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The Journal of Military Experience Volume III Brian Mockenhaupt Managing Editor Tara Leigh Tappert Art Editor Eric Hodges Scholarship Editor Clayton D. Murwin Sketch Artist MEA Production Editors Travis L. Martin Lisa Day Mariana Grohowski © The Journal of Military Experience The Journal of Military Experience, Vol. 3 © Eastern Kentucky University ISSN: 2169-0456 The JME™ logo and copyright is owned by Eastern Kentucky University and is used under license by the Military Experience and the Arts, Inc. No reproduction of any material within is allowed without the written consent of Military Experience & the Arts, Inc. (MEA). All rights to the works in this volume revert to the author/artist after publication. MEA retains the right to republish works in print or online form. Tea Time, the cover art for this volume, was created by Giuseppe Pellicano. The JME logo was created by Luis Jurado. MEA Executive Board Travis L. Martin President & Editor-in-Chief Mariana Grohowski Vice President Lisa Day Secretary MEA is a non-profit, volunteer-run organization whose primary mission is to work with veterans and their families to publish creative prose, poetry, and artwork. We also work with scholars to publish articles related to veterans’ issues in the humanities and social sciences. Our publications include: The Journal of Military Experience, Blue Streak: A Journal of Military Poetry, The Blue Falcon Review, and The Veterans’ PTSD Project. i Table of Contents Page Editor’s Introduction v —Brian Mockenhaupt Non-Fiction Introduction: Non-Fiction 1 —Brian Mockenhaupt Babyface 4 —Winfield Goulden Together 9 —Shield B. Twenty-Three and Angry 12 —Joseph W. Badgett Highway to Hell 22 —Chris Miller The Bear that Stands 29 —Suzanne S. Rancourt Up the Road a Piece 50 —Michael J. Hoffman Engine Trouble 57 —Eric Hannel Spitfire 61 —Winfield Goulden © The Journal of Military Experience The One Left Behind 65 —Elizabeth Heaney They Also Serve 70 —Kathy Brady The VA Hospital 81 —Andrew H. Miller Not Alone 85 —Art Schade Scholarship Introduction: Scholarship 95 —Eric Hodges A Military Tradition Institutionalized: Rhetorical 99 Personification and Anthropomorphism in “The Riflemen’s Creed” —Mick Howard Afghanistan and Iraq: The Soldiers’ Experience 125 —Larry Minear Embattled Belief: The Religious Experiences of 156 American Military Combatants during World War II and Today —Nicholas Pellegrino A Private on the Public Stage – 177 Examining My Grandfather’s War at El Alamein —Laurie James Laker iii Artwork Introduction: Artwork 202 —Tara Leigh Tappert Call and Response: Artwork Active Duty Service 206 Members, Veterans, and Civilians —Tara Leigh Tappert and Kate Rouleau, Eds. In War: An Exhibition by Members of Warrior Art 321 Group —Tara Leigh Tappert and Kate Rouleau, Eds. Artists featured in this volume of The Journal of Military Experience include: Jerad W. Alexander Victor C. Juhasz Robin Brooks Anna Kestava Drew Cameron Iris Madelyn Thomas Dang Stephen K. McCall Jessica Dittbenner Clayton D. Murwin Michael Dooley Richard Neal Suliman El-Amin Giuseppe Pellicano Michael D. Fay Bryan S. Reinholdt Jr. Gregory Gieske Skip Rohde Andrew Godin Patrick Sargent Tif Holmes Erica Slone Aaron Hughes W. A. Ehren Tool © The Journal of Military Experience Editor’s Introduction ‡ Brian Mockenhaupt Imagine coming home after World War II, when one in ten Americans had been in uniform. If you met a young man, the question wouldn't have been whether he served, but where. And those who hadn't served likely knew many friends and family who had, worrying for them while they were gone and trying to understand how the war had changed them. I think I would have found some comfort in that. At least more of the unspoken would have been understood. But today, a far smaller minority of men and women serves in the military, fewer than one in 100, and the impact of America's military actions overseas is barely felt at home. Upon leaving the military we can feel scattered—thrown to the wind—as we search for our place in a world that sometimes seems to have gone on without us. Here we have a community built around an act of reflection—upon our time in the military and what we carry forward from those experiences. This volume of The Journal of Military Experience shows the continuing evolution of Military Experience & the Arts, and the dedication of its founder, Travis L. Martin, to providing veterans and others in their support networks with both a community of shared experience and a platform for creative expression. The first two volumes of the JME included fiction, poetry, artwork, scholarship. and v non-fiction writing. The success of those volumes and growing interest by contributors necessitated an expansion: Poetry and fiction now have their own publications, Blue Streak: A Journal of Military Poetry, and The Blue Falcon Review, a collection of fiction. The Journal of Military Experience continues to showcase the artwork, scholarship. and non-fiction writing of a broad group of veterans and a small number of civilians involved in the military community. The works in this volume span nearly 70 years of military service, from the battle of El Alamein in Egypt to the now 12-year-old war in Afghanistan. Tara Leigh Tappert, who oversees the journal's arts section, describes artwork as “one of the most powerful ways to provide bridges across the military and civilian divide.” Here she curates a wide-ranging and impressive collection from more than two dozen artists working in everything from sculpture and photography to performance art and paper making. Eric Hodges has taken over the important work of building the JME's scholarship section, and I am continuing to oversee the nonfiction pieces in the journal. A heartfelt thank you is owed to the editors and mentors who have volunteered their time to help veterans tell their stories in such diverse mediums. By the time pieces reach me, they have often been through several revisions, with weeks of back and forth discussions between the contributors and the volunteer editors, which leaves me with little to do but immerse myself in the stories as a reader. © The Journal of Military Experience I am deeply grateful that these writers and artists have entrusted their work with us. Whether veteran or spouse, therapist or friend, they have filled these pages with thoughtfulness and evocative imagery, and it has been a privilege to work with them as they labor to tell this rich and complex story of military experience. vii Non-Fiction © The Journal of Military Experience Introduction: Non-Fiction ‡ Brian Mockenhaupt In Tim O'Brien's fantastical story Going After Cacciato, an infantry platoon in Vietnam chases down Private Cacciato, who has decided to quit the war and walk to France. How could they make sense of that? In considering Cacciato's decision, they would each have to look at their own experiences in the war. “The trick, of course, was to think it through carefully. That was Doc's advice—look for motives, search for the place where fact ended and imagination took over. Ask the important questions,” writes O'Brien, himself a combat veteran. “It was an idea. It was a working out of possibilities. It wasn't dreaming and it wasn't pretending. It wasn't crazy.” Of course, it may seem strange to reference a fictional work to introduce a collection of non-fiction writing. But in these pieces I see a similar working through of possibilities as these veterans and others in their support networks grapple with the effects of military service, both subtle and profound. These stories are built on fact and experience, using elements from fiction writing like dialogue and scene building to tell true stories. But even in non-fiction, writers make choices and interpretations. We choose elements to highlight, and downplay—and sometimes our subconscious minds do this for us, especially in stressful moments like ix combat, when senses can be so heightened by circumstance, and memory so selective. Writing is often a sifting through of experiences, as we search for patterns, for explanations, even for guidance. Sometimes just the act of putting words onto paper can bring relief or perspective, helping us make sense of events or share them with others. These are stories of combat, the home front, and all of the small spaces in between—from a harrowing glider flight into Germany, to a young veteran waiting in the fluorescent glow of a VA hospital for his first appointment. We are taken on a jeep drive down a frozen mountain road in South Korea, and a routine patrol through Baghdad that turns surreal at the site of a suicide bombing. A Marine captures his war in photographs, distilled into snapshots in the mind, each with a caption of emotion, and another Marine stands at her kitchen table, loading a pistol and looking back on the traumas of her life as she considers whether to shoot the man who has been stalking and harassing her. Flying into the mountains of Afghanistan for a year-long deployment, Joseph Badgett thinks, “This will be the realest damn thing I ever do.” Skimming through Facebook several months into his tour, he has a stark realization: “My friends weren't changing. I was,” he writes in “Twenty-Three and Angry.” “Once you go to war, you never come back.” The stories compiled here also remind us that the veteran community is broad and that military service impacts far more people than just those wearing the uniform. When we went to war, others came with us, in heart and spirit. Kathy Brady captures this in a © The Journal of Military Experience poignant and moving story about her son's combat tour, and his return home.

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