Children's Picture Book Review: 'Goodnight Marines'

"Goodnight Marines" by David R. Dixon, Illustrated by Phil Jones

Seeking to communicate the pride, history, and purpose of the U.S. Marine Corps to a younger audience is no small task, but U.S. Marine Maj. David Dixon and Army veteran Phil Jones have done so with punch, grace, and humor.

Riffing on the form and tone of childhood classic "Goodnight Moon," by Margaret Wise Brown, "Goodnight Marines" is full of saturated colors and peaceful images, delivered at a steady cadence.

A sample:

Goodnight blues and scarlet thread,
Goodnight Tuffy Hound on the end of my bed.

Goodnight Tripoli, Belleau Wood and Saipan.
Goodnight to my Dad in Afghanistan.

Iraq War veteran Dixon, an AH-1W "SuperCobra" pilot, was the 2014 recipient of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation's Robert A. Gannon Award for "Call in the Air," an accessible and often humorous book of military-themed poetry, aimed at adults.

Jones, a former artist for The Walt Disney Co., served in Operation Desert Storm with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

In words and visuals, Dixon and Jones leave no corner of Marine life unexplored. (I particularly enjoyed the "two yellow feet" area rug in the storybook room, which evoke the painted pavement just off the bus at Parris Island.) The book's design also demonstrates laudable attention-to-detail. Take, for example, the near-midnight-blue of the book's cover, which is punctuated by a red spine reminiscent of "blood stripe" on an enlisted Marine's dress trousers.

Many ranks and military jobs are mentioned, in order to depict the wide range of experiences for Marine moms and dads. The 34-page book features three pages of glossary terms, potentially helpful to non-Marine parents and babysitters. While plain-spoken, the expository language is rich with historical tidbits.

For example, the author's language regarding the recurring character of "Tuffy Hound," the storybook child's stuffed animal. Tuffy wears dog tags and a Drill Instructor's round, brown campaign cover. Dixon explains that Tuffy's actual name is Teufel Hunden ("Devil Dog"), a mascot of the U.S. Marine Corps:

Unfortunately, this young boy cannot yet pronounce such a difficult German word, so he has named his friend "Tuffy Hound." Tuffy was given to the child by his dad before deploying to Afghanistan. Just like the father guards his combat outpost, Tuffy provides the child with warmth and security, watching over the room as the child sleeps. Tuffy is a Staff Sergeant and wears the Smokey Bear cover of a Marine Drill Instructor, symbolizing the mentorship, guidance, and (albeit sometimes tough) love that DI's show as they become parental figures to recruits during Boot Camp.

Available in hardcover and on Kindle.

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.

Review: Danish-language Film 'A War' ('Krigen')

Dar Salim ("Najib Bisma") and Pilou Asbæk ("Claus Pedersen") in the Danish-language film "A War" ("Krigen"). 

Review: "A War" (originally "Krigen") by writer-director Tobias Lindholm

Currently nominated for an Academy Award in the foreign language film category, the 2015 feature film "A War" tells the story of a Danish Army company commander deployed to southern Afghanistan. The movie opens in U.S. theaters Fri., Feb. 12, 2016.

After his unit's morale implodes following an I.E.D. attack, Danish officer Claus Pedersen chooses to leave the relative safety of the Tactical Operations Center ("TOC") to patrol alongside his troops.

From this vantage, Pedersen witnesses the life-and-death results of his decisions, both for the men and women under his command, and for the Afghan men, women, and children who are his mission to help. Meanwhile, at home, his wife Tuva navigates the challenges of raising three young children. When a command decision results in possible civilian casualties, and is questioned and investigated by the military police, Pedersen returns to Denmark for civilian trial.

The film is an accessible, realistic depiction of conflicting perspectives, and nuanced responses to war. Civilians and military superiors have the advantage of hindsight and high morality, and desire to see a situation retroactively resolved as either black or white, wrong or right. Troops on the ground know that there are no easy answers, and that many tactical choices are gray with uncertainty or lack easy ethical reference. Spouses understand the sacrifices soldiers make in their separations, but also live with the daily wear and tear those absences demand of family life.

Despite the high stakes, the film is not sensationalistic. In its content, the film evokes similar events and emotions depicted in the 2009 Danish documentary "Armadillo," without that production's highly stylized soundscape or surreal saturations of color. Instead, "A War" is a straight-forward, somewhat stoic story, in which are distilled many internal conflicts: What's right for the mission vs. what's right for the troops? What's "right" for the military vs. what's "right" for civilians? What's the right answer for legal purposes vs. what's the right answer for family? The movie quietly asks hard questions, and often provides tough, if subtle, answers.

(For a brief Red Bull Rising review of the Afghan War documentary "Armadillo," click here.)

Perhaps counterintuitively, that the film regards military and legal contexts other than that of the United States makes it potentially more accessible to U.S. audiences, and particularly U.S. military veterans. As a foreign language film, a U.S. viewer is likely to see all parties in "A War" equally as the "other."

Freed from internal questions about the verisimilitude of how U.S. troops should look or act (Danish troops are allowed to grow beards, for example), or the proper U.S. court-martial procedures, the viewer-veteran is free to consider the moral questions laying beneath the story's surface. Were "A War" to portray a U.S. military experience, it would be too easily viewed by soldiers as "Us vs. Them."

"A War" isn't about Us vs. Them, however. It's about all of us.

*****

For a trailer of "A War," click here. Or view the embedded video below.

For an Internent Movie Database (I.M.D.B.) listing, click here.

A Facebook page for the movie is here.