VETERANS and REFUGEES: Suffering in Symmetry
Looking to Literature to Learn Lessons
Every month on the 11th, I focus on veterans and the military family.
Why the 11th? Because Veterans Day is on November 11.
A single day is not nearly adequate to honor veterans. Once a month is better. Daily, hourly is best.
This month: grappling with the complexity of the soldier and refugee experience through literature.
When I last wrote, the war in Ukraine was in early days. When an entire nation rises to defend itself, the lines between soldier and civilian are blurry and difficult to parse. The number of people who are both veterans and refugees grows, blurring the lines further. I continue to grapple with this.
I’m grappling with some other difficult concepts, too. The gap between those who will become veterans and those who are war criminals. The difference between honorable and dishonorable military action, between violent acts of war and war crimes. Distinctions and declensions of blame based on rank: those who give orders, and those who follow orders.
There is fairly solid ground on either end of the spectrum. But finding where the balance tips is almost impossible.
Today I’m sharing a selection of books that explore these issues. Some are novels. Some are memoirs. Some tell the story of soldiers. Some tell the story of refugees. Some tell the story of how war starts. Some tell the story of what happens after war ends. And in the telling of the stories, they touch on all of the complex and interrelated issues.
These are hard, complicated books. They are vivid, real. They discus harrowing choices and complicated morality. The physical and mental toll of war. The end of life. The end of a way of life. Children and mothers and warriors, all of them fierce and frightened. Accountability, or the lack thereof. Wickedness and willfulness and resignation and repentance. The destruction of humans and the human spirit. The resolve and resiliency of human beings.
The books below are a small sample of what is available. The links are live. I’ve also included summaries or reviews written by others.
When people with first-hand experience as soldiers and/or as refugees take on the task of distilling their experiences and writing them down, we are wise to pay attention. They have lived the hell of wartime. Their voices are authentic. Let’s listen to those voices, and learn.
Kind regards,
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Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning, by Elliot Ackerman
“By moving back and forth between his recent experiences on the ground as a journalist in Syria and its environs and his deeper past in Iraq and Afghanistan, he creates a work of remarkable atmospheric pressurization. Ackerman shares vivid and powerful stories of his own experiences in combat, culminating in the events of the Second Battle of Fallujah, the most intense urban combat for the Marines since Hue in Vietnam, where Ackerman's actions leading a rifle platoon saw him awarded the Silver Star. He weaves these stories into the latticework of a masterful larger reckoning with contemporary geopolitics through his vantage as a journalist in Istanbul and with the human extremes of both bravery and horror.
At once an intensely personal story about the terrible lure of combat and a brilliant meditation on the larger meaning of the past two decades of strife for America, the region, and the world, Places and Names bids fair to take its place among our greatest books about modern war.”
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“Elliot Ackerman writes beautifully about war—especially the new wars of the Middle East through fiction and now non-fiction. His exceptional memoir is really a double memoir of his own experiences as a Marine and those of a jihadist fighter he befriends in a refugee camp. The result is an superb, unique, and unforgettable story of war and death, fear and cruelty, above all the horrors and allure of combat.” —Simon Sebag Montefiore, author ofThe Romanovs
"[Ackerman's] descriptions of Syria, which he visited as a writer, were so painfully evocative for me that I had to stop reading for a time. His vivid, sparse prose bears comparison to that of Tim O’Brien in The Things They Carried or Norman Lewis in Naples ’44; Places and Names has the same clear-eyed view of what war is.” —The Spectator's Books of the Year 2019
The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien
Classic. One of the best.
“This is an American classic.
Since it burst onto the literary scene twenty years ago, The Things They Carried has not stopped changing minds and lives, challenging readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. It is an unparalleled Vietnam testament. It is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. It is a major literary achievement and a book beloved by readers and writers and teachers and students.
The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O'Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. These men carried malaria tablets, love letters, 28-pound mine detectors, dope, illustrasted Bibles, each other. And if they made it home alive, they carried images of a nightmarish war that haunts our history and echoes into our present.
The Things They Carried is required reading for any American.”
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“In prose that combines the sharp, unsentimental rhythms of Hemingway with gentler, more lyrical descriptions, Mr. O'Brien gives the reader a shockingly visceral sense of what it felt like to tramp through a booby-trapped jungle, carrying 20 pounds of supplies, 14 pounds of ammunition, along with radios, machine guns, assault rifles and grenades. . . . With The Things They Carried, Mr. O'Brien has written a vital, important book—a book that matters not only to the reader interested in Vietnam, but to anyone interested in the craft of writing as well.” —Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom, by Helen Thorpe
“Offering a nuanced and transformative take on immigration, multiculturalism, and America's role on the global stage, The Newcomers follows and reflects on the lives of 22 immigrant teenagers throughout the course of their 2015-2016 school year at Denver's South High School.
Unfamiliar with American culture or the English language, the students range from the ages of 14 to 19 and come from nations struggling with drought, famine, or war. Many come directly from refugee camps, and some arrive alone, having left or lost every other member of their family. Their stories are poignant and remarkable, and at the center of their combined story is Mr. Williams: the dedicated and endlessly resourceful teacher of their English Language Acquisition class - a class which was created specifically for them and which will provide them with the foundation they need to face the enormous challenges of adapting to life in America.”
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“This book is not only an intimate look at lives immigrant teens live, but it is a primer on the art and science of new language acquisition and a portrait of ongoing and emerging global horrors and the human fallout that arrives on our shores… The teens we meet have endured things none of us can imagine…But we learn a great deal, and that’s never been more crucial than at this moment.” —USA Today
“Few books could be more vital, in this particular moment or in any moment, than this book. Helen Thorpe writes expansively about one school, one classroom, one teacher, one group of students—students who hail from the most severe places in the world and come together at South High. Confused, troubled, bright, magnificent: they converge, ostensibly to learn English, learning so much more than a language—learning about us and about themselves, all the bad and all the good. You need to meet these young people. Once you do, everything you read or hear or say will be illuminated and changed.” —Jeff Hobbs, author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace
A Hope More Powerful than the Sea, by Melissa Fleming
“A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea tells the story of Doaa Al-Zamel, a Syrian girl whose life was upended in 2011 by her country’s brutal civil war. She and her family escape to Egypt, but life soon quickly becomes dangerous for Syrians in that country. Doaa and her fiancé decide to flee to Europe to seek safety and an education, but four days after setting sail on a smuggler’s dilapidated fishing vessel along with five hundred other refugees, their boat is struck and begins to sink...
Doaa’s eye-opening story, as told by Melissa Fleming, represents the millions of unheard voices of refugees who risk everything in a desperate search for a safe future.”
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“Written by an official in the U.N.’s refugee agency, this deeply affecting book recounts the story of a young Syrian, Doaa al Zamel... Fleming brings a moral urgency to the narrative. Doaa is now safe in Sweden, but Fleming pointedly asks, ‘Why is there no massive resettlement program for Syrians―the victims of the worst war of our times?’” ―The New Yorker
“Fleming deftly illustrates the pain of those who choose to leave Syria… [She] recounts their narrative with compassion and without melodrama, and her book is ultimately a story of hope… The message is to try to humanize one young woman, to tell her tale so that the migrant crisis does not become a bunch of nameless, faceless people fleeing a war but human beings with families, with needs, and with desires.” ―Newsweek
The Yellow Birds, by Kevin Powers
"‘The war tried to kill us in the spring.’ So begins this powerful account of friendship and loss.
In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the city. Bound together since basic training when Bartle makes a promise to bring Murphy safely home, the two have been dropped into a war neither is prepared for.
In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress that comes from constant danger. As reality begins to blur into a hazy nightmare, Murphy becomes increasingly unmoored from the world around him and Bartle takes actions he could never have imagined.
With profound emotional insight, especially into the effects of a hidden war on mothers and families at home, The Yellow Birds is a groundbreaking novel that is destined to become a classic.”
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"A novel of grit, grace, and blood by an Iraq war veteran....Kevin Powers moves gracefully between spare, factual description of the soldiers' work to simple, hard-won reflections on the meaning of war."―Ron Charles, Washington Post
"Powers has created a powerful work of art that captures the complexity and life altering realities of combat service. This book will endure. Read it and then put it way up on that high rare shelf alongside Ernest Hemingway and Tim O'Brien."―Anthony Swofford
Europe’s Last Summer: Who Started the War in 1914?, by David Fromkin
“When war broke out in Europe in 1914, it surprised a European population enjoying the most beautiful summer in memory. For nearly a century since, historians have debated the causes of the war. Some have cited the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand; others have concluded it was unavoidable.
In Europe’s Last Summer, David Fromkin provides a different answer: hostilities were commenced deliberately. In a riveting re-creation of the run-up to war, Fromkin shows how German generals, seeing war as inevitable, manipulated events to precipitate a conflict waged on their own terms. Moving deftly between diplomats, generals, and rulers across Europe, he makes the complex diplomatic negotiations accessible and immediate. Examining the actions of individuals amid larger historical forces, this is a gripping historical narrative and a dramatic reassessment of a key moment in the twentieth-century.”
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"No one has deconstructed the war quite the way Fromkin has.... Through it all are the telling details of diplomatic and military life that make the period so utterly tragic." --The Boston Globe
“Magnificent, consistently compelling. . . . Written with clarity and insight. . . . [Fromkin] masterfully guies us through the complexities of appropriate prewar and European diplomatic and military history.” –BookPage
German Boy: A Refugee’s Story, by Wolfgang W.E. Samuel
“What was the experience of war for a child in bombed and ravaged Germany? In this memoir, the voice of innocence is heard.
’This is great stuff,’ exclaims Stephen E. Ambrose. ‘I love this book.’
In this gripping account, a boy and his mother are wrenched from their tranquil lives to forge a path through the storm of war and the rubble of its aftermath. In the past there has been a spectrum of books and films that share other German World War II experiences. However, told from the perspective of a ten-year-old, this book is rare. The boy and his mother must prevail over hunger and despair, or die.
In the Third Reich, young Wolfgang Samuel and his family are content but alone. The father, a Luftwaffe officer, is away fighting the Allies in the West. In 1945 as Berlin and nearby communities crumble, young Wolfgang, his mother Hedy, and little sister Ingrid flee the advancing Russian army. They have no inkling of the chaos ahead. In Strasburg, a small town north of Berlin where they find refuge, Wolfgang begins to comprehend the evils the Nazi regime brought to Germany. As the Reich collapses, mother, son, and daughter flee again just ahead of the Russian charge.
In the chaos of defeat they struggle to find food and shelter. Death stalks the primitive camps that are their temporary havens, and the child becomes the family provider. Under the crushing responsibility, Wolfgang becomes his mother’s and sister’s mainstay. When they return to Strasburg, the Communists in control are as brutal as the Nazis. In the violent atmosphere of arbitrary arrest, rape, hunger, and fear, the boy and his mother persist. Pursued by Communist police through a fierce blizzard, they escape to the West, but even in the English zone, the constant search for food, warmth, and shelter dominates their lives, and the mother’s sacrifices become the boy’s nightmares.
Although this is a time of deepest despair, Wolfgang hangs on to the thinnest thread of hope. In June 1948 with the arrival of the Americans flying the Berlin Airlift, Wolfgang begins a new journey.”
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This book cut close to the bone for me. It was recommended by a friend of mine, born in the United States to parents who had arrived here from Germany during the chaos of WWII. It is the true story of a very young boy as he experiences life in a war zone: fleeing the advance of war, sometimes inadvertently fleeing toward, instead of away from, the front lines as the battle fronts shift. It is the story of the constant, physically exhausting and mentally excruciating search for a safe place to stay, for food to eat, for shoes to wear, of the days when they found some of these things and the days when they found none of these things.
Why did it cut so close? Because this is the story of people I know. I don’t know the author and his family. I do have close friends whose parents struggled to survive in Germany and Austria during WWII. The stories in this memoir are the same stories my friends tell. — Mallory
Salt to the Sea, by Ruta Sepetys
New York Times Bestseller and winner of the Carnegie Medal! "Masterfully crafted"—The Wall Street Journal
”For readers of Between Shades of Gray and All the Light We Cannot See, Ruta Sepetys returns to WWII in this epic novel that shines a light on one of the war's most devastating—yet unknown—tragedies.
World War II is drawing to a close in East Prussia and thousands of refugees are on a desperate trek toward freedom, many with something to hide. Among them are Joana, Emilia, and Florian, whose paths converge en route to the ship that promises salvation, the Wilhelm Gustloff. Forced by circumstance to unite, the three find their strength, courage, and trust in each other tested with each step closer to safety.
Just when it seems freedom is within their grasp, tragedy strikes. Not country, nor culture, nor status matter as all ten thousand people—adults and children alike—aboard must fight for the same thing: survival.
Told in alternating points of view and perfect for fans of Anthony Doerr's Pulitzer Prize-winning All the Light We Cannot See, Erik Larson's Dead Wake, and Elizabeth Wein's Printz Honor Book Code Name Verity, this masterful work of historical fiction is inspired by the real-life tragedy that was the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff—the greatest maritime disaster in history. As she did in Between Shades of Gray, Ruta Sepetys unearths a shockingly little-known casualty of a gruesome war, and proves that humanity and love can prevail, even in the darkest of hours.”
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"Superlative...masterfully crafted...[a] powerful work of historical fiction."—The Wall Street Journal
"[Sepetys is] a master of YA fiction…she once again anchors a panoramic view of epic tragedy in perspectives that feel deeply textured and immediate."—Entertainment Weekly