Reporters have, understandably, not been spending much time in certain parts of Iraq. It's too dangerous -- even for the most foolhardy among them. But soldiers are there. And they're often online and chatty. The result is the proliferation of what has come to be known as milblogs -- and a new book, Matthew Currier Burden's The Blog of War: Front-Line Dispatches from Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, anthologizes some of the best of them.
Milblogs exist mainly because of looser military restrictions on soldiers during the earlier stages of the conflict in Iraq, which allowed them to write more freely about their experiences. The results have been intriguing. There may be no other war that's been more photographed, reported on, filmed, and written about -- by soldiers. The Blog of War is an attempt to compile the work of these Kevlar-clad correspondents. Soldiers, officers, medics, a chaplain, and other military personnel write about camel spiders, scorpions, an Iraqi tea ceremony, and the challenges of handling concertina wire while you're wearing a vest, helmet, and goggles; they also cover military contractors, mortar attacks, intelligence-gathering, and the terror of battle. The result is mixed.
One problem is the title. In fact, the entries don't really seem like blog postings. They're months or years out of date, rather lengthy, and, as published work on dead tree, seem removed from the fast-changing blogosphere. And the writers don't seem, for the most part, caught in the fog of war, despite the book's pun and despite the fact they're often posting entries after a day spent in the thick of it. Rather, they seem cool-headed and often -- though not always -- reflective. Partly as a result, the book's short excerpts read more like e-mails, postcards, and truncated, down-market versions of Conde Nast Traveller pieces rather than blog entries. But that's not a bad thing. Like the more literary, letter-writing genre, the entries are often funny, touching, intimate, and -- not surprisingly, given the subject matter -- quite wrenching.
One officer, Staff Sergeant CJ Grisham, writes about his work as a military intelligence analyst for the 3rd Infantry Division. He is responsible for collecting information on the insurgency -- sometimes by rifling through the pockets of enemy fighters killed in battle in Karbala, Falluja, and other cities. “The worst part was searching the guys that had obviously been dead for a while,” he writes.
One day, a platoon leader brings him a document that had been dropped by an Iraqi man while soldiers were patrolling the area. The platoon leader -- a less experienced soldier -- watches as Grisham spreads the document out and shows him and other soldiers how the circles drawn on the paper seem to represent underground bunkers. Certain lines, it appears, show entry routes into Baghdad, Grisham explains. Then he unfolds a corner of the document, showing “Pattern No. 326” -- sewing instructions for a little girl's dress.
“Everyone in the room burst into laughter, something you could tell everyone was trying hard to avoid throughout my entire presentation,” Grisham writes. “And we made sure that we got it all on film.”
Other entries, too, show the difficult, sometimes absurd, nature of trying to figure out the enemy in Iraq -- especially since he's often nameless and faceless, hiding in the shadows. Sergeant Michael Durand of the California Army National Guard, stationed in Iraq with the 3rd Infantry Division, describes one evening when an unknown vehicle drives down a cordoned-off strip of road. “It could be a drunk, or somebody that just doesn't give a damn about the curfew or it could be full of AK-wielding bad guys,” he writes. Minutes pass. Finally, the driver says he has a sick woman in the car and wants to get to the hospital. Durand sends him away. It had been a close call. The results could have been tragic for the driver -- and life-changing for Durand.
“For every shot fired we have to fill out sworn statements outlining exactly what we did, hoping that someone who never leaves the safety of the wire of the FOB [Forward Operating Base], Fobbits we call them, thinks you acted and performed in just the right manner,” he writes. “If they don't, you can find yourself up on charges, if you're lucky. On your way to Leavenworth, if you're not.”
There are some weak entries. One woman, Sarah Elizabeth Walter, cites an Armed Forces Network commercial in a piece about her husband, an armor officer in the 1st Infantry Division: “Every generation has its heroes. This one is no different.” True. But it'd be nice to know more about this particular hero. She doesn't provide that.More often, though, the pieces give a vivid sense of life in the military -- a picture rarely captured in news accounts. The author, Burden, is a Thucydides-quoting former Army major, and he writes about his close friend, Major Mathew E. Schram. Schram, as we discover, was killed by enemy fire while accompanying a convoy in western Iraq on May 26, 2003.
“Major Schram's convoy had been followed by a car transporting a reporter,” Burden writes. “Once the action began, the reporter and his driver turned and got the hell out of there. If it weren't for Mat's charge up into the ambushers, they never would have made it out of there alive. The reporter never wrote a story about my good friend, Mat, the man who saved his life. That wasn't news.”
Unfortunately, the military rules governing Internet web sites and blogs changed during the course of the book. Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, chief of staff of the Army, announced in 2005 that military personnel needed to show more caution in what they posted on the Web. “The effect of the guidance has been to restrict the majority of military blogs and put an end to some blogs altogether," writes Burden. Luckily, many of the blog postings from a less restricted time are now preserved in this book. Despite a few glitches, the collection is riveting.
The Blog of War, as Burden makes clear, is for his friend Major Schram and all the other men and women who have sacrificed their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's not enough, of course. But it's a worthy tribute.
Tara McKelvey is a Prospect senior editor.
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to The American Prospect here.
Support independent media with a tax-deductible donation here.