Book Review: 'A Hard and Heavy Thing'

Book review: "A Hard and Heavy Thing" by Matthew J. Hefti

In his debut novel, former U.S. Air Force bomb technician Matthew J. Hefti delivers a carefully observed, intricate exploration of interconnections among three Wisconsin friends before, during, and after a deployment to Iraq.

Two friends, Levi and Nick, find themselves at war, and there's a girl back home, too—Eris, the boys' personal goddess of discord. The book is written from the perspective of Levi, and the reader must constantly triangulate to new information and insights about the narrator, as well as the people he encounters.

The chapters are quick and punchy, and book reveals itself and its characters with the quickening pace of a beach-time thriller. Nothing is black and white. Call it a "Midwestern Noir."

"A Hard and Heavy Thing" is available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle e-book versions.

Author Hefti is a veteran of two deployments to Iraq and two to Afghanistan. The soldierly details of suffering fools and friends and unspeakable heat will ring true to anyone who has walked in those boots, and gone on those patrols.

Especially worthy of note is Hefti's accurate depiction of a non-commissioned officer's running calculus in managing his soldiers. At one point, for example, a platoon leader asks acting sergeant Levi for input into two courses of action. One would take the truck-mounted patrol the long way back to home base, but would allow an overnight stop for pizza and milkshakes at one of the more luxurious Forward Operating Bases ("FOB"). The other would be more direct and faster, but present greater exposure to Improvised Explosive Devices—bombs buried in the road.

What Levi chooses to keep from his officer is that prisoners captured on their patrol have been roughed up by junior soldiers under his command. Returning via the larger FOB would mean delivering the detainees into the hands of those most likely to investigate the abuse.

However, "if they took the prisoners back to [their home base] to sit for a few days, any bruises and lacerations would have faded into signs of a simple struggle and nothing more by the time they took them to the main base," Levi thinks to himself. "By that time, any complaints by the detainees would be the baseless and desperate pleadings of some bomb-setting terrorists …"

In short, Levi is caught between protecting his fellow soldiers from potential criminal charges, and protecting them against injury and death. To this dilemma, Hefti cannily adds the trust and professional expectations of Levi's officer, and the undermining muttered chorus of Levi's younger subordinates. Levi is presented with no good choices, only decisions to be made. Feels like real life.

Those decisions, of course, have consequences—on Levi, on Nick, and on their lives after deployment. Hefti does a masterful job disarming reader expectations and the usual tropes, and guides readers on an unpredictable journey toward an ultimately satisfying conclusion.

The philosophical fulcrum for the work is this: As he is shipping out for Iraq, Levi asks his war veteran father for any parting advice. "Just do the right thing," his father replies. "Worry only about what you control. The rest is war."

Book Review: 'See Me for Who I Am'

"See Me for Who I Am: Student Veterans' Stories of War and Coming Home," edited by David Chrisinger

David Chrisinger is a mil-blogger, veterans-issues activist, and creator of a military-to-civilian reintegration course, "Back from the Front," at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Related to the latter effort, Chrisinger helped produce and publish an anthology of student essays. The 150-page trade paperback, "See Me for Who I Am: Student Veterans' Stories of War and Coming Home" was released earlier this week. It is also available as an Amazon Kindle e-book.

The book collects approximately 20 veterans' stories, written in various voices and styles. While a few aspire to literary gymnastics or even melodrama, most achieve a conversational and approachable tone—perfect for exposing civilian readers to veterans' insights, without risk of scaring them off.

The content is bookended by some big guns. There is a foreword written by Brian Castner, author of 2012's "The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows" and the upcoming "All the Ways We Kill and Die: An Elegy for a Fallen Comrade, and the Hunt for His Killer." And there is an afterword by Matthew J. Hefti, author of the 2016 Afghan War novel "A Hard And Heavy Thing". It is Hefti who writes:

The uncultivated nature of this book is exactly what makes it required reading; that rawness is what sets this book apart from others on the same topic. These college freshmen—often older and worldlier than their peers—are walking straight off the battlefield with the dust still trailing off their boots, the blood still speckling their uniforms, and the gun smoke still stinging their nostrils. There is no irony here; See Me for Who I Am is real talk.

The real talk here, admittedly, is from a relatively homogenous cohort of student veterans. An informal sampling of writers' biographies reveals that these are Midwesterners—most grew up in Wisconsin or graduated from high school there. Declared majors cluster around the strengths of the institution in which they are enrolled: business and information technology, medicine and health, forestry management. Most are male narrators, but there are a few female voices present. While this may accurately reflect the composition of Chrisinger's reintegration classes, it does point to possibilities for future explorations.

The book illuminates, after all, the types of conversations possible on any campus of learning, if professors and fellow students were to approach incoming student-veterans with open minds and open ears. It would be exciting to see other student bodies, faculties, and administrations adopt "See Me for Who I Am" as the catalyst for initial engagement, then move toward generating and collecting other narratives on their own campuses.

Read "See Me for Who I Am." Then, look more locally. Seek out more stories. And start talking.

'Deadly Writers Patrol' Bridges Generations at War

In the tenth issue of its print literary journal, the Madison, Wis.-based Deadly Writers Patrol (D.W.P.) delivers 80 pages of punchy prose and poetry about war and peace.

The nucleus of the group is a fire team of writers who each served during the Vietnam War. Starting in 2013, however, submissions were opened to veterans and family members of other conflicts. In both process and product, the effort builds bridges not only between civilians and veterans, but between generations.

"The Deadly Writers Patrol magazine began as an outlet for writing by Vietnam veterans, but we're now publishing a number of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan," says DWP editor Craig Werner:

Most of the writing we publishes touches on experience in the service, but we're open to writing by veterans on any topic. Over the years we've published work by a few non-veterans—including several members of veterans' families—about the eras. We focus primarily on "creative" work—fiction and poetry rather than memoir—but we understand that the line between autobiography and fiction is blurry and we don't spend much effort enforcing it. In effect, it means that we're looking for writing that deals with the complexities of experience rather than journalistic reports of "what happened."

Back issues of Deadly Writers Patrol Magazine can be purchased for varying amounts ranging from $5 to $15 here.)

The newest DWP issue is 80 pages in length, and features the work of 15 military veterans and family members. There is an equal number of poems and short stories. Cost is $10. (Disclosure: The issue contains four poems by the writer of the Red Bull Rising blog, including "your drill sergeant writes haiku, too" and "Jody stole your haiku tools".)

Iraq War veteran and poet Wyl Schuth targets gritty details of veterans' everyday lives, including job interviews and the suicide deaths of friends. In "Ambush," for example, he writes of a flashback ignited by a curb-crawling city bus:

[…] we plod forward still.
Scanning again through the glass
the horizon returns to horizontal

The driver coos back an apology—
she has cut the corner too short
nothing more, no IED this time […]

Former Marine and Iraq War veteran Maurice Decaul presents a series of four poems, written in the style and spirit of an ancient Tamil anthology called the Purananuru. Written between the 1st century B.C.E. and the 5th century, the original texts delivered treatises on topics such as war, morality, and kingly conduct.

Now, using timeless titles such as "Song for a Hero" and "Song for a Gold Star Wife," Decaul uses the ancient poetic form's fragmentary nature to great effect. Read individually, each is a heart-breaking psalm. Read cumulatively, one gains a sense of modern war's collective costs. In "Song for a Hero (After the Purananuru 290)", he writes:

[…] War is like a star the great architect emplaced
Father of your father & father of my father perishing
mustard-gas machineguns atom-bombs
     wastelands
& I too might be remembered for courage
like a Kevlar umbrella unfurled when shrapnel rains
& when it is raining lords, it is I who won't be missed.

Themes such as Schuth's and Decaul's echo those of their Vietnam War-era brothers and sisters. At the same time, having their work appear alongside stories of earlier conflicts invites readers to comparison and contrast. Uniforms, acronyms, and details may have changed, but times have not.

Take, for example, the work of Vietnam War veteran Steve Piotrowski, whose short story "The Black Shack" tells a multi-layered narrative of navigation, from out in the field to back in the rear, and among differing civil-military terrains of race and culture. The work is a chapter-length excerpt from Piotrowski's larger book project, "Coming Home," and is based on his experiences in the 173rd Airborne Corps. Younger veterans will marvel at how much has changed, and how much hasn't.

The DWP magazine's editors welcome veterans' contributions of poetry, fiction, and more. Submissions by non-veterans should regard in some manner a theme of war or its effects. In addition to short stories and poems, past submissions have included excerpts from novels and memoirs, as well as personal essays.

Submissions should be sent to editor Craig Werner via e-mail: cwerner52 AT yahoo.com

Werner's "We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack to the Vietnam War," written along with fellow DWP member Doug Bradley, is forthcoming later this year from University of Massachusetts Press.

A sampler of other Deadly Writers Patrol writing is available FREE on-line here.

Notes from a Veterans-in-the-Arts Symposium

MEA2 event organizer Jason Poudrier, MEA founding president Travis L. Martin, and
current MEA president David. P. Ervin celebrate a successful veterans-in-the-arts
symposium  conducted May 14-17, 2015 at Cameron University, Lawton, Okla.
PHOTO: Military Experience & the Arts

More than 100 military veterans, writers, artists, scholars, therapists, and others assembled in the second Military Experience & the Arts Symposium (M.E.A.2.) May 14-17, 2015. The event was held at Cameron University, Lawton, Okla., near the Fort Sill military installation. Participants attended nearly 75 workshops, performances, meet-ups, and seminars on the communication of military experiences through expressive arts, including music, writing, dance, painting, and more.

The first such event was held 2012 in Richmond, Ky. Each symposium has been under the banner of Military Experience & the Arts, a Kentucky-based non-profit organization.

News reports about the event included this broadcast from ABC affiliate KSWO-TV Channel 7: "Veterans Create, Display Art." (See text, video at link.)

The Cameron campus was lush and green, the dirt red, and the weather relatively cool and blustery. (Wind conditions kept me off the on-campus disc golf course.) The region has gotten plenty of rain this year, and flash flood concerns were often as high as local waterways. Some friends from Wisconsin had to find hotel rooms at the last minute, after the cabin they'd reserved on Fort Sill turned about to be high and dry, but surrounded by a moat impassible to anything but tactical vehicles.

Still, to update that old Army saying about the weather and training: "If it's raining, we're still painting!"

While it was impossible to participate in every workshop or experience, I hope the following notes provide some sense of the talents and topics available at MEA2.

DAY 1:

Saw lots of friends from MEA1. Met friends I didn't know I knew already. ("Who I am depends on who you are and where we are ...") Met entirely new friends. Even friends who'd said they'd gotten published via venues identified at the Red Bull Rising blog. Oklahoma, in short, is a very friendly place. 

In the evening, former Marine and poet Suzanne Rancourt read from her work in a theater setting, and made me cry. And then, former Marine Roman Baca's Exit 12 Dance Company took the stage, and performed a ballet about motherhood and separation and deployment. They also made me cry. 

When the lights went up, the mother who commissioned/choreographed the piece was suddenly in the audience, as well as one of her two sons, who is stationed at nearby Fort Sill. And later, the troupe re-purposed a dance to an impromptu Native American flute performance by Albert Gray Eagle. 

"Magic" does not adequately describe all this.

DAY 2:

Made DIY comic books with Steve Gooch and Marc DiPaolo of Oklahoma City University, then learned about contemplative photography from Buddhist and Army veteran Tif Holmes from the non-profit Engage the Light of Lubbock, Texas. 

Wrote about the homefront through prompts suggested by Amber Jensen of South Dakota State University, a writer and Army National Guard family member, whom I first met back at Great Plains Writers' Conference 2014. 

Then, dinner with the jazz musicians of 77th Army Band ("The Pride of Fort Sill!"), followed by provoking insights about Military Sexual Trauma issues from Miette Wells, Phd., an Air Force veteran. 

Finally, video presentation from Ben Patton, grandson of WWII Gen. George S. Patton, and founder of "I Was There" Film Workshops. The latter uses digital film-making as a collaborative therapeutic intervention for people diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. 

So much energy here! So many sparks!

DAY 3:

Got the gouge on self-publishing from MEA president David P. Ervin (author of "Leaving the Wire: An Infantryman's Iraq"), then learned about flash non-fiction techniques from Rob Roensch of Red Earth MFA in Creative Writing at OCU. 

After lunch, Tara Leigh Tappert of The Arts and the Military blew my mind by academically connecting the Arts & Crafts movement with the origins of occupational therapy as a profession, and the establishment of craft shops U.S. military installations in the '50s, '60s, and '70s. Scholarship like that puts veterans and arts organizations such as MEA into historical context. "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again." 

Evening performances included readings of flash fiction by Veterans Writing Project Managing Editor Jerri Bell (from whom I learned lots of new sailor slang. Household-6 will be very pleased), and physical comedy (Masks! Mime! Puppets! Juggling!) from Hoosier Doug Berky. Berky's re-telling of the Korean fable, "The Tiger's Whisker," is a family-friendly tale of one family's journey of healing from PTSD. I hope to invite him to Iowa someday.

Bottom line: The Military Experience & the Arts Symposium 2 provided a unique opportunity to exchange insights on expressive arts techniques, tools, scholarship, advocacy, and healing on veterans issues—and encouraged veterans, students, educators, and arts practitioners to try new things.

Godspeed, and God bless! I can't wait to see what happens next!

Deadly Writers Patrol Magazine Seeks Writer-Veterans

A Madison, Wis.-based group of writers is building nationwide bridges between Vietnam War-era service members and their younger counterparts, while also exploring in poetry and prose topics related to war and peace, military service, healing, and homecoming.

The Deadly Writers Patrol (D.W.P.) published its first literary magazine in 2006. In 2013, its ninth issue presented works by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as those in Vietnam. (Back issues of Deadly Writers Patrol Magazine can be purchased for varying amounts ranging from $5 to $15 here.) The 2013 issue is 70 pages in length, and features the work of 15 military veterans and family members.

Editors are currently seeking submissions for the next issue. Deadline is Sept. 1, 2014.

"The Deadly Writers Patrol (DWP) Magazine always seeks writing by Vietnam vets, but we're also interested in engaging veterans and others affected by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," says Doug Bradley, a member of the group. Bradley is also author of the 2012 memoir "DEROS Vietnam."

"Their inclusion reaffirms a core belief of DWP: That writing can be a mirror reflecting the deepest corners of our spirits and psyches; that our writing can express the reality of suffering, and explore the possibility of healing. It can help us resolve problems and help achieve a deeper understanding of our common humanity. It can also bring us face to face with the parts of life that always will remain a mystery."

The magazine's editors welcome veterans' contributions of poetry, fiction, and more. Submissions by non-veterans should regard in some manner a theme of war or its effects. In addition to short stories and poems, past submissions have included excerpts from novels and memoirs, as well as personal essays.

Submissions should be sent via the group's website, or to directly to Bradley via e-mail: djbradle AT wisc.edu

In Eastern Iowa, Two Exhibits Explore Military Themes

Two current art exhibits in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, present a mix of difficult and challenging images related to military service.

Dan Eldon's "Touching Hands"

The first, an exhibit of the photojournalism of Dan Eldon, depicts the U.S. military in 1990s Somalia, along with scenes of poverty, starvation, and violence. The 23-year-old Eldon was one of four journalists stoned to death by a Somali mob, shortly before the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu. That battle was later depicted in both the book and movie "Blackhawk Down."

Eldon's multimedia journals have themselves been talked about as potential feature-film material.

The Eldon photos are part of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art's' ongoing series "The Restless Nation: American Art from the Collection." Alongside artwork on themes of "The Nation Votes" and the "The Nation Settles," Eldon's work explores a theme of "The Nation Wars." Approximately 20 photos are presented.

Photo: Survivors Empowered Through Art, Inc.

The second Cedar Rapids exhibit opened this week at the recently renovated Veterans Memorial Building. There, a Wisconsin-based organization called Survivors Empowered Through Art (SETA) presents a collection of artwork related to sexual assault in the military.

Featured in the exhibit is "Stepping Stones," a path of internally lit glass blocks, on which are illuminated the words and works of survivors of Military Sexual Trauma.

“Our art shows both the struggles of being sexual assault survivors and the journey to healing,” SETA founder Rachel Beauchene recently told the LaCrosse (Wis.) Tribune. “We hope to raise awareness about the epidemic of sexual assault in the military as well as the long-term effects of sexual trauma."

“The art encourages viewers to see sexual assault through a different perspective,” she said.

For more information about the life and work of Dan Eldon, including some on-line photographs, visit here.

For more information about SETA, visit the website here. A Facebook page is here.

OIF Veterans to Trek from Milwaukee to Los Angeles

Starting Aug. 30, 2013, two Iraq War veterans will walk from Milwaukee, Wis. to Los Angeles–a distance of 2,700 miles–in order to raise funds and awareness for veterans diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (P.T.S.D.) and others. Other challenges faced by U.S. military veterans and their families include homelessness, unemployment, and suicide.

Funds raised will benefit Dryhootch of America, a Milwaukee-based 501(c)3 non-profit organization that promotes alcohol-free coffee-shop social centers, and peer counseling programs for U.S. military veterans. The trekking veterans have set their target high: $100,000.

Anthony Anderson was a member of the Wisconsin National Guard from 2002-2008. He deployed to Iraq in 2004 with the Louisiana National Guard's 256th Brigade, and in again in 2007 with Wisconsin's 105th Cavalry Regiment.

Tom Voss served in the active-duty Army from 2003-2006. He deployed to Iraq in 2004 with 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment (3-21 Inf.), an element of the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division  "Tropic Lightning" Division (1-25 Inf.).

To cover costs, the two walkers are seeking to raise a start-up amount of $5,000 via crowd-funding website Indiegogo here. A video describing their "Veterans Trek" project is here.

Anderson and Voss invite other veterans and supporters to walk with them through towns along the way. In Iowa, the walking route will go through the towns of Dubuque, Farley, Dyersville, Earlville, Manchester, Winthrop, Independence, Jesup, Waterloo, Marshalltown, Des Moines, Adel, Stuart, Anita, Atlantic, Hancock, and Council Bluffs.

Visit the Veterans Trek website here and Facebook page here.

For more information on Dryhootch of America, visit the organization's website or Facebook page.