War Poetry Book Review: Kim Garcia's 'Drone'

Poetry Book Review: "Drone" by Kim Garcia

In 46 poems, across five sections and 86 pages, poet Kim Garcia offers a panoply of perspectives on how we conduct modern war at a distance. There are poems written in the voices, minds, and tongues of pilots, wives, and targets—something for everyone. And, in the midst of desert images and intellectual constructions, there are also birds and bees and honeycomb. There are slow, meticulous observations of character and terrain, followed by quick strikes of eye-opening invention.

The book was published late 2016 by The Backwaters Press. The collection, on first readings, may feel a little atmospheric, distant, or aloof. Perhaps this is due to the subject matter, or to the book's origins in a 2014 interdisciplinary conference on drones and remote warfare held at Boston College.

Garcia's titles are often presented in clipped, militaristic syntax. Consider, for example, labels such as "Kevlar, Carbon, Quartz" and "Blue Early Morning Snow, Home Front." The cover image seems a similar blend of warm welcome and cold efficiency. The soft, matte photograph reproduces an Afghan rug depicting bird's eye views of various U.S.-style drones, similar in shape to MQ-1 "Predator" or MQ-9 "Reaper." Each has a tail propeller, and bears missiles under each wing.

Mixed messages. Perhaps this is an example of "Beware Trojan birds bearing gifts"?

Careful readers will be rewarded with a more-human, less-abstracted experience of war than what may be spray-painted on the fuselage, however. Garcia infuses her language with disparate vocabularies, creating inspired moments of cross-pollenated synthesis, such as the Psalm-like "Night Flight, Night Vision." In it, what might be otherwise presented as cold technical descriptions ("white hot parts of the map") are lased with double-meaning, and even punny word-play. (Consider, for example, the dark soldier humor of "toward a corps" mispronounced as "toward a corpse.")

[…] Flying to the white hot parts of the map in mountain dark. Lidless eye

mimicking a god's trick of seeing sinners
          everywhere from nowhere, raining fire.

We are sovereign sight's living hands, dreaming drone-like
          in infrared, grids and pixel-prisons.

Tunneling toward a corps, a vector mapped
          of human warmth, pattern only. […]

Garcia's closer observations of human interconnectedness are wonderfully warm and grounded, even when her subjects are alienation and death. While her contemplations on technology are intellectually engaging, it is her depiction of human experience that lands with the most emotional punch. From a backyard porch, for example, she launches "Talking About the War" […]

while a vet under the Blue Ridge with a red
neck, red arms,takes a battered lawnmower
from his truck and mows the back lawn.

We're foreigners—we know nothing about the land,
where hornets live, the bog near the ferns,
the root run bald on one side from years of mowing. […]

And, in "Old Friends," Garcia relates the loss of Omar, a young Turkish man the poet once knew.

"[…] He would be a father now, not the young boy bowing

and touching his heart, his mouth, his forehead, when he saw me.
He loved the mystics. He had all an idealist's weaknesses, purer

than mind. I would get in a boat and sail across the Bosporus if
my friends could come back to me, still friends, still undecided

about our future.

Garcia's "Drone" is an essential addition to the growing number of 21st century war poetry collections, and delivers a truth-seeking payload to a target located smack between technological tools and human tolls.

"Drone" is available in trade paperback via Amazon and other booksellers.

Aug. 25: 34th Inf. 'Red Bull' Div. Celebrates 100 Years!

On Aug. 25, 1917, the 34th Infantry "Sandstorm" Division was organized at Camp Cody, New Mexico. While the distinctive unit patch was also created by Iowa National Guard soldier and regionalist artist Marvin Cone in that same year, the division did not take on the nickname "Red Bull" until World War II.

The division's birthday is specified as the official "unit day" of the 34th Infantry Division by the U.S. Army's Center of Military History. As such, this day is to be commemorated with stories, displays, and ceremonies of the unit's past accomplishments.

According to Army Regulation 870-5 (Chapter 6, Section 2, Paragraph C):

Each organization should observe its Unit Day as a training holiday and commemorate its history in ceremonies that stress unit lineage, honors, heritage, and traditions, as well as personal accomplishments of former and current unit members. The Unit Day program may also feature such activities as parades, concerts, sports, and other competitive events.

"Attack! Attack! Attack!" Please celebrate responsibly.

The Quest for Combat Kelly & The Red Bull Story

And, just like that, my quest for my comics holy grail was over: "Combat Kelly," issue No. 21, published in 1954. Thirty-two pages. Original cover price: 10 cents. Potentially jam-packed full of racist attitudes and Red Bull history.

Granted, my quest had been a passive one. Something to look for at comics conventions and dealers. Something to browse through Internet auction sites, whenever I had trouble sleeping. A year or two ago, I'd almost successfully purchased a copy—fair condition, yellowed-but-readable pages—but that had somehow slipped through my keyboarding fingers. The seller's asking price had been about $20.

Imagine my surprise, when I randomly found the whole issue had been posted for free on-line. I had been clicking in the dark, and, suddenly, there it was.

Having grown up in the early 1970s, I'd never read any Combat Kelly comic books. Closest I got to war books was a few hand-me-down copies of Sgt. Rock ("Our Army at War") or G.I. Combat. Maybe an issue of Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandoes.

Combat Kelly? Until researching the topic for the Red Bull Rising blog, I'd never even heard of him.

Combat Kelly was a character first published by Atlas Comics—one of the ancestors of Marvel Comics—from November 1951 to August 1957. The setting was the Korean War, which was fought between June 1950 and July 1953.

My search for issue No. 21 had little to do with Kelly himself, but in a secondary "back-up" feature, one that contained, to my knowledge, the only comic-book mention of the U.S. 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division.

Although the unit patch is correct, the story doesn't call the "Red Bull" by name. Instead, it uses as its title an earlier moniker: "The Sandstorm Division." When it was first formed in August 1917, the unit took its first nickname from the weather and terrain surrounding Camp Cody, N.M. Most references say the name changed in World War II, to better reflect the unit patch designed by artist and citizen-soldier Marvin Cone.

The comic-book story accounts for only six pages of the 32-page issue. Ten pages (including inside- and back-cover) are advertisements. There's also a 2-page prose (text-only) story. In the 6-page main story, Combat Kelly and his pal Major Thorn get double-crossed by a South Korean they've rescued from execution, who turns out to be the notorious North Korean agent "Red Mary." Kelly and Thorn escape by flying a liberated MiG jet fighter. Asians are depicted in racist caricatures—agent "Red Mary," for example, is a cross between the Dragon Lady stereotype and Disney's Creulla de Vil. The lesson I take from all this? This comic is a document of its time. I should not be expecting high levels of artistic achievement, nor historical accuracy.

There are three other stories, other than the main Combat Kelly story. One is a retelling of a German horse cavalry during the First World War. "True War Stories that Made History … Told by Combat Kelly" opens with the narrator's statement: "The story of the Battles of Belleau Wood is in all the history books, but it's be a different story if it hadn't been for a couple of Marines who loved horse, and hated heinies!"

Filling out the issue: a 5-page story, art by Robert Q. Sale, regarding Cpl. Cookie Novak's rescue of a Korean child and later capturing the guerrilla "Bloody Mary." The plot—not to mention the naming the principal baddies as "red" or "bloody" something—feels a bit repetitive, even within a single issue.

And, what of the plot of "The Sandstorm Division" story? Drawn by Dave Berg—an artist who would later work for Mad magazine—the story takes place in World War II, during the division's crossings of the Volturno River in October 1943. In history, the operations were in the offensive against the southernmost German defenses in Italy, the Volturno Line. In the comic, the "Red Bull" patch appears five times in six pages—twice in caption boxes, and three times on the right-shoulder sleeves of Combat Kelly and Captain Thorn. (Thorn wasn't promoted to major until Korea.)

Here's how one comics database summarizes the story:

Combat Kelly is on a mission with the Sandstorm Division 34th Infantry Division battling Nazi forces under the command of Captain Thorn in Italy. Fighting Nazi soldiers, Combat spots an enemy boat along the Volturno River and tosses a grenade into it, it explodes just as it is passing under a bridge just as a German supply truck filled with ammo passes over it. The resulting explosion destroys both vehicles and destroys the bridge, hampering the Germans' abilities to get supplies into Rome. However it also eliminates their ability to get over to enemy lines.

However, Captain Thorn calls for steel boats while a pontoon bridge is built to travel across the river with supplies. Along the way Combat and Cookie's boat is attacked by German soldiers. Pinned down by enemy artillery fire, Combat and Cookie use a boat to cross the river and sneak up on the enemy base using dynamite to blow them up, allowing their forces to sends tanks and other vehicles across the water safely.

Unfortunately, other than thrill of seeing a "Red Bull" patch on the pages of a four-color comic, there's not much else that's special about the story. The writers might have plugged any unit connected with the Volturno River into the story. Apparently, they did just enough research to properly emplace their characters in both time and terrain.

The story invites a question, however: I wonder if they somehow got it right that the 34th Infantry Division didn't take on the "Red Bull" name until after the comic's publication date of 1954?

That sounds like another quest!