of an approaching airplane, the whine of the engines growing louder and louder. And then impact—a massive earthquake-like jolt. There is screaming everywhere, and the halls immediately fill with dust and smoke. There is no time to think. I sprint down the hall behind two other Navy officers toward the point of impact.
My office is on the fourth floor of the E-ring, which is between the fifth and sixth corridors of the Pentagon. The plane has hit between the third and fourth corridors. We run through a brown haze that I learn weeks later was a combination of vaporized aviation fuel and particle asbestos that had been shaken loose from the ceiling. We pass through an area that recently had been abandoned for renovation and into a newly renovated, fully occupied area containing our operations center.
I finally reach the fissure—a gaping hole of sunlight where there should be building. The floor simply has dropped out, and parts of the airplane are visible, burning not fifty feet below us. It does not take us long to figure out that everybody on our floor who is still alive has evacuated, and that there is nothing we can do for anybody in the pit.
I run outside to the point of impact, and I encounter total devastation. Aircraft parts, most no larger than a sheet of paper, litter the field. I can make out, on one of the larger pieces of aluminum, a red A from american airlines. A column of black smoke rises into the air, bending toward the Potomac over the top of the building.
I start to wonder, Where is everybody? Thousands of people work in that building, there should be hundreds streaming out of the emergency exits right now. But at first I see no evacuees. Then as I round the corner of the heliport utility building, I notice a very small number of walking wounded, and then, on the ground before me, one gravely injured man. He is a Pentagon maintenance worker who is burned so badly that I can’t tell whether he is white or black. Amazingly, he is still conscious. An Army officer is kneeling beside him, and since we are just a few feet from the still-burning building, the soldier says, “Let’s get him out of here.” A few more military men gather, and we carry him away from the building to the edge of Route 27, where the first ambulance has just pulled up.
As the EMTs tend to him, I look back down toward the building and see an open emergency exit, thick black smoke billowing out. There’s some sort of movement inside the doorway, and it appears as if someone has fallen, so I run back down the hill and into the building.
Just a few feet inside I almost stumble over a lady crawling toward the door. She can’t stand up, and I try to lift her, but I’m having trouble because sheets of her skin are coming off in my hands. I call for help, and two Army officers respond immediately. Then, as we hear— and feel—a series of secondary explosions just a few yards away, the three of us half-carry, half-drag the woman to the top of the hill, where we place her by the maintenance worker as a second ambulance arrives.
Third-degree burns cover her. But she is conscious and lucid, and a man with a blue traffic vest proclaiming pentagon physician stops to examine her. So I leave, confident that she is in good hands, and run back down the hill to help evacuate another of the wounded.
When we attempt to lift a badly burned man, he screams out, “Let go! Don’t touch me!” Just then we hear more explosions coming from the fissure which we fear are bombs (but later learn are the airliner’s oxygen tanks cooking off), so we carry this man out of there with him screaming the whole way.
When we arrive at the top of the hill with the second man, I notice that the woman we had just carried up the hill is becoming agitated, saying, “I can’t breathe.” I call over to an EMT, “Do you have any oxygen?” He runs to the back of his rig, pulls out a bottle, and puts it on her. As the flow begins and she starts to calm down, she looks at me like she wants to say something. I kneel down beside her and say, “Is that better, are you all right?”
And then comes the moment I’ll never forget. She blinks and asks, “Doctor, am I going to die?” Wham. Just like that. That is a question that I never imagined myself having to answer. I look around our little triage area on the side of the road—
The first injured man I had come across is no longer conscious and is doing poorly.
Another young lady is standing nearby with severely burned hands, screaming hysterically.
A soldier is trying to chase down a fire truck that has become lost in the maze of roads surrounding the Pentagon.
Other officers are attending to the walking wounded, and someone is pouring water from a five-gallon cooler bottle onto people as they exit the building to extinguish the small fires on their clothing.
—And here lies this woman, with no one to attend to her but me. What should I say? Should I tell her I am not a doctor? But there are no answers to be found, so I lean over the lady and ask, “What’s your name?”
“Antoinette,” she says.
“No, Antoinette, you’re not going to die. We have a helicopter coming for you. I’m going to stay with you until you’re on it.”
She nods, and I feel relieved for having said this.
The medevac helicopter arrives a few minutes later. Since the Pentagon’s heliport is in the middle of the attack area, the helo has to land up the hill toward the Navy Annex, on the other side of Route 27. The trek up the hill is surprisingly long and difficult. When we finally get her to th...
Product details
- Publisher : Random House; First Edition (September 12, 2006)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 416 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1400065623
- ISBN-13 : 978-1400065622
- Item Weight : 1.5 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.28 x 1.33 x 9.65 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,037,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #538 in Iraq History (Books)
- #1,429 in Iraq War History (Books)
- #17,207 in American Military History
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About the authors

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Montgomery J. Granger is a three-time mobilized U.S. Army
Reserve Major (Ret.), who was called into his Reserve Center in
Uniondale (Long Island), New York, on 9/11, in response to the
attacks on the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and
Flight 93, which crashed at Shanksville, Pennsylvania. He answered
his country’s call to duty next in January 2002 for a mission to help
run the military detention facility at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba. He was called up again just six months after
returning from duty at Gitmo, but this time remained stateside at the
U.S. Army Reserve Training Center at Fort Dix, New Jersey. After
nearly six months at Fort Dix, MAJ Granger returned to civilian life
for about a year when he was involuntarily transferred to another
Reserve Army unit that was deploying to Iraq in the fall of 2004.
Major Granger served 14 months of active duty on his third deployment
and served in Baghdad, Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca, and Ashraf,
Iraq, as Medical Service officer for military detention facility operations.
He is married and is the father of five children, and lives on
Long Island, New York. He is also the author of “Theodore,” a personal
narrative published in the 2006 Random House wartime anthology
“Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan and the Home Front
in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families,” where he wrote
about his fear and anxiety over having left his family in 2002, and
especially two-day-old Theodore, and what reaction there was upon
his return. Operation Homecoming was sponsored in part by the
National Endowment for the Arts, and edited by Andrew Carroll, editor
of the New York Times bestselling book, War Letters.
Granger was born in Illinois, raised and schooled in Rubidoux,
California, and attended undergraduate school at the University of
Alabama in Tuscaloosa where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree
in education. He earned a master’s degree in curriculum and teaching
from Teachers College—Columbia University, where he met his wife.
He also attended the State University of New York at Stony Brook,
where he earned professional credits to obtain a New York State
School District Administrators’ license. He is an accomplished coach
and teacher of health and physical education, having taught in Alabama,
California, New York City, and Long Island, before becoming a
director of Health, Physical Education and Athletics. He was most
recently Director of Health, Physical Education and Athletics, and
then District Administrator for Operations for the Comsewogue
school district in Port Jefferson Station, N.Y., and is now a Director of
Health, Physical Education and Athletics, and Director of Facilities
for and east end school district in Long Island.
Granger is the author of many writings and musing as yet unpublished,
but hopefully soon to be shared with a waiting world.

Born in Portland, Oregon in 1964, Jack Lewis is a middle-aged curmudgeon of catholic writing proclivity. Jack holds a BA English cum laude from Washington State University and an MFA in screenwriting from the University of Southern California. He wears thick glasses, drinks Ardbeg, owns two motorcycles and a chainsaw, and prefers slip-on shoes.
In 2006, Jack contributed two chapters to Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan and the Home Front (ed. Andrew Carroll, Random House 2006), and participated in two documentary films based on that book including Richard Robbins's Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience. Those writings stemmed from his service leading a tactical psychological operations team in NW Iraq during 2004-2005.
Editorial writing earlier in Jack's career resulted in the D.B. Houston Journalism Prize, SPJ Editorial Writing honors, Best of the Palouse citation, and WSU Philosophy Club Gadfly of the Year.
Between spasms of frenzied writing activity, Jack has worked as a busboy, geriatric nursing aide, soldier, production assistant, telecommunications circuit designer, soda jerk, computer technician, hotel manager, farm hand, editor, floor clerk for the coolest hardware store in Seattle, and motorcycle service writer.
To get a bit of Jack between rounds of books and magazine contributions, you can sample his blog at www.jaxworx.com.

NBC's on-air Security Analyst for their official coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, Robert Schaefer is a U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Beret), Foreign Area Officer, senior analyst, and diplomat specializing in the Eurasia region. For over twenty seven years he has served in a variety of special units and participated in virtually every U.S. overseas operation since 1990. He has extensive experience with counterinsurgency and counter-terrorist operations around the world and has lived and worked in many countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia as a diplomat and adviser to foreign governments and militaries. He is uniquely qualified to analyze the conflict in the North Caucasus because of his first-hand experience planning and executing counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism operations in the Caucasus region.
Lieutenant Colonel (ret) Schaefer is the recipient of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), and the Office of Strategic Services Society's Award of Excellence (The Singlaub Award) as the U.S. Special Operations Command Person of the Year for his historic achievements with Russian airborne forces. He obtained his M.A. from Harvard University's Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia program, and is the host of National Public Radio's Memorial Day Special 2007 - 2013.
He is a member of the Editorial Board for the Caucasus Survey (a peer-reviewed professional journal), as well as a consultant to several government agencies, universities, and a frequent contributor to major media outlets (CNN, NPR, BBC, VOA, and others) and seminars focusing on Russia, Chechnya, Dagestan, and the North Caucasus insurgency. His critically-acclaimed book "The Insurgency in Chechnya and the North Caucasus" won multiple national awards and was named to Kirkus Reviews "Best of 2011," and the "Top 150 Books on Terrorism and Counterterrorism" (the only book about the conflict to make the list). He has also contributed a chapter to an anthology entitled, "The Fire Below, How the Caucasus Changed Russia," (Bloomsbury, 2013), and was a contributor to "Operation Homecoming" (Random House, 2006).

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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.
Some of the stories in this book will remain w/me for the rest of my life. I get cold chills just trying to write my thoughts now. It is raw and it is real. It covers a magnitude of information and emotions from all sides related in this war. The Troops and the families literally poured out their souls on paper...it is mind-boggling the heart that is in this book.
Other books by Andrew I read in one sitting, I can't put them down, this book due to my compassion, understanding, and personal ties to our Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan I could not read this book in one sitting. I could only get through a few stories at a time. I had to take a break before I could pick it up again. I love the tradition and history of the American Soldier and I never thought it possible to love them anymore than what I already do, Operation Homecoming has raised my respect, pride, and admiration for our military to a far deeper and more powerful level. God Bless you all and thank you for your service to our country.
If anyone reads this book and is not affected by it, then there is something wrong w/them. When I finished the book at 3 am all I could do was sit solemnly and gently hold it in my hands in a moment of silence. I can tell you no other book has ever left such a profound impression on me.
Many, many thanks to the Contributors, Mr. Carroll, NEA, Boeing, Southern Foundation, the DOD, and all the other folks that worked so hard to make this unique project happen. In my mind it is a national treasure and a blessing to our country. It is a work of art, a thing of beauty, a book that I will cherish and read again and again.
I am looking forward to Grace Under Fire, I will probably need the gold plated glasses again.
While at a book reading/signing for Operation Homecoming in Seattle last month, a gentleman approached Andrew Carroll and the other authors and told us a story.
This ordinary, middle-aged American man in conservative attire said that he was the father of a high school student who was, as he described her, the "typical teenage girl" - into fashion, web surfing, hair, shopping malls, boys, loud music, etc.
This father gave the book to his daughter. At first, she was reluctant to read it. What "typical teenage girl" wants to read a book about war given to her by her father? I know that I was always hesitant to read books that my parents (or teachers for that matter!) had recommended. The teenager eventually gave in and she started to read Operation Homecoming.
What happened next, according to her dad, is the amazing part.
He told us that his daughter headed to her room with the book and then "disappeared for two days."
She then returned from her room, clutching the hardback, and said, "Dad, this is the most amazing book I have ever read. Thank you."






