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MR. TOM PUTNAM: Good afternoon. I’m Tom Putnam, the Acting Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. On behalf of John Shattuck, CEO of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, and all of my colleagues at the Library and Library Foundation, I want to say how honored we are to host this special Veterans Day Forum. And I thank you all for coming.

Kennedy Library Forums would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors, including lead sponsor, Bank of America, Boston Capital, the Lowell Institute, and Corcoran Jennison. We’re also indebted to our media sponsors, WBUR, which broadcasts our forums on Sunday evenings at 8:00 p.m., , and NECN.

Let us begin by pausing for a moment of silence for all those who have lost their lives while serving in our nation’s military. [pause]

Thank you. And I ask all veterans here with us today and any active members of our armed forces, including those with me here on this stage, to please stand to be duly recognized. [applause] We are joined this afternoon by Massachusetts Secretary of Veteran Affairs, Tom Kelley, and his wife, Joan. We thank you, sir, for your work on behalf of veterans, and your presence here with us today.

It is fitting to hold this Veterans Day program at the John F. Kennedy Library for President Kennedy was, in words he used to describe his generation, tempered by war and disciplined by a hard and bitter peace. During World War II, John F. Kennedy lost a brother over the Atlantic and two members of his PT-109 crew in OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 2

the South Pacific. At the heart of his inaugural address, he paid tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice to our country, reminding his fellow citizens that, “The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.” It was not only the memories of those lost that remained with him throughout his life, but also the injuries he sustained in battle. And in 1954, while recuperating from back surgery to alleviate those wounds, he wrote Profiles in Courage . In his introduction to that book, he quoted who defined courage as grace under pressure.

As many of you know, the Kennedy Library is home to the papers of Ernest Hemingway, perhaps one of our country’s finest writers on war. “Hemingway’s great war work deals with aftermath,” stated Tobias Wolff at the Hemingway Centennial held here at the Kennedy Library in 1999. “It deals with what happens to the soul in war and the difficulty of telling the truth about what one has been through.” And therein lies the essence of Operation Homecoming , an initiative of the National Endowment of the Arts to inspire American troops to write about their experience of war in and , to share the truths of what they had been through.

Here with us today are three of the authors whose eyewitness accounts and short stories are included in the final volume. Major Paul Danielson, a surgeon with the U.S. Army Reserve Medical Corps, Kathleen Toomey Jabs, a Commander in the Navy Reserve, and Commander Edward W. Jewell, a radiologist on the U.S. Navy Ship Comfort . I thank all of you for coming today, for your service to our country, and for your contributions to this priceless volume of writings, which I should OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 3

mention is on sale in our bookstore. And there will be a book signing with these authors following today’s forum. The authors will be fully introduced later by the editor of this volume and the moderator of today’s conversation, Andrew Carroll.

Mr. Carroll is the editor of several best-selling collections of letters, including Letters of a Nation and War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars . His interest in letters began in 1989 after his home burned down. Although no one was hurt, all of his possessions and letters were destroyed in the fire. The loss prompted him to realize the value of letters and how important it is for us to preserve them, a concept that is music to the ears to all who work at archives like this one. Andrew Carroll concludes the book’s introduction with words from a non-commissioned officer in the Army Special Forces from Fort Bragg, North Carolina. In response to Mr. Carroll’s question concerning what inspired him to participate in an Operation Homecoming workshop, the soldier replied, “This is the first time anyone’s ever asked us to write about what we think of all that’s going on.”

It is now my pleasure to introduce Jon Parrish Peede, the Counselor to the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Director of the Operation Homecoming program, to share a few words about the genesis of this exceptional initiative. Jon. [applause]

JON PARRISH PEEDE: Thank you, Mr. Putnam. On behalf of the NEA Chairman, , and all my colleagues in Washington at the Arts Endowment, I want to thank you for having us here. And I want to thank the OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 4

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum for sponsoring and organizing today’s events.

It is fitting that we are here discussing Operation Homecoming at the Kennedy Library for it was the vision of JFK that led to the creation of our agency 40 years ago last month. Indeed, a few months before his assassination, his staff gave him the report that he had asked for on creating a federal arts agency. That report read, “The U.S. will be judged -- and its place in history ultimately assessed -- not alone by its military or economic power, but by the quality of its civilization.”

There are many marks by which to judge a civilization. But one of them surely is how well that nation expresses its gratitude to those who protect it and serve it, sometimes even giving their lives. Maybe the highest form of expressing that gratitude is simply to let those who wear the uniform and their families to speak for themselves, not to have experts interpret them, but just let them come forward in their own voices.

To facilitate this process for those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and for those who supported them on the home front, Chairman Gioia created Operation Homecoming in April of 2004. I was honored to lead 34 writers from Tobias Wolff to Andrew Carroll to , who wrote Black Hawk Down , and others to bases in five countries to talk to our troops and to help them share their experiences.

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In the end, they wrote 12,000 pages. And we didn’t have the government decide what was in the book. We turned, again, to those same writers, to an independent panel. And we asked, one, if Andrew Carroll would edit it. And I think, as you know from his work and as you’ll learn today, he was absolutely the right person to do that. Andy was, I think, consistent with the spirit of the writers, which is to say he did it … gave immensely of himself. And he did this all on a pro bono basis. And I think, today, at the end of this, you’ll have a sense of what he put into it and the power of these words.

Before we hear from the writing, we are going to show a brief ten-minute film that gives a better sense of why the NEA created this project and, I think, why the troops participated and, most importantly, why these stories have to be heard. So roll the film. [Video screening -- applause]

ANDREW CARROLL: [credits and music at end of video playing simultaneously] … this book, but also has become a good friend. And to Amy Macdonald and to Tom Putnam for all the work you all put in this. This project is very much about identifying a new generation of great writers. And I really hate to do this to this young man, but I want to embarrass someone very quickly. Nate, will you stand up for just one moment? Nate Fick … thank you, Nate. Nate, as many of you know, is the author of best-selling book One Bullet Away . And my only regret about Operation Homecoming is, because he was working on his book, he couldn’t contribute to ours. But as we look back on great writers from the World War II generation many years from now, although OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 6

he’s certainly getting his due as he deserves it, we’re going to look back at him as one of the truly great writers to come out of Iraq. And he fought in Afghanistan, too. So thank you, Nate, for being here. I know you’re very busy, and I appreciate it. [applause]

We don’t often have this honor of three of our contributors being here. I want the focus to be on them. They are going to read from their works. But I do want to give you just a sense of the behind the scenes of working on this project. And then hopefully, around 2:00, we’ll have time to hear from you all for questions. So this really becomes as much of a conversation, a dialogue, as possible.

When I first heard about Operation Homecoming in 2004, I thought, “What a brilliant idea, to send these writers to bases and encourage the troops and their families to share their experiences.” It’s never been done before. It’s actually quite historic. And I also thought, “It’s never going to work.”

I had three major concerns. The first is troops tend to be pretty stoic. They’re not readily willing to share their most private, intimate thoughts or go through their personal letters and their e-mails and then send them into an agency within the executive branch of the government. It just seemed a little farfetched to me as admirable as it was. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. They were inundated from day one with submissions coming in not only from all over the country, but from military personnel stationed around the world.

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My second concern, after they gave me this 12,000-page towering stack of material, was what is there left to say? What have we not heard from these wars that haven’t been reported in the media? And I so vividly remember going through piece after piece, and finding stories that I wasn’t reading anywhere else.

We have a Marine Officer, John Berens, who was in the first wave going into Iraq. And he was tasked with taking care of the graves of British troops who had been in before them in World War I. And, at first, he was incredulous that he was given this order to go care for this British cemetery that was dating back almost 90 years. But he wrote this beautiful contemplative piece, this personal narrative about what it was like to work on the cemetery, to have the Iraqis involved, the interactions he had with them. It’s a stunning work of literature.

Clint Douglas was a soldier who served in Afghanistan, wrote a piece called Lunch with Pirates . And it’s about a meal and tea, really, he had with an Afghan warlord who was technically on our side. But we knew, and he knew that we knew, that he was also working with the Taliban, and that they were mortaring our base and sending up IEDs along these convoys.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever had an awkward social dinner with someone. [laughter] But when you eat with someone who’s trying to kill you, it just changes the dynamic. But yet, here they are exchanging pleasantries in this dilapidated castle surrounded by this henchman’s thugs. And it’s a fascinating, surreal, very funny, very terrifying piece, all these in one.

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It’s interesting, in fact, how much humor played into these. I wasn’t expecting that, but it’s really laced through these works. And one of our favorites is a woman named Sharon Allen who served in Iraq. And she wrote a piece. She actually wrote a … We have several of her stories in the book. She has one called Lost in Translation . And it’s about an interaction she had with a group of Iraqis. It was a bit of a sing-a-long. And they misinterpreted a song that we think of as having to do with finding tranquility in the chaos of life and they thought was about a small, green vegetable. And this will make sense.

We work with a lot of Turks and Iraqis, especially Kurds. One of our guys brought his guitar around to the guard shacks and played some American music for them. Sometimes they’d try to join in. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a bunch of Iraqi soldiers, complete with AK-47s, sitting around and singing with gusto as they mangled the Beatles’ Let It Be .

I’m not going to sing this, but I’ll give you a sense of their words.

In times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, Little Pea . [laughter] They really got into it. Little Pea, Little PEA!, Little Pea, yeah, Little Pea, Whisper words of wisdom, Little Pea . That was a good day.

It was interesting to me to see how often the troops wrote about, whether it was Iraqis or Afghans. And they didn’t caricature them. They wrote about them as people. The piece you saw, Road Work , by Jack Lewis, about the death of this young man in a car accident, it’s very powerful. And we have another young soldier, Ross Cohen, who fought in Afghanistan. And he wrote about this very sort OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 9

of poignant encounter he had with an Afghan man while Ross was manning a checkpoint. I’m not going to read the Pashto because I’m not very good at it. But the translation is here. So Ross actually wrote under a pseudonym of this character named Ginsburg, but it’s essentially based on a real piece.

I started off with a friendly hello, and this gentleman relaxed and smiled broadly.

“So where are you coming from?” “Kabul,” he said.

“Where are you going?”

“Khost.”

“Why?”

Something I couldn’t quite get. I picked up a couple of words for relatives, though, and relayed to Sergeant Feiner (Ginsburg’s team leader) that he was on his way to Khost to see family.

“Ask him if he’s seen anything suspicious,” Feiner told me. This was always a fun game. Not once in seven months have I ever picked up any intel.

“Have you seen anything strange? Any explosives, bullets, weapons? Taliban, Al-Qaeda …?” I droned on in a playful monotone. He smiled, getting the joke, and vigorously assured myself and Sergeant Feiner, whom he could sense was pretty much the boss, that he had seen nothing whatsoever. Ever.

In the meantime, the Afghan Militia Forces searched him, his car, and his fellow passengers, who were all watching the exchange intently. In a land without television, Americans are actually high entertainment. OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 10

(He says the following in Pashto.) “Okay, you can go. Thank you very much for your help.”

Our Afghan friend stared at me, taking in my dark features and olive complexion. “ So Afghani, eh ?”

“Nah. Ze Amrikayan yam ,” I teased him, pointing to the flag on my right shoulder. “I’m not Afghan. I’m American.”

“So Musulman, ye ?””

“Nah. Ze Yehud yam .” I’m not Muslim. I’m Jewish.”

Silence.

Finally, from the driver. “Sha Musulman !” Be Muslim! Yes, of course. I smiled my most friendly of American smiles, which has been transforming the world for generations, and explained that I actually liked being Jewish, that my dad was Jewish, my mom was Jewish, my sister was Jewish, my brother was Jewish.

He cut me off and said, “Yes, yes. I understand.” But then he added, “We are like cousins, then. We are all children of Ibrahim.” We shared a moment. “Yes, we are cousins. Cousins.” He reached out to shake my hand and did the same with Sergeant Feiner. And he got back into his car and drove off.

Now I know from Ross that that was a very moving experience. I can’t speak for the Afghan gentleman. But when you think of all that’s going on in the world today, it’s a rather moving reminder that we, after all, all are cousins.

One of the most admirable things the NEA did when they began Operation Homecoming was include the home front. And this is not an obvious choice. They OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 11

often get overlooked: the spouses, the parents, children, all those impacted back here who pace the kitchen floor, who wait for the phone to ring or, God forbid, the knock on the door.

And we very much -- and I remember going through these submissions -- wanted to make sure that that perspective was represented as powerfully as possible. And I think, throughout the book, it covers many different aspects of it. But we had to face the ultimate sacrifice that so many of these families make.

And we came across a piece by a woman named Christy De’on Miller. She mostly goes by De’on. And her son was fighting off in Iraq, and she turned on the news one morning. It was about 4:00 a.m. She got up early. And CNN had reported that a Marine was killed. Now, she knew it wasn’t her son. But it was just that sense of knowing what this mother, somewhere, was going through. And she wrote a letter to Aaron that morning just to say, “I’m thinking about you. And I’m so sorry to hear the news that one of your fellow Marines was killed,” and so forth. And this piece is about what happens after that. And, unfortunately, I can only read just a few quick excerpts. But I think it will give you a sense of what she was going through.

It was around 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. when the two Marines …

Sorry, De’on has become a bit of a friend.

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… drove up to my house. (She was wrong about the news.) At first, I thought it must be a friend coming to visit, but after mere moments, my eyes made the adjustment.

My mind wasn’t far behind.

The non-commissioned officer began to approach me. He began, “Ma’am, are you Christy Miller?”

That Christy has always thrown me. Only government agencies, debtors or new teachers have ever called me by my first name. It’s rarely been used to bless me with good news.

“What? What did you ask me?” I think I was hollering. I thought he had said “Kristen Miller.” No. No, I wasn’t that person. I saw sympathy. He asked me again. Time and space and neighbors and dogs … (She was out walking her son’s dog) … everything grew into a blazing, buzzing blur.

I couldn’t let the Marines in my home because I just put the two dogs in there. And Hennessey is a pitbull.

“Can we go inside? We need to talk to you.” His wasn’t an easy job.

“No. We’ve got to do this outside.” Mine, still the harder.

After a muddled exchange regarding the dog situation, the other Marine, the officer, said, “Ma’am, your son was killed in action today in Al Anbar Province.”

I said, “My son was killed in the firefight that’s on television right now. He was killed in Fallujah. There’s been one Marine killed today.”

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And there, in that moment, the tiniest and longest length of time, there must have been a mechanical failure, an embodiment of someone’s heart and brain colliding.

“Mine,” I finished. Yes, the Marine was mine.

Aaron Cole Austin was born on July 1 st , 1982 at 8:53 p.m. central daylight savings time in Amherst, Texas. Circumcised and sent home on the Fourth of July. He was my breast-fed, blanket-holding baby boy, a little Linus look-alike. He threw his blanket away when he was ten. God, how I wish for that blanket now. It surely would have carried some scent. You couldn’t even bleach it out.

And her piece is about this issue, of her son disappearing from her life. They send her back his clothes. But because they washed them, the smell is gone. They send back his watch. The battery dies. She kept it on Baghdad time because it made her feel connected to him. Little by little, he was going away. And so this piece is about how does she bring back her son into her life? And she ends it with a rather poignant discovery.

We aren’t always sure in this life if the words we speak or those we write will be our last. Long after the day Aaron died, I found the letter I wrote to him that morning, the day he died. He was alive to me when I wrote it. To me, at the time.

“Hi Son, Well the news is bad. Another Marine killed, ten others wounded. I’m just about as heartsick as I care to be. How are Jose, Jamie, Brent, Barnes and Koci? Please give them all my love. The two letters I got from you the other day were a month old. If you ever get the chance to drop Granny and Grandpa a letter, I know they’d be thrilled. Please take care, Son. Do you get to use the pillow I sent any? My love and prayers always, MOM.” OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 14

It’s not really something of his. He never received it. But still, it’s ours. Just as so many things are now ours. I add later in my mind a postscript, what I would write to him if I could. “I miss you, Aaron, with all of me. Every moment, I was, am and will always remain so very proud of you, who you were, how you went down for those you stood for, you fought for. For me. For us. For your Marines, your brothers. They awarded you the Silver Star, Aaron. They loved you too and miss you. I guess I just never really believed that your time would come before my time. But son, you know we are forever. By the grace of God, I will join you someday. I’ll meet the mystery of it all, too, and we will be together. And how good it will be to see you again.”

It would be impossible, and I would dare say almost irresponsible, to do a book about war and not address the suffering that families go through, not address the brutality of war. I said that I had three concerns when I heard about this project. The first was that there wouldn’t be any submissions. Second, once they got them in, would they tell any new stories? But the third was, if any I did receive were very graphic, very powerful accounts, which are inevitable in any wartime story, would they publish them? Not once in this process did they put any pressure on me or anyone else to say that’s just too inflammatory. That’s just too tough. That’s too intense. It’s too raw. And this book has some very tough material in it.

I’m not going to read the more graphic passages. I just don’t think it’s appropriate in a public setting. You can read it in the privacy of your own home or wherever. But I do want to allude to one by an Air Force flight nurse named Ed Hrivnak, who talked about a fellow medic who was on a humanitarian mission. They got hit by an RPG attack. And this man was consumed in flames. His ears were burned off. OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 15

And his face was just a red mask at the time that Ed saw him. And I said to Ed, “Why did you write this? I mean this is very difficult to read. And it was probably even more difficult to write.” And he said, “I needed to. It was cathartic. And there were several reasons. It was for my own sense of healing. But also, I wanted people to understand what these troops go through.” And this sense of sacrifice is really at the heart of this book, of what is it these men and women go through every single day. There’s also a real sense of pride that comes through.

And I just want to conclude with the piece that Ed wrote. It’s one of his final … We have a series of his journals. And he describes this scene where a Marine and a soldier are about to be loaded up on a Humvee. I’m sorry, on the MEDEVAC mission. These Marines and soldiers are good at waiting. They see we’re doing our best, and they rarely complain. One soldier, trying to be patient, went too long between morphine shots. He tried to gut it out. He didn’t want to slow down the loading of the airplane. We loaded him on the bottom rack, and he immediately grabbed on to the litter above him. I looked down and I could see that his knuckles had turned white. Tears were pouring down his face, but he didn’t make a sound. I told another nurse to toss me a syringe of morphine, and I took care of him myself. When I returned to this GI, a battle buddy was holding his hand. He was talking softly to him. Their hands were locked together. I quickly pushed the morphine into his vein and apologized for letting his pain get to such a level. But his buddy stayed with him, talking to him, consoling him, until the pain medicine took effect, and the soldier’s hand relaxed. These two were not in the same unit. They were not wounded in the same part of Iraq. But they were brought together and bonded by their wounds. And their injuries made them a part of a fraternity, a private brotherhood I felt privileged to witness.

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Although I had my doubts about this project from the start, if nothing else, I thought it sent a very powerful message to these troops that your voices are what matter the most, and to their families as well. And as much as I thought this project was in some ways a tribute to them, I have now come to realize, since I’ve been immersed in it, that we are the beneficiaries. Because what these troops and their families have created is real literature. These are works of art. These are not just ... These men and women are not just stenographers recording what they’ve seen. They have crafted something of value that’s timeless. And like all great works of art, they transcend any one subject. These are not just about war. They’re about resilience and grief and faith and hope and all these different emotions that every one of us, I think, can identify.

There has been a kind of personal joy and heartbreak to working on this project. The joy is seeing this new community of writers. I really think this is the next generation of Vonneguts and Mailers and Tim O’Briens. The heartbreak is thinking -- because this is the first time this has ever been done -- of all the other troops from past wars whose voices were not recorded. But as frustrating as it is to think of that, it is extraordinary and, in fact, exhilarating to think, now that this idea is out there, of everything that is still to be written and has yet to be found. Thank you all very much. [applause]

So I would now like to introduce, one by one, our three writers, our authors. And I’ll actually have them say their names and who they are and preface the pieces that they have written.

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COMMANDER EDWARD M. JEWELL: Good afternoon. My name is Ted Jewell. I’m a doctor who has been in the Navy for 23 years. Towards the end of my career, I was stationed onboard the hospital ship, the USNS Comfort . I kept a diary during the war. And my diary was submitted to the writing project. And that is my contribution to the book.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL PAUL D. DANIELSON: My name is Paul Danielson. I’m a surgeon in the U.S. Army Reserve. And I was deployed to Iraq in 2003 as part of a Forward Surgical Team. And my piece is about homesickness and a particular patient that we took care of during the conflict.

COMMANDER KATHLEEN TOOMEY JABS: My name is Kathleen Toomey Jabs. I’m a Commander in the Navy Reserve. And my piece is entitled Safekeeping . It’s a fictional account of a Navy person who’s been called to Iraq and bringing her child home to stay with her parents so she can deploy.

MR. CARROLL: We’re going to start with Ted.

COMMANDER JEWELL: Again, my submission was a journal and the entries are dated. Again, my name is Ted Jewell. I’m a doctor. I’m a radiologist. I was in the United States Navy for 23 years. Towards the end of my career, I was sent onboard the USNS Comfort, which is a hospital ship. And I was there for the months of March and April 2003 during the beginning of the war until organized combat was over. I kept a journal. And my journal was accepted in the book. So, first entry. OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 18

March 28 th A sickening sight: a helicopter’s downwash blows a stack of letters overboard. Who knows what was lost? Family photos? Last letter to save a troubled relationship? A fat check? Notice of tax audit? We’ll never know. That’s war.

So far, we have received minimal casualties. The doctors are all bored from underutilization, but the surgeons seem particularly restless. There are so many of them and not enough cases to fill their time.

March 29 th Old Navy jargon “belay my last,” meaning disregard my last statement, applies to my commentary from yesterday. We got creamed with fresh casualties last night, 30 new patients, both sides, American and Iraqi, all needing immediate and significant intervention. The injuries are horrifying. Ruptured eyeballs. Children missing limbs. Large burns. Grotesque fractures. Gunshot wounds to the head. Paraplegics from spine injuries. The number of X-ray studies performed last night in a short period of time is so great it causes the entire system to crash under the burden of electronic data it is being fed.

Our patients are mostly Iraqis. Along with their combat wounds, they are dirty, undernourished and dehydrated. One rumor says that we will treat all the wounded Iraqi EPWs -- enemy prisoners of war, that is -- for the duration of the war, and these are the only patients we will see. If true, this would, in effect, make the Comfort a prison hospital ship. The corpsmen on the wards have to guard the prisoners and keep them from communicating with one another to prevent rebellion. As medical people, we are trained to care for the sick; it is difficult to stay mindful that these patients, our patients, are the enemy and could fight back against us.

April 5 th OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 19

The Saturday night entertainment is karaoke. I usually like it. But tonight, it’s just not for me. The room is hot and crowded, and the whole event is just too loud. I step out for air. On deck is a different world. For safety, we are on “darken ship” status now. This means no external lights, and all windows are covered to block light transmission. The night is moonless. The sky is only a slight haze. It is very, very dark outside. So dark my eyes need ten minutes to fully accommodate. There is a magnificent display of stars, and the night has a misty impressionist feel. People moving about in the night are just vague, dark shapes. Voices are low. Boys and girls being what they are, couples are forming on board Comfort . They drift into obscure corners. In the water, ghostlike green blobs of fluorescence rise and fall. Jellyfish. Thousands and thousands of jellyfish. They drift and bob around the ship. I watch the stars until my neck hurt. Someone is singing in the dark in a beautiful, strange language. He tells me it is Hindi, and he is practicing for the karaoke competition. I hope he wins.

April 25th Civilian Iraq patients are being allowed to move around the ship more (with escort, of course) as their conditions improve. I saw a teenaged boy today smiling and shaking hands with everyone. As he bent to tie his shoe, his sleeve slid up. I saw he had a tattoo on his upper arm, a fresh Marine Corps “Globe and Anchor.” Wow! Hearts and minds, indeed.

Thank you. That’s what they asked me to read. [applause]

LIEUTENANT COLONEL DANIELSON: Again, I don’t know if people heard me before. I’m Lieutenant Colonel Paul Danielson. I’m a Reservist in the Army. And I was deployed to Iraq in 2003 as part of a Forward Surgical Team.

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Just a little bit of background before I read my piece. The mission of our unit was to move very far forward with the troops and provide life and limb-saving surgery to these wounded before they were transported further to the rear for more definitive operations to correct their wounds. And the problem with an FST is that, when your particular maneuver brigade or special operations unit is not working, you’re bored. And when you’re bored, you think of home. And homesickness was pervasive. And it became so perverse that we were often hoping that we’d get casualties just to take our minds off of what was going on. And there was one particular casualty that we took care of that I wrote a story about. And I’m going to read part of it to you now.

Cueball, our First Sergeant, came around the corner. “I was sent to find you, Sir. They want you to poke your head into the operating room.” My mood immediately improved. I left the doctored MRE and thoughts of my family behind and headed to the OR.

Pooh, our orthopedic surgeon, looked up from the Major’s arm. “His elbow is blown away,” he said. “I think the only thing holding his forearm on is a bridge of skin and his median and ulnar nerves. I can’t find his radial. And I think that this is his transected brachial artery.”

I peered over at the sterile field. There was a huge gaping hole where the elbow joint should have been. The sharp, fractured ends of the bones of his arms and forearm protruded menacingly into the wounded area. The stump of his brachial artery was in spasm. It stood up on end, throbbing with each pulse.

“I think we should try to save it,” Pooh said. With two out of the three nerves identified and intact, I thought it was worth a shot. If it OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 21

didn’t work, they could always just take the forearm off back at Landstuhl or Walter Reed.

“I’ll scrub,” I replied.

Once gowned and gloved, I started dissecting through the mess of damaged muscles and tendons to find the end of the brachial artery. A portion of the vessel had been destroyed by the blast. In addition, the distal segment in the forearm had retracted several centimeters. It was apparent that the two ends would not reach one another. And I needed a graft to bridge the gap.

Warthog showed up having finished with his patient. “I could use your help,” I said. “You want to get to work on this guy’s groin?” A few minutes later, Warthog was flailing away this patient’s groin, and produced a piece of saphenous vein that I could use as a graft. I sewed it in and removed the clamps. The patient’s hand immediately pinked up. I rested the pad of my gloved index finger on the shiny segment of vein and felt the thrill of the blood coursing through the vessel. The graft was open. The repair was working. It was a moment to savor.

We finished quickly and dressed the wounds as Pooh put the final touches on the external fixation device. I then broke scrub as the recovery-room team came in to help package the patient for transport to the combat support hospital.

I sat down on a medical chest in the corridor between the trauma bay and the operating room. After draining my CamelBak of tepid water, I leaned back against the wall and sighed. I’m certain that I smelled to high heaven. I didn’t notice. Didn’t really matter. By that point in the war, everyone reeked.

Over the next few days, we tried to figure out what happened to the Major and his arm. Unfortunately, because casualties were evacuated out of the country so rapidly, the answer eluded us. In some ways, it was better not to know. Everyone was willing to assume that the arm OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 22

was saved. Morale was so high that to consider the other possibility would have been too depressing, especially since that night was such a powerful justification for our being there.

Several months after getting home, I was back at my civilian hospital, sitting in my comfortable office when Pooh telephoned.

“Did you happen to see Oprah yesterday?” he asked.

“No, I missed it.” I was worried that he had some psychological scars leftover from the war that were driving him to watch daytime television. “Pooh, why in God’s name were you watching Oprah ?”

“No, no, no, I wasn’t,” he clarified. “But someone told me that she did a feature on some of the wounded U.S. soldiers being treated at BAMC in . She interviewed a Major who had his arm saved. I pulled the transcript off the Internet, and I’ll e-mail it to you. The names and dates seem to correspond. I think it’s our guy. And it looks like his limb was salvaged!

I swelled with professional pride that our operation succeeded. However, it was what this officer said during the television interview that moved me. When I got home that night, I helped my wife put our two sons to bed before sharing the transcript with her. She sat down at the kitchen table to read it. It was only a couple of pages of text, but in it the officer described lying on the battlefield after being wounded. He was staring up at the Iraqi nighttime sky bargaining with God for the chance to see his daughter again. Then, later in the transcript, the Major went on to share his feelings of joy once he made it home safely, and wrapped both of his arms around his family.

My wife looked up from the reading and dabbed her cheeks with the back of her hand. She had never complained to me about my mobilization, although I know how hard it had been on her. She had managed all the challenges: child care, work, pregnancy -- you name it. She is a strong and optimistic individual, but even at that moment, I knew that she was dreading the day when I would be called for a OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 23

second tour. “You know,” she said, trying to smile, “I hated every minute of that deployment. But it was worth it, wasn’t it?”

Thank you. [applause]

COMMANDER JABS: I’d like to thank Andy and Jon and the Kennedy staff for the opportunity, and also my parents and family and friends who have come to see me here at the Kennedy Center. So they brought half of Milton here!

My story is entitled Safekeeping . And it’s, as I said, a fictional account of a woman being called up to Iraq, who’s going through the airport and must bring her child to stay with her parents. And the story is very close, hits close to home because I do leave my children. My parents just have finished up extended time at my house in Virginia Beach, so I could go and serve at the Pentagon. And my husband and children are home now alone. So I want to offer this up to them.

We’re starting as Brenda Croce, who is the chief, is coming through the airport. She has her son, who is a four-year-old boy named Tommy. And they’re carrying his hobbyhorse. And it’s his first time flying alone. And she has to bring him, drop him off at the gate, and then go catch her own flight, and report for deployment. They have just come through the security guards. And they’ve put the hobbyhorse off to the side.

“What’s the problem here?” asked the new guard. Brenda assumed he was the supervisor; he wore gold bars on his collar. She shot a look at the first guard and twirled the stick horse in her hand like a baton. “My son’s horse.” OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 24

The supervisor picked up the horse and shook it. He batted the handle in his arm and smacked it into his palm. “I’m sorry, ma’am, this can’t go. The handle is wood.” Brenda looked at the sign. “My son’s four. I don’t think he’s planning to pound down the cockpit door. I doubt it would work anyway. He’d have to bat a stewardess first.”

The guard’s eyes were flat. He squinted at her a little and lifted a walkie-talkie to his mouth. She was seized with a sudden panic. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything,” she said. “Bad joke. Forget it.”

She squatted down so she could look Tommy in the eye and spoke in a voice of forced calmness. “Tommy, can you be brave? We can’t take Blackie. I’ll ask Nana and Grandpa to get you a new horse, a better one. Okay?”

“I-- I-- I want Blackie,” Tommy said. His eyes widened, and she saw that he was going to cry. “Not here, not now,” she thought. The time for tears had passed. She took a deep breath. “They’ll feed Blackie here,” she said. “I think it would be too hot for him in Atlanta. You know how humid it gets in the summer. Blackie’s not used to that.”

“Really?” Tommy asked.

“Blackie is a special horse,” she said quickly. “He has secret special powers, like the way he talks to you and the way he listens. If he stays here, they’ll put him in a paddock with all the other confiscated toys, and keep him safe.”

“What’s confiscated?”

Oh, it was the wrong word, Brenda thought. It sounded too negative, and Tommy couldn’t possibly understand. The refrain, Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies flashed through her mind.

OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 25

She had told Tommy only the barest facts about an important Navy job Mommy had to do, all disguised in a story about a wonderful visit to Nana and Grandpa. It was the same thing the Navy was doing with her. Who knew, really, what anyone believed? Nothing was happening as expected, but the orders were valid, and needed to be obeyed. At some level, she believed the stories and all the talk saved you; you had to fall back on them or you would go mad. She leaned in towards Tommy, and spoke in a soft voice, “I meant special, very special. Blackie is going to make new friends. Bears and lions and tigers. Maybe some dolls.”

“Oh,” his eyes brightened.

“They have lots of good food here,” she continued. “They’ll keep him safe and maybe, when we come back, we can get him. He’ll be all fattened up. How about it?”

Tommy glanced at the horse and then back at her. His voice shook a little. “Whe-- When can we get him?”

“When we come back,” Brenda said. “It won’t be too long. Just long enough for Blackie to have a good adventure. And for you, too. A little time apart … ” She stopped abruptly. She bit her lip and pressed her eyes shut. She felt dizzy and a little woozy. Her whole insides seemed to be churning. When she opened her eyes, Tommy was staring at her.

“What-- What’s wrong, Mommy?”

She gripped the orders and stood and shook out her legs. She had no idea how long she would be gone or if she would be back at all. “I’m okay, bud. I just -- I can’t bend like I used to.” She felt her heart quiver and tighten. The din around her was almost overwhelming: suitcases slapping the belt, guards calling for IDs, radios buzzing, and overhead the announcements kept coming and coming. In the midst of all the noise, she heard a slight rustle and saw Tommy move towards Blackie. He patted the horse on the neck and pressed its ear, OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 26

and the scratchy, familiar music floated out. He whispered something to the horse, and then he turned away and walked towards her without looking back at the horse.

“What did you tell him?” she asked.

“Goodbye,” he said.

“That-- That’s it?”

“I said he has to be brave.”

Her eyes started to burn. Everything was loud and bright. Tommy slipped his hand into hers, and she clasped the small fingers and squeezed them hard. Her heart, she thought, had seized. She couldn’t think up any lie to numb the pain. She stood immobile until Tommy tugged on her arm. “Okay, Mommy, time to go.” He pulled her forward and led her into the crowd heading for the gate.

[applause]

MR. CARROLL: We now have time for questions. And I want to thank our contributors again. And please feel free to direct questions to them or, if you have question about the NEA project, to Jon. Or did we just cover everything, and you have nothing at all you want to ask us? And please, if you do have a question, come up to this microphone here.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. My name is Janice Josephine Carney. And I served in Vietnam in ’70 and ’71. And it took me like ten years before I started writing about Vietnam. And I was seeing a doctor in Boston, a Dr. Jonathan Shay, had written a book called Achilles in Vietnam . And he really pushed me to write. OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 27

And my question is do you feel that, by getting so many of these military people in Iraq and Afghanistan to do this creative writing, they’ll be able to cope better when they’re coming back and there won’t be as much Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and so many people burying it?

MR. CARROLL: Let me start with that, and I’ll pass it on to Jon, too. I think one thing that the Chairman said in the documentary is just that is one of the three things that he envisioned when this began, to really allow for this catharsis. And I’ve heard this from so many troops. Nate, actually, has a great section in the back of, at the end of One Bullet Away where he talks about coming home, writing about his experiences, and how it really helps with that process.

And the one thing I want this book to do is to show these are not just marines, soldiers, airmen and sailors. They are somebody’s spouse, somebody’s child, somebody’s … They’re human. And the things that they see, the things that they go through, the traumas they witness and experience, I think are very hard for the rest of us to understand.

One of my dearest friends is in Fallujah right now. And during his first deployment, he watches a five year-old Iraqi boy whom he had befriended, sort of adopted in a way, gave him MREs and candy and stuff, about 20 feet away picked up an IED -- the boy didn’t know what it was -- and disappeared. And he says he lives with that image every single day. And it was only through writing emails back to his family, and then eventually we started corresponding, that he was able to just even sort of cope with it in some way. And I think this project, which is OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 28

why it’s so important to me and I think it’s so valuable, is it says to these troops and these veterans, “We want to hear what you have to say.” So, I’ll let Jon offer his perspective as well.

MR. PEEDE: I’m very much in agreement with Andy. I think it’s no accident that all the people that are really involved in this project, if we went to a base and there’s a Lieutenant Colonel or XO that really welcomed us, I pretty much could tell one thing, that person served in Vietnam. And this is exactly what they did not have the opportunity to do. So we know inherently, we know anecdotally, we know empirically that talking about these experiences will help people. And it’s also no accident, if you look through the front of the book, for the 34 writers, you’ll see time after time Vietnam veterans. And when I talked to the writers about this, I said, “I don’t care about your politics on the war. But when you come to the base, you’re all about serving these troops.” And when we would call a writer, the level of enthusiasm was always higher in those who had been through Vietnam.

So you said, as one example, we do … there are two different trends, essentially, in writing about war. There is the British example of Wilfred Owen Siegfried Sassoon who wrote about World War I and never made it out of the trenches. And their great works of art were produced in that. And then we have, more consistently, Tim O’Brien, Normal Mailer, others who … Ernest Hemingway who took five, sometimes ten years to make sense of it. The NEA never presumed what the right window is for any one person. But what we said was that A) the country OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 29

wants to hear your story, and B) your story is important, and then C) we are committed to helping you, in some way, bring that story forward.

MR. CARROLL: And we should, of course, turn it over to the three of you all for your thoughts on this.

COMMANDER JEWELL: Well, I would agree with everything that you said. People in the military are very stoic. People just don’t complain. They just do their job, and you kind of suck it up. And you’re sucking up a lot of pain when you do that. And it felt really good to me to write all that stuff down. I just felt like I just had to do it for myself.

I also did it because we took care of the enemy. And it was a very unique experience. And I came home and realized that no one knew this story, that the Navy PR people just didn’t, they didn’t do enough with it to tell the world what the Comfort had done. And I felt it was important to do that. So those are the reasons I wrote my submission.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL DANIELSON: I would agree as well. I think you come home with some demons that you have to exercise. And there’s positive and negative ways of getting that emotion out. And this was a great outlet for that. And the encouragement from the NEA and from Andy, in particular, was just wonderful.

OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 30

COMMANDER JABS: I would agree. But I would have to say I do Navy PR. And we do our best to get the story out. [laughter]

COMMANDER JEWELL: Sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL DANIELSON: I guess that’s why I’m seated in the middle. [laughter]

MR. CARROLL: I want to just add two quick things. We do have pieces in the book about people coming home and confronting the demons and some having nightmares and so forth. And I think they’re too modest to say this. But what they’ve done is a real act of generosity because it can be very difficult to tell these stories, as important as it is to get them out, to share them with others. And so many of them said that they were doing it because they wanted other troops to know you’re not alone. And not one person in the book said take my name out of it. To a person, they said, “I want to put a name and a face with this.” And I think it’s really quite generous of them to have done so.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’m just wondering -- I’m sure there’s a lot of areas we can all imagine are very difficult to write about. But I’m wondering if you, as editors and then of course as writers, as specific as possible, saw certain topics, details, points that people had a tough time, just couldn’t articulate, couldn’t flow, couldn’t get their minds around, couldn’t just put on paper that you saw that were particularly challenging or difficult for them.

OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 31

MR. CARROLL: Kathleen, let’s start just because I feel we keep going this way, come this way back. Do you have thoughts on this?

COMMANDER JABS: The editorial process in this book was extremely helpful to me. I was amazed and honored at the careful attention and the way that, through the level of detail, each word, each line was scrutinized, really helped the project come up to a new level that I … I really thank them and appreciate the work there.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL DANIELSON: I would just say, sort of as an amateur writer, you have to write what’s easy and which is what I did was told a story that I lived through, other issues that are harder to get one’s mind around. And perhaps as the other questioner alluded to, it may take several years before we can address some of those.

COMMANDER JEWELL: I just wrote down everything that happened, everything that I thought. I didn’t try to edit anything at the time. When I came home and reworked the thing for submission, it had to be toned down considerably. And the editorial staff also helped a great deal to make it more readable. And I’m sure there is some darkness that I will never, never get over.

MR. CARROLL: What so impressed me about the submissions was the absolute diversity of them. With any war, any subject, arguably, there is both a timeless and universal aspect to it. You see certain themes come up over and over, but then each one is unique in its own way. So, of course, there are stories or aspects of war that we can’t cover, or we didn’t receive, or that weren’t fleshed out. But I OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 32

think what’s so -- and all the reviews have said this of people who have gone through it, especially those in the military -- it’s so comprehensive. You cover so many issues that these troops and their families have to face and confront. And Jon raised a point, which I’ll actually let you address, about the editorial.

MR. PEEDE: Go ahead.

MR. CARROLL: Well we had a big discussion about this on whether we should edit these pieces at all or how should we edit them. And we decided for the poetry, the short stories, the journals and so forth that we would work with the writers very intensely. And we saw them as authors and that this was very much a professional process, and if they wanted to have the chance to rework them. But with letters and e-mails, we did not edit them. We didn’t change a word. We may have cut them down, but we did not edit them because we wanted something in the book that had that raw immediacy, sort of timestamp from the frontlines. And so, those are a little more ragged. There are some typos and so forth. But it really comes through that they wrote them under duress in many situations.

MR. PEEDE: I think, once you read the book, this will be clear. But let’s say somebody … If three people submitted 50 pages each to the book, and one person spoke quite powerfully about missing their children, and another person wrote about camaraderie, and a third person wrote most powerfully about overcoming, let’s say, an injury, instead of publishing 150 pages of those three and having readers kind of get lost in them, Andy would work with the authors to say your expertise is this. And let’s take that seven pages, that seven pages, that seven OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 33

pages. So that’s what we mean. That’s the difference between editing for reading as opposed to editing for content. No one was allowed to edit for content, to shape it in one way or another.

Also, I should say, since we’re here at the Kennedy Library, that all NEA projects, the project materials are preserved at the National Archives, of which this is a division of. And all of the submissions will be at the Library of Congress.

MR. CARROLL: Yes, sir.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’m a D-Day veteran of World War II. [applause] Thank you. I don’t usually get that kind of applause. Most people don’t … the younger people hardly even knew what D-Day was or what D-Day represented. And so, sometimes I speak to groups of young people. And I spoke to a group yesterday of middle school students in Melrose. And I happened to be also at General Patton’s home in South Hamilton when they had a festival there. And there were a bunch of young children there, toddlers and up to about five or six years old. And suddenly it hit me. I said, “This is my legacy. If it hadn’t been for what I and all my other compatriots did on D-Day, they wouldn’t be living here in freedom and liberty the way they are.” And so, I mentioned that yesterday to the young people. And I told them that … Well, I quoted President Clinton on the 50 th anniversary of D-Day when he said, “They walk with a little less spring in their steps, and their ranks are growing thinner. But we must always remember, when these men were young they saved the world.” And so, I conveyed that to the people that I spoke with yesterday. And then I spoke to them and I said, “There’s OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 34

nothing glamorous about war. And it’s up to your generation, and generations that succeed you to find ways to prevent war.” [applause]

I wasn’t actually close enough to the people I was expressing my feelings to. But I was on a stage with a number of other veterans. One was actually a Marine Corps veteran who had just returned from Iraq. And as I was leaving, they all reached out their hands and thanked me for what I had said. And so, that made it worthwhile. So thank you very much for listening. [applause]

MR. CARROLL: Thank you. I just want to say very quickly that one of, I think, a favorite piece of ours is in the end of the book. It’s called 3:00 AM in Bangor, Maine . And it’s about a group of soldiers coming back from Iraq. And they’re very tired. They’ve been on this long flight. They’re really quite frustrated how long it’s taking to get home. And waiting for them in the airport -- I’m sure you all know this because it’s, in some ways, a local story -- are a group of World War II and Vietnam veterans who had been waiting for 24 hours -- and again, it’s 3:00 a.m. in the morning -- just to give them coffee, shake their hands. And it’s just one of the most beautiful stories. And so what I love about it is it shows that intergenerational connection, that once you’re a soldier -- marine, airman or sailor -- you are always that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you very much because I think this is a wonderful program and very necessary for this particular war. And I would like to ask, is it an ongoing program? Because I have a good friend who has just returned from Iraq, who was there because his son was there, both father and son. His son OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 35

was badly injured. He’s just returned. And I wondered if he would be interested in telling you some of his experiences.

MR. PEEDE: Absolutely. The best way, besides talking afterwards, is our website, which is operationhomecoming.gov. And we are still collecting stories for the archives. As we go to military bases. And I should say, this isn’t just a book going to a lot of military bases. We’re talking to service academies. Each base that has the interest or capacity for, Andy or other writers who are going will teach a writing workshop. And I think when it comes time for the publisher to have a paperback, that they’ll even ask us, “What do you have that’s come in since the book has been out?”

In addition, online or educational resources for those that we never reached on a base. You’ve heard some contributors we’ve met in person on a base and through a workshop, but others just mail the work in. And the free audio disk includes just tremendous … We talked about World War II veterans. We had the honor of doing the last interview of Shelby Foote’s life. He was 88. And we interviewed him about World War II. Pulitzer Prize-winner, Richard Wilbur, World War II veteran. So absolutely, please do point your loved ones toward our project.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you.

MR. CARROLL: Thank you. Yes, sir.

OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 36

AUDIENCE MEMBER: First of all, thank you for being here. Thank you for the forum and the ongoing work and the power that this provides our nation. I look forward to reading the book. The question I have are for the military personnel who served. And it appears, from my observation, that there is a qualitative difference in the reception with our military personnel as they come home, especially during this conflict, particularly compared to Vietnam, which I was very fortunate because I was of an age where the lottery was in existence and I got a high number, so I got to go to college. And it’s as simple as that. But from your point of view, I would like your opinion from this vantage point. It seems like, as I observe, people can be critical of the war, but be very supportive of the soldiers in a variety of ways. And I just wondered, as those who have served and come home, what your perception is. Because, obviously, the war continues. It’s not over yet. And so your work is even more vital now. But also, it’s kind of an open-ended, ongoing saga. So just from your vantage point, what’s your perception of criticism, support and how it all fits together, personally?

COMMANDER JEWELL: Well, my experience was very positive. When I came home, I told everyone I had been in the war, and I had just come home. And, you know, open arms from friends and family. People couldn’t do enough for me. I went around town in my uniform. I live in Washington, D.C., a very anti-war, a very liberal city. People were buying me drinks, buying me dinners, free baseball tickets. I mean people couldn’t do enough for returning service members, at least at that time. And I think it’s probably still the same. And your point is well taken. People hate the war, but they love the service people who do the dirty job.

OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 37

LIEUTENANT COLONEL DANIELSON: I would echo that. Although I didn’t get any free tickets, I got a great reception when I came home. And people are still thanking me for what I did several years ago. And I think that, compared to what a lot of other veterans have done, my role is very minor. Yet, I still feel a lot of love from everyone out there. What I would emphasize, though, is I think that sometimes the public forgets about the families of the service members who are still over there now. Especially with a large reserve component fighting this war, there are isolated pockets of families out there who are not on military installations where everybody understands what’s going on. They may be very much alone. And if there is any message that I would say, it would be that people should be cognizant of the fact that there are families and loved ones out there who have people overseas who need support on an ongoing basis.

COMMANDER JABS: And when my husband was in Iraq, we received a lot of support from our neighbors and from my family members, from people’s work, sending care packages to him. My aunt’s company sent something. My sister-in- law’s company sent something. And when he came home, he was treated well. And I think the American people really do understand the sacrifices that are being made and want to help the service members coming back.

MR. CARROLL: Do you all want to make any final comments? Do we have one more question?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: My question is whether there is any writing opportunity similar to what you are telling us about for Vietnam veterans? OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 38

MR. PEEDE: Actually, there are. Some are institutionalized. And, as a matter of fact, this is, I believe, there is the Joiner Center at UMass Boston?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes.

MR. PEEDE: And, as a matter of fact -- and I say this because I think it’s the group that ran that asked us, I think, an extremely legitimate question. They asked it in print, so I didn’t have a chance to do a rebuttal, unfortunately. But they asked, essentially, can the U.S. government, one part of it fight a war and the other part say you have freedom of expression. And they were somewhat questioning whether that was really something that could happen. But through that dialogue, I came to know a lot about the Joiner Center here. And we may somewhat disagree on that final answer. But I’ve gained a lot of respect for what they’re doing. And that’s an example of an institution. Other writers like Maxine Hong Kingston in California has led meditations for decades for Vietnam vets.

I deal with a lot of people in Veterans Affairs who are doing a great deal. The answer is never enough. That’s the answer, I think, for a lot of us: that you find there’s always something more you could be doing. But I would say that looking at woundedwarriors.com and some other things, you really can, and working through Veterans Affairs, look for things. And please, others add.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Would you repeat that website, please?

OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 39

MR. PEEDE: For Operation Homecoming , it is www.operationhomecoming.gov .

AUDIENCE MEM ER: But, I thought you said something …

MR. CARROLL: Wounded Warriors.

MR. PEEDE: Oh, woundedwarriors.org. And that’s, of course, www.woundedwarriors.org . And that’s just a tremendous organization that does a lot of good things.

MR. CARROLL: Anymore questions? Yes, sir.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, I want to publicly thank you all who have put the book together and who have contributed to the book. Your roles are much broader than what you personally have contributed because of who you speak for. You speak for so many people who are doing what you did right now and their families. You’re speaking for so many people who do what you did who are no longer with us, who can’t speak anymore. You’re speaking for so many people who are still with us, and their families, who fought before in other wars, in the wars that have been forgotten, wars that were never acknowledged: Grenada, wherever, Bosnia. You speak for people who are super-patriots, who want to go to war. You speak for me. I was against the war and against the military when I was growing up. I was against the war. I was against the military when I was in the military and stationed over there at the army base on a ship in the ‘60s and ‘70s, protested like so many, got in trouble. You speak for so many people who can’t speak. And so OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 40

many people are going to read what you’ve written or are going to hear it on NPR, like I did yesterday, which brought me here. And from the diversity of what you write, I think you’re going to really touch people who have been forgotten about, and who would never even think, “Oh yeah, this is really important.” So thank you very much.

MR. PEEDE: Thank you. [applause]

MR. CARROLL: I guess we have time for one more.

AUDIENCE MEM ER: I almost hesitate to bring this up. But I wonder, were there issues that, in the editorial process, you had to tone down or avoid or edit out? I have no idea whether this occurs. But in Vietnam there were enlisted men trying to murder their officers and this kind of stuff. There must be plenty of unsavory things. How did you handle that?

MR. CARROLL: In the process, there was nothing that I asked the troops to take out or tone down in any way or that we cut out, because we thought it was too inflammatory. Anything that we cut, it was more aesthetic just because, if a piece went on for 50 pages, we can’t have 300, 100, 500 pages of material for this collection. And we were very candid with the troops about, “Do you feel that, if we ask you to take out this section just because it’s long, not because it’s graphic or whatever, would you like to keep it in?” And in every case -- I hope you all agree with this -- there was no point you felt that we put any pressure on you all to put something in or take something out for political reasons. It’s a very intense OPERATION HOMECOMING 11.11.06 PAGE 41

book. We haven’t read some of the more graphic pieces because, again, I just don’t think in a public atmosphere it’s appropriate because you can’t really turn away. If you’re reading it and it’s too much, you can stop, take a moment, and go back to it. But we do not flinch on the bloodshed and the violence and what goes on. Now, we don’t have any pieces, to my recollection, that dealt with that issue. And I haven’t … I only know of the one incident that happened in Kuwait at the very beginning of the war where a soldier rolled a grenade under and, I think, two troops were killed. But we just don’t have anything written about that, that particular issue.

MR. PEEDE: Last comments?

MR. CARROLL: Do you all have any final comments you’d like to make?

COMMANDER JEWELL: I’d just like to say there were thousands of pages submitted for the project. And I feel really honored that they selected me to be in the book. And I feel great sitting here on Veteran’s Day in front of this big group. And thank you all for coming. And I hope everyone will have a chance to read the book and enjoy it. Thank you. [applause]

LIEUTENANT COLONEL DANIELSON: Yes. It’s an honor and a privilege to be here today. I want to thank the Kennedy Library, thank the NEA, thank Andy and thank the veterans of this country for giving me such a great place to grow up in. [applause]

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COMMANDER JABS: I’d echo the honor and the privilege of being here among veterans, with veterans, and being in the Kennedy Library where you think, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country, and just as a day to think about sacrifice and service. It’s quite an honor. [applause]

MR. CARROLL: Thank you all very much for coming. [applause] END