War Stories
hey guys, i need some help.
I vaguely remember a while back someone saying something about a guy that used to be in the army. maybe he was a soldier in nam or something. anyway, he begain writing fiction and was of course getting all his 'head authority' stuff from his non-fiction experience. ie; jargon, weapon info etc.
i'm just wondering what his name was. anyone?
i'm having a spike in interest in the war at the present, particularly the war on terror that is still happening in afghanistan. why? well, i work with this lady and her son has just coe back from a 10 month stay on the frontline. shooting people and getting bombed and shit. heavy. she's telling me bits and pieces of what happened, what he's going through etc. and it's sick. and sad. she said he watched the hurt locker the other day (which is meant to be an as close as you can get to real without it being non-fiction account of the war) and said it was nothing like it. so yet again, hollywood and the media has sensationalised the war. i mean, you should see the fucking tv commercials we have running on the tv to join the army/navy/airforce. it's sick. these kids are still young, and they have no idea what they're getting themselves into. and when the get back they're ruined. they can't live in normal society anymore because they have that many anxiety issues and they just can no longer relate with normal people, because i guess, they've seen shit that we have no idea about.
/end rant.
also, i've been brainstorming a story, probably novel length, in my head for a while now. it would be a story about a soldier. but it wouldn't be a war story, per se. probably more of a coming-of-age story, i guess. i'm just fascinated about this and i'd love to use it as a frame to tell a story, a real one, about what these boys are dealing with.
anyway, it's just completly sucked me in, and i'm doing a journalism subject at uni at the moment, and the end of year assesment is a character profile. i wanted to d osomething a bit different anyway, so i was thinking i may try and interview a soldier that has come back from the war recently. only thing is; i probably won't be able to because i don't think they're allowed to talk to media-types. not that i am one. but you know.
soooooo... (sorry guys) does anyone know of any decent books, fiction or non-fiction, that deal with any REAL issues from the war. i'm talking, behind the scenes shit. the shit the papers don't tell you. preferably australian, but hey, i'm open for anything at this stage because i don't think it's the type of info that is easily attainable.
/end complete ranting thread. sorry.
THAT'S HIM! i thought it was Kabol that was talking about him, but now that you've said it, i'm pretty sure it was you, Mike. Legend.
i'll have to check him out, and do some research. try and find out some aussie info.
good stuff monkey man.
Yeah - it sounds like you're talking about Richard Marcinko. Rogue Warrior has a lot of good stuff in it. And it has a Seals Jargon Glossary in the back of the book.
Another good book for behind the scenes info you won't read about in the paper is Chasing Ghosts by Paul Rieckhoff.
I'd recommend Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, the short story collection, not just the story. Some of it's fiction, some of it's nonfiction and it's truly great. The first story is pretty much just listing everything a soldier in Vietnam would have to carry. How To Tell A True War story is great and might be useful for your purposes.
Jarhead's a great book, too.
interesting. thanks for your help. i've found some good interview footage aswell.
appreciate it.
Anything Tim O'Brien is friggin' ace for war stories. I don't know that better ones even exist. But I don't think O'Brien's really touched any of the recent stuff going on. Slaughterhouse Five is still a great war story, too.
I know a kid who was in Iraq. He's scrawny and nerdy and you'd never imagine he was a former soldier just looking at him. He got vacation leave halfway through his tour, ran to Canada, never went back. Now he's a big political activist around these parts, he helps organise rallies South of the border--rallies he can't go to when they happen, because they'll arrest him. So he just quietly organises. And flips houses for money these days, I hear.
He was a medic. His best friend died on a gurney in front of him. One day him and some other soldiers blew up a door "for fun" and these two little girls behind it ended up full of splinters. They were bleeding to death on the ground with their mother watching in horror; he tried to help them, but a superior told him he needed to stop because they had "other orders". They got into a huge fight but in the end he had to leave. They called local medical people for the girls, but apparently the locals usually didn't do shit. His superior made him basically let these two girls die and the "other orders" were to go back to their base and eat lunch. And before he went on vacation leave, he wasn't allowed into some army base restaurant to eat because he wasn't clean enough. All the clothes he had were covered in dust and blood and there was nothing he could do about it.
You might be thinking of Richard Marcinko, The Rogue Warrior. HE was a founder in the Navy SEALs, wrote a non-fiction book and then branched those ideas and stories into a fiction series. Salty language, technical know-how, weapons talk, all of that good stuff.