Randy Brown

Tim O'Brien owns the title, THE THINGS THEY CARRIED (1990) for his classic book of short stories about the Vietnam war from more than thirty years ago. Now here's THINGS WE CARRY STILL (2023), a similar title, but an anthology from Middle West Press containing dozens of poems and stories written by veterans and their family members. And it encompasses all the wars from Vietnam up through the current "forever wars," which continue to evolve and drag on, well, 'forever,' sadly. The many contributors here - men and women veterans, their wives and children - cover the gamut of things carried or worn. From steel pots to floppy hats to Kevlar covers, pocket knives, dress blues, flight suits and maternity BDUs, souvenirs and ditty bags, pistols, knives and body armor, etc. There are too many pieces of GI gear and paraphernalia and too many memories, from painful to hilarious, in this book to list here, but my God, what a collection it is!

Just a couple that I dog-eared, because they jogged memories of my own. In "Footlocker," Colin D. Halloran reveals the contents of his -

"A 5-pound jar of Skippy, / the latest issues of / SURFING / and / WHITEWATER - ... most of the remaining space is dedicated to an infantryman's anomaly: books. / I can't seem to go to war without Shakespeare, Uris, Whitman, Keats. / I am not a typical grunt / is what my footlocker says."

Me too, Colin. My overseas locker was always mostly a bookcase. And there was always a paperback in my field jacket pocket too, for all those "hurry up and wait" situations so common in the Cold War army.

And one more - Benjamin B. White's "P-38 Can Opener" struck a chord with me. About a very useful little device, olive drab in color, with a folding blade and a handy hole to put it on your key ring. I remember using it on bivouac in BCT, in 1962, to open those cans of stale C-rats, some of them probably from the WWII or Korean War eras.

"... then almost overnight, dehydrated MREs took / the place of the boxes of cans, and P-38s were no /
longer necessary or issued even though they were / the most versatile tool the army had - a can / opener, sure, but also a screwdriver, a letter-opener, / a fingernail cleaner, a hole-punch, and over all, / a small, do-it-all toolbox in your pocket ..."

And indeed it was all those things; and, like White, I carried mine and used it for years. Ah, memories.

I recognized the names of many contributors here, because I have read their books - Christopher Lyke, Lisa Stice, Eric Chandler, Andria Williams, Ben Weakley, J.B. Stevens, and others whose work appeared in earlier anthologies, WHY WE WRITE, and OUR BEST WAR STORIES, both also from Middle West Press. Kudos to editors Lisa Stice and Randy Brown, and also to Vicki Hudson for her fine Introduction. You and all the contributors have done Tim O'Brien proud. My highest recommendation, especially for serious collectors of war lit.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (altro)

SO FRAG & SO BOLD is a thoroughly delightful - and thought provoking - little tome, filled with clever turns of phrase, humor and wisdom. Its comic book-ish cover depicting a hybrid combo of a human heart and a grenade is at once weird and um, well, appropriate, I guess. War writer Randy Brown (aka Charlie Sherpa) weaves his usual magic in these extremely brief 'poems,' haikus and sometimes seemingly random thoughts. Perhaps my favorite is "a Musing," with its two lines: "what do artists call / a group of friends" . Another might be "Winchester," with its "are we done / when we fire / nothing but / blank sheets" . ('Winchester,' btw, is military radio code for "we're out of ammo."). Reading this one, I couldn't help but think of all the white space, or nearly blank sheets throughout this little book, and wondered why a smaller, maybe even shirt-pocket-size format wasn't used. To save paper, ya know? And the haikus? Yes, Randy, I did find myself counting syllables. As in "the only glory / one should seek is the respect / of one's on soldiers" (in "a quiet professional professes through haiku"). Five, seven, five. Yup, seventeen. Sorry, can't help myself. And yes, there is a blank sheet at the end of this collection, so I guess you were done.

I read this little book in about twenty minutes, and going slow at that. Then I read it again. And again. Plenty to think about here, and I did. And I enjoyed the hell outa these 'poems.' Thanks for all of them, Randy. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the Cold War memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA.… (altro)

WHY WE WRITE: CRAFT ESSAYS ON WRITING WAR is a necessarily "specialized" collection, with contributions from more than sixty writers. Like most anthologies, the quality and readability varies from one writer to the next. But on the whole I was caught up in these short essays, most of them no more than a few pages. There are no "famous" writers here, except perhaps for Phil Klay, whose first book, REDEPLOYMENT, won the National Book Award several years back. To the general reading public, however, most of the contributors will be new, although some of them have been working at their craft for years. I recognized several of them, from their books, and through social media contacts. I have read, for example, David Abrams' novel, FOBBIT; Thomas Ricks' MAKING THE CORPS; and SEE ME FOR WHO I AM, an anthology edited by David Chrisinger. I have also sampled some of the poetry of Randy Brown (the book's co-editor, with Steve Leonard), and Eric Chandler, as well as stories by Teresa Fazio and Jerri Bell.

How to write about essays as varied as these? Well, I guess I'll just highlight a few things that stood out for me and why. I'll start with Ben Wilbert's "Basic Training Teaches More than Marching and Maneuvers," in which he notes that -

"For many, the military represents a highpoint of excitement. What they see and do - where they go - during time in uniform achieves levels seldom repeated in later civilian life … Service members and veterans sometimes turn to writing as a natural cathartic response to capture, process, or purge feelings related to the experience."

Indeed. Wilbert's words made me remember all over again, the excitement of my first enlistment, straight out of high school, and my postings to Turkey and Germany - exotic places and heady experiences for a small town eighteen-to-twenty year-old kid. And there was Bill McCloud's comment in "Recovering the Rhythm of War," that "My family still has 52 letters that I wrote home to my parents during my year in Vietnam." Those letters, he tells us, resulted in his 2017 book of poems, THE SMELL OF LIGHT: VIETNAM, 1968-1969. He notes further, "that writing that book had started decades earlier, letter by letter." Again, I get it. My folks saved my letters too. And forty years later I published my own Cold War memoir based on those letters.

And there is war correspondent Carmen Gentile's admission in "Some True Lies about Conflict Reporting" that the "real reason why" he travels to far-flung dangerous places to report on war is "It's a rush." He later adds, "Bottom line: There is something probably seriously wrong with me. That's probably the closest answer to the truth about what I do - and why I do it - that I'll ever give." Now there is some chilling honesty for you.

Afghanistan veteran Chad Corrigan ("Sharing Stories of Service Between Generations"), in explaining why he writes, tells us about his veteran grandfather, who would never talk about his war -

"The Francis Ferreira that I knew was a kind, loving straight-talking retired barber who had served in World War II. Unfortunately his war stories would die with him. I did not want the same to happen with me."

He notes too that his multiple deployments added up to four missed years of his sons' childhoods. "My goal is to fill in some of the blind spots … They deserve to know."

And in "A Passage of Lines: Starting a Literary Journal," Christopher Lyke tells of his late enlistment at the age of 30, when he had "already established a working life." I could relate. I reenlisted at age 32. But unlike Lyke, who was a "grunt sergeant in Afghanistan," I was trained as a Russian linguist and deployed again to Germany.

I still write, although I couldn't call my current output a "literary journal," as Lyke does. It's just a daily journal. As poet and Air Force veteran Eric Chandler notes, "I write to figure things out. I write to create a record of what has happened to me." ("'It' Shoots: Zen and Writing")

These are only a few of the things that leapt out at me as I perused this fascinating collection of essays about writing and why we do it. I also made notes of things from some writers here that I hope to read later on - Teresa Fazio's upcoming memoir, FIDELIS; Rachel Kambury's novel of WWII, GRAVEL, which she wrote before graduating from high school! Or Wayne Johnson's memoir, THE MILITARIZED ZONE: WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE ARMY, GRANDPA? Or more of the several books by Michael Lund, whose essay, "My Grandfather's Thumb," caught me up. But enough. This is a great collection. Especially for enthusiasts of war writing and stories from the military life. I enjoyed it tremendously, immensely. "Bigly." Buy it, read it.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the Cold War memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA… (altro)