Two 'Red Bull' Soldier-Writers Featured in New Book!

Featuring more than 60 leading and emerging writers of military- and war-themed fiction, non-fiction, journalism, poetry, and more, the anthology "Why We Write: Craft Essays on Writing War" launches TODAY, Dec. 10, 2019 in both print and Kindle e-book formats! The Middle West Press LLC project is in partnership with the Military Writers Guild. Contributors include service members past and present, as well as scholars, historians, journalists, and civilians with experiences in international relations and national security.

The book coincidentally features a number of current and former Iowans—including two former members of the Iowa National Guard's 2nd Brigade Combat Team (B.C.T.), 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division. Steven L. Moore, author of "The Longer We Were There: A Memoir of a Part-Time Soldier," served in Laghman Province during the brigade's 2010-2011 deployment to Afghanistan. Anthology editor Randy Brown helped produce a print collection of the brigade public affairs journalism from that same deployment.

The anthology's title echoes Frank Capra's patriotic "Why We Fight" films of World War II, the cover by illustrator Paul Hewitt of Battlefield Design reinterprets propaganda poster images from the same era.

Response to the anthology from other war writers has been overwhelming and positive:

"Page by page, line by line, these men and women—veterans and civilians of various eras and nations—speak the truth about what it is like not just to fight, but to write," notes U.S. Army veteran Doug Bradley, author of "Who'll Stop the Rain: Respect, Remembrance, and Reconciliation in Post-Vietnam America" as well as other non-fiction and fiction about that war. "'The power of a good story is as important as the sharpest policy paper,' writes one Vietnam-veteran senator's son. As a U.S. Navy chopper pilot who himself flew in Afghanistan, he couldn't be more accurate. Read this book and discover what he means!"

U.S. Marine veteran and literary agent Tracy Crow says: "A notable first, 'Why We Write' delivers immeasurable, experiential wisdom from an impressive range of military voices regarding the power and impact of writing—on the self, on the truth, and ultimately on the world. […] The courageous contributors within 'Why We Write' are filling a disturbing void for humanity by expressing a sense of urgency and historical reflection about the complexities of war—whether writing and reflecting on the insanely humorous, or the insanely atrocious."

Crow also serves as president of the national non-profit MilSpeak Foundation, Inc., and is the author of six military-themed fiction and non-fiction titles, including "On Point: A Guide to Writing the Military Story."

The "Why We Write" anthology comprises four sections, each loosely organized around a theme:

• Calls to Action, Calls to Arms: Stories of how-to and inspiration toward engaging the public and/or the military profession through writing!

• War Stories: Stories of writing success and lessons-learned!

• Building Bridges & Platforms: Stories of how-to and inspiration toward building connections, communities, organizations, author platforms, etc.!

• The Arts of War & Writing: Essays about writing literary fiction, genre fiction, poetry, history, and more!

Women make up approximately one-third of the anthology's contributors. Approximately two-thirds of the contributors are past or present members of their respective countries' armed forces, with the remaining one-third being "civilians"—journalists, scholars, historians, and more. Military Writers Guild members comprise approximately one-fifth of contributors.

To order the $19.99 (U.S.) print version via Amazon.com, click here!

To order the $9.99 (U.S.) Kindle e-book version, click here!

To order via an independent bookstore, contact Beaverdale Books, Des Moines, Iowa at: 515.279.5400. Phone orders only. Shipping & Handling approximately $4 (U.S.).

Anthology co-editor Randy Brown is an award-winning war poet (Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire) and U.S. Army veteran who embedded as civilian media in Afghanistan in 2011. A former newspaper and magazine journalist, he previously edited the book Reporting for Duty: U.S. Citizen-Soldier Journalism from the Afghan Surge, 2010-2011.

Widely published in literary journals and anthologies, he has also written the Red Bull Rising military blog since December 2009. He writes about military-themed writing techniques and markets at The Aiming Circle blog. He is a member of the Military Writers Guild. On Twitter, follow him at: @FOB_Haiku

Steve Leonard is a retired U.S. Army strategist, a program director in organizational leadership at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, and the creative force behind the web comic Doctrine Man!! He is published widely, including in the anthologies Strategy Strikes Back: How Star Wars Explains Modern Military Conflict, and Winning Westeros: How Game of Thrones Explains Modern Military Conflict. He is a member of the Military Writers Guild. On Twitter, follow him at: @Doctrine_Man

Established in 2017 for the purpose of promoting professional collaboration in the practice of writing, the national non-profit Military Writers Guild has grown to comprise more than 150 past and present service members, as well as civilians with experiences in international relations, national security, journalism, and intelligence.

Middle West Press LLC is a Johnston, Iowa-based editor and publisher of non-fiction, fiction, journalism, and poetry. As an independent micro-press, it publishes one to four titles annually. “Why We Write” is the first of its projects conducted in partnership with an association, and the fifth of its titles involving war and military themes.

Book Review: 'Still Come Home: A Novel'

Fiction Book Review: "Still Come Home" by Katey Schultz

Katey Schultz is an educator and author based in North Carolina. In 2013, Schultz delivered "Flashes of War," an award-winning collection of 31 short stories, generated around U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Each story is each told from the perspective of a single character, and many resolved in only two or three pages. Writing in the mode of "flash-fiction" forces an author to pare down one's prose, but also to infuse meaning and metaphor to optimize each word.

As a writer, Schultz is a master of one of the principles of war: "economy of force."

In a new, 260-page novel, "Still Come Home," Schultz deploys her Spartan words to deliver what others have not: She distills the seemingly never-ending war in Afghanistan to a relatable scale, articulating through her characters the questions that can be asked about war, and duty, and family. In doing so, she illuminates the complex emotional calculations of regular people caught up in war, be they "friend," "enemy," or seemingly indifferent. Her work serves the highest calling in a heartless world: to create opportunities for empathy, and for reflection.

The action of "Still Come Home" takes place over three days, in a handful of settings near Tarin Kot, a real place in Southern Afghanistan's Uruzgan Province, as woven together through the voices and threads of three main characters.

(More geography: The novel settles into spaces between a semi-fictional Forward Operating Base ("FOB") Copperhead, and the fictional town of Imar, pop. 300. Potentially noteworthy to the readers of the Red Bull Rising blog, the base is likely modeled after FOB Davis (aka FOB Ripley). FOB Davis was a coalition installation originally established in 2004 with help from the Iowa National Guard's Task Force 168.)

There is Nathan Miller, a former farm-boy valedictorian who joined the active-duty Army right out of Indiana high school. Now a member of the North Carolina National Guard, Afghanistan is his fourth deployment. Miller is soon to return stateside to his semi-estranged wife, with whom he has one child and has lost another. There is the teenaged and possibly infertile Pashtun woman Aaseya, who seeks to establish the stability and legitimacy she enjoyed before her family was killed in an explosion. She suspects the assassination took place after the family had been wrongly reported to the Taliban as U.S. collaborators. And there is her brick-maker husband Rahim, 37, her late father's cousin, who is a victim of the institutional sexual abuse of male children known as bacha bazi.

Based on such relations, readers might incorrectly anticipate melodrama or comic-book soap opera. While engines of hope and shame drive much of the plot, however, the narrative never feels one- or two-dimensional. Complexity happens. Objectives change. Characters move out smartly, based on their intelligence. Most importantly, in all of this, the author treats her Afghan characters with care and content equal to their American counterparts.

War is hell, after all. On everybody. Especially family. And everyone's got family.

In a typical selection, Schultz describes a three-vehicle convoy's arrival in Imar with semi-automatic rhythm:

The convoy nears the main part of the village. A vendor selling kebabs works frantically to hold his makeshift cart intact as the Spartans vibrate past. Miller can see actual residences now—mud-cooked family homes, the occasional two-story dwelling. Coils of smoke lift from several courtyards. Some homes have no windows or openings at all, just a hand-built wall surrounding each compound of small, interconnected dwellings. Others have cut tiny spaces to welcome the light and air, faded red or yellow curtains flapping thinly in the breeze. Three little girls hurry from a hiding spot behind an outbuilding. The oldest shuffles the other two away from the convoy and looks over her shoulder at the men, moving with the practiced hustle of war. Even here, at the far reaches of nowhere, they seem suspicious.

Schultz has just as carefully curated the time of her story, as much as she has chosen the place. The year is just before the "Afghan Surge" of 2010-2011; just before Humvees are banned from deploying outside the wire; and just after a controversial new set of Rules of Engagement ("R.O.E.") has been issued to coalition troops by U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

In the posh think-tank phrasing of the day, the counter-insurgency tactics were intended to "win hearts and minds" by exercising restraint in the application of violence. Nobody wants to kill civilians, of course, but many rank-and-file soldiers chaffed at the ROE, feeling as if they'd been told not to defend themselves.

As both metaphor and at a meta-level, this mix of time and place is an ideal observation point from which to consider American involvement in Afghanistan. At no other time did the country's declaring victory and coming home seem more likely than 2010. (At risk of self-promotion, this trailer video for "Reporting for Duty" captures something of the hopeful "clear, hold, build" spirit of the time.) Through her storytelling, what Schultz exposes is not necessarily that these "strategies" (tactics and techniques, really) were wrong, but that we were asking the wrong questions.

War is hell, after all. And hell is a koan.

Schultz writes: "Miller calls to mind the [ROE] directive, its ominous sentiment: The Taliban cannot militarily defeat us, but we can defeat ourselves. Like grabbing fistfuls of sand—that's what this war is. Like trying to hold onto the impossible."

Later, as Miller is about to move out with his men, he inventories his squad emotionally, noting each soldier's customized need for redemption. "And with that, the war is theirs. They will fight it for these reasons. Not for freedom. Not for politics. Not for God or country or trucking companies. But for the individual things. The needles of hurt across a spectrum of life."

Against this, the troops collectively face, an unseen, random, and constant threat. "They all know the risks," Schultz writes. "No front lines in this war. Enemies, ambushes, and IEDs popping up willy-nilly, a stomach-churning child’s game of anticipation. It could be now. Or now. Now."

This game of roulette is what we have asked of our soldiers, our fellow citizens. For 18 years and counting.

At readings and other events, and on her website, Schultz tells audiences that "Flashes of War" stemmed from the urge to understand, as a citizen and educator and artist, what her country was doing in her name. Somehow without ever traveling downrange herself, her stories include sounds and smells and slang that consistently ring true. In "Still Come Home," Schultz's prose is similarly well-researched, and carefully targeted. Through her fiction, Schultz has not only successfully captured the cultural landscape of Afghanistan in 2009, but the on-going equation of American involvement in Afghanistan. And she's packaged it in an easily accessible form, without judgment.

Not, however, without hope.

In present-tense, Schultz artfully but explicitly traces each main character's shifting wants and needs. Grabbing at their own fistfuls of sand, Miller, Aaseya, and Rahim continually triangulate their respective decisions with their individual desires for safety, security, and family. Miller, for example, volunteered to deploy without first soliciting his wife's opinion. She assumes he wants to play soldier again. In reality, he hopes to make up for past mistakes—some of which have occurred on the battlefield, and some that have happened back home. At one point, as Schultz succinctly states: "This tour is Miller’s final chance to find his cool again, forget he ever drafted a suicide note, and land softly back home, back into marriage, composed and capable as ever."

The obvious question would seem to be, can he still come back home?

The essential question is, can we?

'She Went to War' Opens at Guthrie Theatre March 17

Opening Friday, four military veterans perform a script based on their military experience in The Telling Project's "She Went to War," The 50-minute production will play Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays March 17 to April 2 in the Guthrie Theatre's Dowling Studio, Minneapolis.

Friday and Saturday performances are 7:30 p.m., while Sunday matinee performance are at 1 p.m. General admission seating opens 30 minutes before curtain. Tickets are $9 and may be reserved on-line here.

Cast members include:

Jenn Calaway, who enlisted in the Marine Corps in 2006 as public affairs specialist, and later deployed to Afghanistan. She says struggled with the constraints of a male-dominated organization (the American military) in a male-dominated country (Afghanistan) “If it was known that the American military had a female in their ranks, they would lose respect from the Afghans. They wouldn’t want to have conversations with them or do business or work with them. I had to disguise myself as a guy most of the time."

Gretchen Evans, who served in the U.S. Army from 1979 to 2006 as an intelligence analyst and paratrooper. According to press materials, Gretchen’s career put her in the crosshairs of conflict around the globe, including Grenada, Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In 2006, while working as a sergeant major in Afghanistan, a mortar blast threw her into a concrete bunker wall. She suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury (T.B.I.) and lost 95 percent of her hearing, ending her career in military service. "I always tell everybody I had 27 good years in the military and one really crappy day," she says. She now works as al lead veteran outreach coordinator at the Emory Healthcare Veterans Program. 

Tabitha Nichols, who served in the Army National Guard from 2003 to 2011. At age 19, Nichols was injured in a mortar attack in Forward Operating Base in Kalsu, Iraq, just days after her arrival there. "When I got out, it was like cutting loose a ball and chain. I’m gonna keep that ball and chain, but it’s not holding me back anymore. I just put it on a shelf, look at it sometimes, maybe polish it now and then,” she says.

Racheal Robinson, currently serving in the U.S. Air Force, who originally enlisted in the Army National Guard as an emancipated minor at the age of 17. “The military has been my whole adult life," she says. "It’s who I am." 

Since 2008, the Austin, Texas-based non-profit Telling Project has presented nationwide more than 40 community-based performances by military veterans, service members, and family members. Each production's script is based on interviews with cast members about their military experiences.

The all-female theatrical presentation "She Went to War" is a first for The Telling Project organization.

A website for The Telling Project is here.

A public Facebook group for The Telling Project is here.

The "She Went to War" production is also part of the Guthrie Theatre's "Level Nine" series, through which the Minneapolis organization creates opportunities for community engagement and dialogue.

Update: Soldier Sets New Sights on Seven Years' War

Jason Huffman with "1750: Britain vs. France" at GenCon 2014. PHOTO: Battle Hardened Games, Inc.

Editor's note: This post is an update to a Red Bull Rising post that ran Aug. 28, 2014. While the effort to meet that earlier, $28,000 goal proved unsuccessful, the game designers have recently launched a smarter, leaner attempt at funding the project. With more than 25 days to go, they seem well on their way to making their $12,000 objective.

Like many soldiers, Iowa Army National Guard member Jason Huffman loves history, loves games and simulations, and loves learning about history through gaming. After months of game design, play-testing, and even demonstrating at the 2014 GenCon gaming convention in Indianapolis, he and his colleagues at Battle Hardened Games have launched a crowd-funding effort to bring their inaugural game "1750: Britain vs. France" to full production.

Sample graphics from the game "1750: Britain vs. France"

The game "1750" is a 2-player card-based strategy contest, using both dice and cards to fight for control of the board. One player plays as Britain and the other as France, and each seeks to dominate the globe. Players leverage historical events, land and sea forces, generals and admirals, supplies, and allies to control the North American, African, and Indian colonies in the years leading up the American Revolution. The graphics incorporate the paintings, maps, and other artwork of the day.

A Kickstarter page for the project is here. A video is here, as well as below. A Facebook page for Battle Hardened Games is here. Huffman started his game company in 2013, and is trying to raise $12,000 by Wed., Nov. 9, 2016.

"My top priority is to deliver games that you'll enjoy playing, whether you are a history fan or not," he writes on his website. "But I do hope that you will learn a little bit about history when playing our games. I also hope that some educators will consider using our games as a framework for discussing history, particularly the leaders, battles, economics, and geography involved."

In 2007-2008, Huffman spent a year deployed to Western Afghanistan as part of an Embedded Training Team (E.T.T.). There, he saw the echoes of empires first-hand. (Also, be sure to ask him about the Taliban chicken.) In his first game design, however, he chose to focus on the 18th century struggle between imperial powers Britain and France—the "Seven Year's War." (In the theater that was to become the United States, the conflict is better known as the "French and Indian War.")

For Huffman, the historical milieu provides an opportunity to explore lessons on scales ranging from the global, to the individual. He writes:

Many British officers that would later play major roles in the American Revolution also fought in the Seven Year's War, with some of the younger officers in the American Revolution going on to fight in other British conflicts of the late 1700s.

There are a few British generals that I find particularly interesting in terms of their legacies from this era. They fought in multiple wars and had very different results in each of them. Growing up in an American school system, our history books didn't really address parts of their careers that didn't deal with American history. Basically they get mentioned within the context of the American Revolution and that’s it.

Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, circa 1796

Take, for example, Charles Cornwalis. Huffman writes on his website:

Basically, looking at American history books, or watching [2000 film] The Patriot, Cornwallis would have been viewed as the biggest loser of the 1700s. He surrendered an army of over 7,000 soldiers, the act that ultimately broke military British efforts to retain the 13 colonies. This same person was hugely instrumental in the ongoing rise of British power in the Indian subcontinent. You can't look back at him and only weigh the Yorktown surrender in judging his performance as a commander [...]

The entrepreneurial Huffman is an Iowa National Guard signal officer, and also spent time as a civilian contractor instructing on mission command systems. He now works for a national healthcare insurer.

Huffman is a 2003 graduate of the Reserve Officers Training Corps program at the University of Iowa, Iowa City.

"My love of military history was certainly a strong influence in my decision to join the military," he tells the Red Bull Rising blog. "My grandfather was also a medic in the 34th Infantry Division during WWII in North Africa and Italy, and that was always inspiring to me when I decided to join."

And ... what about the war story regarding Pashtun poultry? "I was driving wearing N.V.G.s [Night Vision Goggles] during an operation to cordon an Afghan village, when a chicken flew at our Humvee, knocking out a tactical satellite that had been zip-tied to the hood and really hurting our communications during that operation."

"That chicken," Huffman says, "was Taliban."

Let's Not Joke About Ebulla

This past weekend, U.S. military officials announced that the 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division headquarters, along with hundreds of other National Guard and Army Reserve units from across the nation, were no longer slated to deploy to the West African nation of Liberia this spring. This essay was written prior to that announcement.

Sgt. 1st Class Katz is preparing to go to Africa. It'll be her fourth deployment. The Minnesota National Guard's 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division headquarters has been alerted for the Ebola-response mission to Liberia. The mission is called "Operation United Assistance." I tell her it'll be a good mission—a good story. She tells me something she remembers me saying once, regarding going to Afghanistan with the division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team (2-34th BCT).

"You said something about how everything kind of fell into place, for both you and the unit," she says. "How the Red Bull boasted the longest-deployed units to Iraq ... the largest deployment of Iowans since World War II ... one of only three National Guard brigades to own battle space in Afghanistan ... This might be the only time anyone would ever see something like this."

In typical sentiment, Katz says she doesn't want to go, but also that she wants to go. I understand the push-pull, topsy-turvy, mixed feelings about pending deployments. It's heady stuff, being called up to help change the world. Citizen-soldiers get to see history in the making. It's also a burden, however. Family and friends worry. Life and job get interrupted. Embrace the suck.

"Still," I remember my father saying once or twice, "it has a certain appeal ..."

I remember Papa Sherpa coming off a U.S. Air Force Reserve rotation to Operation Desert Shield. Soon after, he put in his retirement papers. He had started his active-duty military career during the Vietnam War, as a navigator on a C-130 Hercules, flying tactical airlift missions. After a variety of other platforms and missions, he ended his career in the same way.

After his paperwork had already been filed, however, the military mission to Somalia popped up. At the time, I was relatively new to the service, and was wearing Army greens. Off at months of Army training, I'd missed the war in Kuwait. That was on my mind when I asked Dad if he regretted putting in his papers, and potentially watching his former colleagues lift off without him. "You know," he said, "this might have been one to miss ..."

"All this has happened before, and all this will happen again." The same Army officer who once tagged me with the "Sherpa" nickname was the one who recommended that I watch the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, while we were both deployed to a peacekeeping mission to the Sinai Peninsula. From that science-fiction program, I first learned the mantra of the eternal return: "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again."

Of all the lessons I learned in the Army, that phrase explains the most.

After I graduated, I swore that I'd never come back to Iowa, but I did. I returned to Iowa after Army communications school, and joined the Iowa Army National Guard. I worked a couple of community and metro newspaper jobs, and made the jump to trade magazines by the mid-1990s.

My first editorship? I kid you not: It was a trade magazine for managers of corporate, hospitality, healthcare, institutional facilities and campuses. The now-defunct publication was was called—again, I am not making this up—"Maintenance Executive."

How's that for high-falutin'?

My interest in writing about best-practices and lessons-learned stems from that experience. Twenty years ago, I was writing about the threats of Ebola, as well as other emergent diseases, on behalf of those professionals most likely to clean it up. In one memorable columnist's portrait, I was photographed wearing a suit and tie and my M17A2 protective mask. I'd borrowed the latter from my locker at the National Guard armory.

For magazine cover-story, I interviewed Richard Preston, author of the non-fiction book "The Hot Zone." Preston tells stories of three strains of Ebola, each named after the place of its discovery: Ebola Sudan, Ebola Zaire, and Ebola Reston (Va.). My family and friends took to naming the seasonal flu after the person who'd first discovered it: Ebola Jeff, Ebola Scott, Ebola Sherpa ...

Hilarious, no? I kill me.

So, Katz is off to war again. And Ebola doesn't look like as much of a joke as it was when I was young and immortal. But the Red Bull is, once again, present at the fulcrum of history. People like Katz don't want to go, but they don't want to stay at home, either. This will be the first time I'll see a Red Bull friend of mine move out smartly, post-Afghanistan.

It's not a war, but neither is it business as usual. The Red Bull is again on the attack.

Two thoughts haunt my hours:

"This one might have been one to miss."

"All this has happened before, and all this will happen again."

'Through a Soldier's Eyes' Tails 'Red Bull' in WWII Italy

A 26-minute documentary depicting the travels of present-day members of the 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division on a tour of that unit's World War II battlefields in Italy will debut on Minnesota public television channels Fri., Nov. 7, at 9 p.m. Central Time. For a 25-second trailer video, click here.

(In Central Iowa, "Through a Soldier's Eyes" will air 8 p.m., Nov. 4 on Iowa Public Television Channel 11.3.)

Luke Heikkila PHOTO: Twin Cities Public Television

Produced by Twin Cities Public Television producer Luke Heikkila, "Through a Soldier's Eyes" is part of an ongoing commitment by the station to tell the stories of Minnesota service members, families, and veterans. Heikkila embedded with Minnesota troops in Iraq in 2009, and in Afghanistan in 2012.

The 34th Inf. Div. was originally comprised of citizen-soldiers from Iowa, Minnesota, and North and South Dakota. The unit's distinctive "Red Bull" patch is still worn by National Guard troops in Minnesota and Iowa. The project was previously mentioned on the Red Bull Rising blog.

Earlier in 2014, Heikkila followed Staff Sgt. Dillon Jennings and other current members of the 34th Inf. Div. on a trip to Italy. The group toured battle sites such as Anzio, Monte Cassino, Volturno River, Hill 810, and others.

Jenning's great-grandfather, Bernard Bonnema, also served in the 133rd Infantry Regiment, one of the "Red Bull" units deployed to World War II Italy.

A veteran of two overseas deployments himself, Jennings didn't make the connection between his own service and that of his great-grandfather, until after participating in the record-breaking 22-month deployment of 1st Brigade, 34th Infantry Division (1-34th Bde.) to Iraq in 2006-2007.

Air-times and channels for "Through a Soldier's Eyes" are listed here, as well as below. The program will also be made available on-line veterans.tpt.org, and via the PBS World Channel.

Twin Cities Public Television, Channel 2.1

• Fri., Nov. 7 @ 9:00 p.m.
• Sat., Nov 8 @ 3:00 a.m.
• Sun., Nov. 9 @ 4:00 p.m.

Twin Cities Public Television MN Channel 2.2

• Sun., Nov. 9 @ 7:30 a.m.
• Sun., Nov. 16 @ 1:30 a.m.
• Sun., Nov. 16 @ 7:30 a.m.
• Sun., Nov. 16 @ 1:30 a.m.

Twin Cities Public Television Life Channel 2.3

• Sun., Nov 16 @ 11:30 a.m.

Iowa Soldier Crowd-funds to Refight 'Seven Years' War'

Jason Huffman with "1750: Britain vs. France" at GenCon 2014. PHOTO: Battle Hardened Games, Inc.

Like many soldiers, Iowa Army National Guard member Jason Huffman loves history, loves games and simulations, and loves learning about history through gaming. After months of game design, play-testing, and even demonstrating at the recent GenCon gaming convention in Indianapolis, he and his colleagues at Battle Hardened Games have launched a crowd-funding effort to bring their inaugural game "1750: Britain vs. France" to full production.

Sample graphics from the game "1750: Britain vs. France"

The game "1750" is a 2-player card-based strategy contest, using both dice and cards to fight for control of the board. One player plays as Britain and the other as France, and each seeks to dominate the globe. Players leverage historical events, land and sea forces, generals and admirals, supplies, and allies to control the North American, African, and Indian colonies in the years leading up the American Revolution. The graphics incorporate the paintings, maps, and other artwork of the day.

A Kickstarter page for the project is here. A video is here, as well as below. A Facebook page for Battle Hardened Games is here. Huffman started his game company in 2013, and is trying to raise $28,000 by Sun., Sept. 28, 2014. He has already fronted the graphic design and other developmental costs. If funded via Kickstarter, the game is ready to go into full production.

"My top priority is to deliver games that you'll enjoy playing, whether you are a history fan or not," he writes on his website. "But I do hope that you will learn a little bit about history when playing our games. I also hope that some educators will consider using our games as a framework for discussing history, particularly the leaders, battles, economics, and geography involved."

In 2007-2008, Huffman spent a year deployed to Western Afghanistan as part of an Embedded Training Team (E.T.T.). There, he saw the echoes of empires first-hand. (Also, be sure to ask him about the Taliban chicken.) In his first game design, however, he chose to focus on the 18th century struggle between imperial powers Britain and France—the "Seven Year's War." (In the theater that was to become the United States, the conflict is better known as the "French and Indian War.")

For Huffman, the historical mileu provides an opportunity to explore lessons on scales ranging from the global, to the individual. He writes:

Many British officers that would later play major roles in the American Revolution also fought in the Seven Year's War, with some of the younger officers in the American Revolution going on to fight in other British conflicts of the late 1700s.

There are a few British generals that I find particularly interesting in terms of their legacies from this era. They fought in multiple wars and had very different results in each of them. Growing up in an American school system, our history books didn't really address parts of their careers that didn't deal with American history. Basically they get mentioned within the context of the American Revolution and that’s it.

Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, circa 1796

Take, for example, Charles Cornwalis. Huffman writes on his website:

Basically, looking at American history books, or watching [2000 film] The Patriot, Cornwallis would have been viewed as the biggest loser of the 1700s. He surrendered an army of over 7,000 soldiers, the act that ultimately broke military British efforts to retain the 13 colonies. This same person was hugely instrumental in the ongoing rise of British power in the Indian subcontinent. You can't look back at him and only weigh the Yorktown surrender in judging his performance as a commander [...]

In his "spare time," the entrepreneurial Huffman is an Iowa National Guard signal officer assigned to 734th Regional Support Group (R.S.G.), and recently spent time as a civilian contractor instructing on mission command systems. Huffman is a 2003 graduate of the Reserve Officers Training Corps program at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. "My love of military history was certainly a strong influence in my decision to join the military," he tells the Red Bull Rising blog. "My grandfather was also a medic in the 34th Infantry Division during WWII in North Africa and Italy, and that was always inspiring to me when I decided to join."

And ... what about the war story regarding Pashtun poultry?

"I was driving wearing N.V.G.s [Night Vision Goggles] during an operation to cordon an Afghan village, when a chicken flew at our Humvee, knocking out a tactical satellite that had been zip-tied to the hood and really hurting our communications during that operation."

"That chicken," Huffman says, "was Taliban."

In Nat'l Guard Mag, Mil-blogger Revisits Korean War

In the current issue of GX Online, journalist and mil-blogger Susan Katz Keating delivers a fast-paced, fact-packed article about Korean War history that was inspired by her citizen-soldier father, Norman Katz. GX Online is an official magazine of the U.S. Army National Guard.

Keating chronicles National Guard mobilizations including California's 40th Infantry "Sunshine" Division (40th Inf. Div.) and Oklahoma's 45th Infantry "Thunderbird" Division (45th Inf. Div.). Between Aug. 14, 1950 and Feb. 15, 1952, she writes, the National Guard contributed approximately 138,000 reservists to repel North Korea. Norman Katz was a member of the 40th Inf. Div., and a Purple Heart recipient.

Troops fighting in Korea braved sub-zero temperatures, unforgiving mountain terrain, ubiquitous spies, and inferior supplies and equipment. One pharmacist veteran describes for Keating how he'd mix codeine into syrup, to suppress coughing that would give away their fighting positions. Another tells of being welcomed by a group of liberated Korean and Chinese prisoners of war while on a supposedly secret mission—informed by their former jailers, the prisoners knew more about the mission than the U.S. troops.

The issue is available FREE as a PDF file here. Keating's article, "Enduring Courage," appears on print pages 58-63, and PDF spreads 30-33. You can read her blog post about the GX Online article here. Her Facebook fan page is here.

'Scintilla' Publishes Special 'Literature of War' Issue

With their Spring 2014 issue of "Scintilla," editors of the on-line literary magazine published their first collection of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry dedicated to a single topic. The "Literature of War: At Home and Abroad" issue features writers with both direct and indirect experience with the military.

Founded in 2011, the magazine is published twice yearly, and is available to readers FREE online here.

In the new issue's introduction, Editor Tim Lepczyk calls it the "best [...] most challenging issue we’ve published."

He writes:

[...] I’m in awe of the meaning these writers have brought forth, the vision, painful at times, that they have shared. For many of us, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have played out in a vacuum. If Vietnam was the first televised war, what were, what are these wars? The overlooked? The distant?

[...] Of the twenty-two writers whose work we published, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq mean different things. For some, there may be overlap, and for others, their viewpoints may be diametrically opposed. What we have though are the ways in which people have been affected. We have stories. We have poems. They add to the larger narrative, and perhaps, together, create meaning.

The short stories in the issue are risk-taking, format-breaking, and invite multiple readings. For example, Robert Wallace's "A Brief History of the Universe" is a consciousness-bending and -blending tale that reveals itself to be less about homecoming, and more about the nuclear bonds between soldiers. It's "Thelma and Louise" meets "Band of Brothers," by way of "Rashomon."

In the issue's singular non-fiction feature, New York Air National Guard airman Julio A. Olivencia's "Fine Dirt and Dead Birds," the writer offers an impressionistic series of scenes, ranging from a ho-hum homecoming to cruising down Bagram's notorious Disney Drive at rush hour.

Olivencia's observations of war as a daily routine may take some readers by surprise. This is neither adrenalin-fueled action nor over-the-top service comedy:

"Me and Teddy found the perfect song for driving down Disney in the morning," Mike says, as we pull onto the main drag of Bagram Airfield. We start the morning crawl with "Shiny Happy People" coming out of the speaker in the cup holder.

For some, war is hell. For others, it's a commute.

It is in the issue's center-mass of 23 poems, however, that readers will encounter a rapid-fire salvo of hard-hitting—and sometimes humorous—provocations and perspectives.

Two poems—"Non-Combat Related Incidents and Other Lies" by Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes, and "Private" by Adam Berlin—indelibly engage the topic of sexual assault in U.S. military ranks. These are words that should be read, and discussed widely.

In his editorial, Lepczyk mentions that he was partly inspired to produce the war-themed issue as early as "Scintilla" No. 2, when the publication featured a poem by U.S. Army veteran Paul David Adkins. That poem was "War Story #164: Explaining Why I Brought to Iraq But Couldn’t Open Weldon Kees’ Collected Poems."

Three more of Adkins' poems are featured in the "Literature of War" issue. Adkins' work often seems rooted in a low reality of TOC dispatches and SIGACT reports, which explode into the consideration of things more sublime. His "Iraqi Army Unit on Camp Striker, Baghdad Iraq," for example, offers a gritty, sh--ty little anecdote—the circumstances of which might be recognizable to anyone involved in training host-nation forces.

Their colonel met our colonel inside
the TOC to build
     a partnership.
His troops waited outside,
lit fires by their Humvees,
cooked chow and laughed.
Sparks swirled as if they conjured a genie.

They acted like they never used
a porta-john before.
Each Soldier filed in twice,
emerged doubled
with guffaws. [...]

In keeping with the oral tradition of "war stories" maintained by soldiers everywhere, the poem builds to a spectacularly scatological pay-off. This is a poem to pass around the barracks ... or the next staff meeting.

There is differently dark humor to be found elsewhere in the issue. In "Iraq Reflection," for example, Charity Winters delivers some clever wordplay and poetic construction using acronyms such as "IEDs and EFPs." To this reader, when viewed as a whole, the poem becomes a calligram, taking on the distinctive shape of a concave plate of copper—a component of the deadly Explosively Formed Penetrators (E.F.P.) mentioned in the work.

There is poignancy and pride to be found as well. In "Hanging Gardens," Massachusetts-based Iraqi-American writer Nora Alsahlwhi writes evocatively of her family's home country:

I write about Iraq
when her skin was
carmine, perfumed with
freshly picked celosias
wild pear petals in the morning,
and crushed saffron by noon [...]

I write about Iraq
when missiles began to rain down
on doctors treating the diseased
and politics ravaged villages
full of hardworking descendants
of Nebuchadnezzar, and Sargon the Great [...]

Provocative, poetic, poignant, Scintilla's foray into the literature of war deserves the considered attentions of both our citizens and our soldiers. Give your eyes time to adjust. Let the issue serve as an illumination round, parachute-floating briefly overhead, casting shadows so that we may see others—and have others see us. We are frozen for this moment.

When it gets dark, we shall start moving again.

*****

Note: "Scintilla" No. 6 also features "leaving empty," a poem by the writer of the Red Bull Rising blog. The poem regards the 2001 destruction by the Taliban of two giant statues of the Buddha located in Afghanistan's Bamiyan Province. In 2009, the Iowa National Guard's 2nd Brigade Combat Team (B.C.T.), 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division (2-34th BCT) was preparing for a deployment that included that province. The mission changed before the unit arrived in country.

Iowa Cav Snipers Take 2nd Place in Joint Competition

A Texas Army National Guard sniper team engages targets during the 2014 Winston P.
Wilson Sniper Championship conducted at Fort Chaffee, Ark. April 19-26. PHOTO:
National Guard Marksmanship Training Center (NGMTC).

A 2-soldier sniper team from the Iowa National Guard's Charlie Troop, 1st Squadron, 113th Cavalry Regiment (1-113th Cav.) achieved second place in the 43th Annual Winston P. Wilson Sniper Championship conducted April 19-26 at Fort Chaffee, Ark.

According to a proud command sergeant major, Sergeants Jeremy Henrich and Jaime Koopman scored 1083 out of 2040 possible points, just 24 points under the team comprising Marine Corps Scout School Instructors Sgt. Daniel Ramos and Sgt. Shaun Garvey.

Seventeen teams competed in this year's event, which tested 16 skills involved in the tactical employment of the bolt-action M40 rifle, the semi-automatic M110 sniper rifle, and the M9 Beretta pistol.

The annual even, conducted by the National Guard Marksmanship Training Center (N.G.M.T.C.) to promote sniper training, brings together competitors from both U.S. active-duty and reserve services, as well as those of foreign allies. According to rules, "all competitors must provide proof of current or previous assignment in a TOE/TDA position with an Army Additional Skill Identifier (A.S.I.) of B4 or completion of a service equivalent formal sniper training i.e., the Air Force Close Precision Engagement Course (C.P.E.C.), U.S. Marine Corps Scout Sniper Course, or the Special Operations Tactical Interdiction Course (S.O.T.I.C.)." Competitors must be rank of E3 or above.

Third and fourth places went to sniper teams from the Marine infantry school and the Army's 3rd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment.

Iowa National Guard snipers Jeremy Henrich and Jaime Koopman,
both sergeants in the Charlie Troop, 1st Squadron, 113th Cavelry
Regiment (1-133th Cav.), finished first in fieldcraft events. PHOTO:
1-113th Cav.

Henrich and Koopman finished first in fieldcraft events, which included range estimate, stalk, land navigation, observation, and target detection events.

"This is a remarkable accomplishment for a couple of Iowa National Guardsmen and we couldn't be prouder of them. This team has won multiple sniper competitions and were awarded the Meritorious Service Medal a few months ago for being the best damn sniper team in the National Guard," writes Command Sgt. Major Matthew Strasser on his organization's Facebook page.

A Southwest Times-Record news report includes video taken of the event.

For a PDF reference manual on the 2014 Winston P. Wilson Sniper Championship, click here.

WWII Vet Joe Boitnott, 92, Conducts Final 'Attack!'

2011 photo by Army Staff Sgt. Ashlee Lolkus

One of the remaining 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division veterans of World War II, Monty Joe Boitnott, 92, died on April 12, 2014, at the VA hospital in Des Moines, Iowa. Tomorrow, April 23, would have been his 93rd birthday.

Boitnott was a welcoming and lively presence at the annual 34th Infantry Division Association reunion and dine-out. Fellow veterans and "Red Bull" family members—young and old—looked forward to seeing him wearing in his Red Bull blazer, and hearing him share his stories.

Boinott grew up in Maxwell, pop. 811, where his mother ran a restaurant. His father was the town postmaster, and owned a jewelry and optical repair shop in the front of the restaurant.

Boinott joined the Iowa National Guard's 168th Infantry Regiment while he was still attending North High School, Des Moines. He started the war as as infantryman, and made three amphibious landings in North Africa and Italy. In September 1944, he transferred to the Army Air Force and served as as a tail-gunner on B-17 "Flying Fortress" bombers, serving until victory in Europe. He continued to serve throughout the Korean War, and retired from the United States Air Force in 1972 at the rank of master sergeant. In total, Boinott served in uniform nearly 30 years.

A full obituary and other funeral details are posted here.

In addition to participating in memorials, museum displays, and television documentaries, Boitnott wrote a short memoir that is available for reading on-line here. (Caution: Music plays as webpage loads, but does not repeat.)

Boitnott was present during some of the "Red Bull" division's greatest milestones, including place-names as Algiers, Salerno, and Monte Cassino. An excerpt from his on-line memoir shows how he could bring history to life:

After Christmas, our unit relieved the 36th Division at San Pietro near the Rapido River at the entrance to Cassino dominated by Mount Troccio, two miles from the town.The river was icy cold. The Germans had the opposite banks loaded with land mines. Plus they blew some ditches and flooded the low area to the rolling hills from the Rapido tributaries of water. My unit's objective was some old Italian military barracks that had shelter from sleet and snow we were encountering.

It took us four days to cross the river due to heavy fighting with the Germans. Finally we reached our objective, and here my squad went close to 70 hours without rations and water.

Our losses were staggering. I really don't know the head count but my unit alone was down less than half strength in manpower. My unit never did reach the town of Monte Cassino, but units of our other regiment, the 133rd, was engaged in hand-to-hand fighting in the town.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests memorials to be directed to:

The 34th Division Association
c/o The Iowa Gold Star Military Museum
7105 N.W. 70th Avenue
Johnston, Iowa 50131

Visitation will be held today, Tues., April 22, 2014 from 4 to 7 p.m. at Hamilton's Funeral Home, Westown Parkway, 3601 Westown Parkway, West Des Moines.

Burial with military honors will be held on Wed., April 23 at 2 p.m., Iowa Veterans Cemetery, Van Meter, Iowa.

On-line condolences may be expressed here.

Notes from the 2014 Great Plains Writers' Conference

The 2014 Great Plains Writers' Conference featured a discussion among

civil-military stakeholders on the campus of South Dakota State University. Photo: GPWC.

For three days, last week's 38th Annual Great Plains Writers' Conference in Brookings, S.D. delivered inspiring conversations around the theme of "Coming Home: War, Healing, and American Culture." The event took place on the campus of South Dakota State University.

The event was scheduled from Sunday evening, March 23 to Tuesday evening, March 25. Daytime sessions allowed students and faculty to take full advantage of visiting regional and national experts, and to present their own research and writing to the public. Session formats included panel discussions, authorial readings and how-tos, historical overviews, and more. Evenings featured longer-form readings by visiting authors. Via a blog, Facebook and Twitter, organizers posted insights and updates on-line.

My own notebook is full of takeaway tips and memorable moments:

Francis Whitebird, a Vietnam Veteran and 

son of Code Talker Noah Whitebird,

shows off pins that represent the wars

in which his family has fought. The top one

represents the Indian Wars, the last 

one Afghanistan and Iraq. Caption and photo 

by U.S. House of Representatives.

Vietnam War veteran Francis Whitebird and his sons Colin and Brandon, both veterans of the Iraq War, talked about the warrior tradition in their immediate family, and in the Rosebud Sioux tribe. The elder Whitebird talked of how his community would gather and celebrate departing soldiers. "They would sing them off, and then, they would feed everybody," he said. (The practice reminded me of National Guard send-off and homecoming ceremonies.)

Upon their return from war, veterans would be honored by seating them in groups, according to the conflicts in which they served. "In Lakota Country, we have songs about every war, and we had war songs about individuals. My aunt had one of them made up for me." Returning warriors could also take part in "centering" ceremonies, which would bring peace to themselves.

His sons now participate in tribal events as warriors themselves, connecting them to a larger history and culture. Said Connor, "Dad used to wake us up by singing Army Infantry cadences. How you grow up makes a difference. We had chores before school. We made our beds with hospital corners."

"After I got shot in the chest, I decided to go back [to Iraq.]," he continued. "It was a little bit of pride, but I was also thinking about the people who went before me."

*****

It was through a reading by Katey Schultz, author of "Flashes of War," that I came to understand the potential poetic connections of flash fiction and prose-poetry. Flash fiction is described as single-perspective stories that range in approximate length from 250 to 750 words. In her short fiction, Schultz, who has no direct connection to military service, has distilled words and observations into rounds that ring true and on target. The result is part poetry, part story-telling.

Schultz, by the way, also described her technique of generating story prompts from photos and other media. Check out a YouTube video here, which features some of the images she used as cues for short fiction.

*****

GPWC Twitter feed during Charlie Sherpa's presentation on
"Finding and Creating Opportunities in Writing about Military Life."

Founder of the non-profit Veterans Writing Project, Washington, D.C., Ron Capps noted that his organization welcomes participation by military family members, as well as current and past military service members. "Working with Special Forces, we had a saying: 'One is none,'" he said. "There always has to be a back-up. There always has to be a wingman. When you get out, particularly if you're in the National Guard or reserves, your family becomes your wingman."

*****

Rosalie Owens, an on-line course designer and creative-writing instructor for American Military University, noted that her class participants—many of whom currently serve in uniform overseas—recently asked that military ranks be dropped from class discussions. The implied hierarchies were getting in the way of good discussions and communications.

*****

One particularly notable panel brought together campus veterans coordinators, university officials and faculty, and military-science instructors. In that session, presenters considered questions such as:

• How could faculty incorporate military professional development reading lists (here's an example) into their curricula?

• How could military cadet and/or student-veterans use their skills and experiences to document South Dakota veterans' experiences, through writing or other media?

• Could departments or campus groups help establish reading circles or writing workshops to help breach the civil-military divide?

*****

In one evening's event, David Abrams ("Fobbit") and Patrick Hicks ("The Commandant of Lubizec") explored the surprisingly rich common ground between their respective works. Abrams' "Fobbit" (2012) is an Iraq War satire in the spirit and tone of Joseph Heller's novel "Catch 22" (1961).

Hicks' just-released historical novel is a dark and lyrical story of World War II extermination camps.

In short, one would have a hard time imagining two war-themed works more dissimilar than the Fobbit and the Commandant. The connection and comparison suggested by moderator Steven Wingate, however, was in each author's wrestling with the "euphemisms and engines of war." It was one of those magic moments that could only take place at a conference such as this, with creative and thoughtful people sitting face to face, exchanging ideas and insights.

*****

In the conference's culminating evening event, Ron Capps warmed up the crowd gathered for poet Brian Turner (2005's "Here, Bullet" and 2010's "Phantom Noise"). With self-deprecating humor, Capps said he felt his role was similar to that of George Thorogood, who opened for The Rolling Stones in the 1980s. Capps read selections from his upcoming memoir "Seriously Not All Right: Five Wars in Ten Years."

When Turner took the stage, he asked for the house lights to be brought up in the black-box space, creating an opportunity for more conversation. The poetry reading that followed was less rock concert, and more "MTV Unplugged"—alternating blasts of word-music with thought-provoking commentary. "How many have we lost in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," he asked during one interlude. "Now, what happens if I change the way I say that: How many have we lost in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?" The slight change in emphasis unlocked whole new layers of meaning.

*****

Disclosure: As a presenter myself at this year's event, my lodging and some land travel was underwritten by the 2014 Great Plains Writers' Conference. The next event is scheduled for March 22-24, 2015, and will explore literary themes and intersections with agriculture, ecology, environmental design, architecture, and more.