Title: Surviving Iraq: Soldiers' Stories/American Veterans on War: Personal Stories from WW II to Afghanistan
Abstract: Surviving Iraq: Soldiers' Stories. By Elise Forbes Tripp. Charles City, VA: Olive Branch Press, 2007. 274 pages. $17.99 (paperback).American Veterans on War: Personal Stories from WW II Afghanistan. By Elise Forbes Tripp. Charles City, VA: Olive Branch Press, 2011. 460 pages. $14.95 (paperback).Two recent books by Elise Forbes Tripp document the experiences of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Similar Tom Weiner's subjects in Called Serve: Stories of Men and Women Confronted by the Vietnam War Draft (excerpted in this issue's Editor's Choice selection), a majority of Tripp's oral interviewees were also from Massachusetts, particularly from the Pioneer Valley. In her first book, Surviving Iraq: Soldiers' Stories (2007), many of her subjects were students at Holyoke Community College (HCC), UMass Amherst, and other colleges in Western Massachusetts at the time Tripp conducted her interviews. (At the time, Tripp was an adjunct instructor at HCC.) Unlike Tom Weiner's subjects from the Vietnam era, however, all of her interviewees volunteered for the armed services and all of their accounts focus on their experiences of modern warfare.In Surviving Iraq: Soldiers' Stories (2007), Tripp provides interviews with thirty men and women. She conceived of the idea of the book when her nephew was deployed Iraq in 2003. Divided into six sections, each focuses on a different aspect of the conflict. They are titled: Invasion, Winning Hearts and Minds, Boots on the Ground, Women in the War Zone, War's Lasting Impact, and The Ultimate Loss. The narratives testify Tripp's skills as an interviewer. Both Tripp and Weiner allow their subjects speak for themselves; 95% of their text is direct transcriptions from their one-onone interviews.Unlike Vietnam, however, the Iraq war was fought by an all-volunteer army. At the time of their service, Tripp's subjects ranged from age eighteen sixty. They had enlisted for diverse reasons: adventure, patriotism, extra income, paying for college, defending their country and defeating a declared enemy, as well as to please their families and find themselves. Olive Branch Press offers this cogent summary from its book jacket:These thirty in-depth narratives belong the national dialogue on the war and also a people's history of the war. We find unvarnished views of the war's conduct and its rationales, as well as of its commander in chief and his administration. Soldiers' individual experiences range from the harrowing the hilarious: all the indelible human detail of war. As fighters, soldiers must face urban warfare against an unidentifiable enemy; as women they must guard against assault from their male comrades; as military personnel they live on bases that have modern movie theaters, gyms, the internet and phones, Burger Kings and Pizza Huts, all in the midst of a dangerous conflict. Almost a half a million soldiers have served in the four years of this war, but each story is unique, telling us what it is like serve in war, and survive it.Along with historians Andrew Carroll and Howard Zinn, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns gave Surviving Iraq high praise: This is a 'bottom-up' celebration of the trials and terrors of so-called ordinary soldiers brought that most terrible and transcendent of all moments - combat. . . What emerges is a shocking, moving and utterly heroic portrait of young men and women in impossible situations.1Oral histories offer powerful teaching tools in the classroom, both at the high school and college levels. First-hand accounts provide an immediacy and vividness that is often lacking in textbooks. …
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
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