By Buff Whitman-Bradley
As the producer of the Courage to Resist Audio Project from 2007-2009, I was the person who interviewed the GI resisters whose stories, originally posted on the CtR website, are the basis of the new Courage to Resist book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. I finished each interview with enormous respect for the young soldier with whom I had just spoken. These were brave, smart folks willing to look beyond and behind the official rationalizations for war; willing to take great risks when they determined that in all good conscience they could no longer participate in wars they came to regard as both illegal and immoral.
I also finished many of the interviews with a heavy heart for the damage that the wars had wrought on the bodies and minds of many of the interviewees. By making war on others, we make war on our own young people. This poem is based on one of the interviews. It was originally published in Liberation Lit.
Property damage
On the telephone from Germany
the young soldier says he wants out
He has gone AWOL two times, he says
to try to get the Army to discharge him
and says he’d rather go to prison
than return to Iraq
On the telephone from Germany
the young soldier recalls
the exploded body he saw
plastered against the outside of a house
the chunks of bone
embedded in the wall
“We laughed about the dead Haji
who’d blown himself up,” he said
“You laugh about it, or you cry about it,
or you say nothing and go insane”
On the telephone from Germany
the young soldier remembers
the daily mortar attacks at Bi’aj
and all the memorial services at Camp Ramadi
and the NCO whose head he held
while the medic worked on him
His body was riddled with shrapnel
His jaw was shattered
and his throat torn wide open
“Hang on, hang on,” the young soldier kept saying
as the man died in his arms
On the telephone from Germany
the young soldier talks about the day
members of his platoon killed a dog
that scavenged around their camp
They smashed her skull with a shovel
they slit her throat and her belly
they broke her legs
and stuffed her into a trash bag
and when they discovered that she had a litter of puppies
they killed the puppies too
and buried them
and put a cross on the grave
“They made a big joke out of it,” he said
“and we all laughed”
You laugh about it or you cry about it
or you say nothing and go insane
On the telephone from Germany
the young soldier says
that he has been burning himself –
“just to feel pain, to feel human” –
holding his palms to flame, raising large blisters
again and again
blister upon blister upon blister
and afterwards curling his fingers into fists
and squeezing the blisters hard
When someone saw what he was doing, he says
he was told he could be punished
for damaging government property
You laugh about it or you cry about it
or you say nothing and go insane
On the telephone from Germany
the young soldier says
he has tried to commit suicide several times
with vodka and pills
and when he has asked for someone to talk to
all they do
is recommend pills
You laugh about it or you cry about it
or you say nothing and go insane
On the telephone from Germany
the young soldier says
he has always tried to be good
he has always tried to do the right thing
and now he is waiting for some good times
waiting to stop checking for his weapon
whenever he leaves his room
waiting to stop looking for IEDs
as he drives down the street
waiting to stop thinking that every stranger he sees
might be trying to kill him
waiting for the images and memories to fade
waiting to feel again
without having to burn himself
and waiting for the Army to decide
what to do with this damaged piece of government property
You laugh about it or you cry about it
or you say nothing and go insane
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