Voices in Wartime

The Cascadia Student Activities Board brought two documentary filmmakers to campus today for a viewing of their movies and a panel discussion afterwards; both films centered around the experience of American military personnel in the Iraq War and writings that have emerged from their experience. The first, called “Voices in Wartime,” focused on poetry; that second, “Operation Homecoming” explored a wider range of narrative forms. Both pieces were intensely moving and the discussion afterwards, which, in addition to the filmmakers, included a soldier and a medic who had done tours of duty in the war, was provocative, poignant, and much more interesting than the class I would have led had I not brought my students to the event.

Hearing the words of the soldiers in the films and those on the panel afterwards made me cry a couple times but also left me feeling a deeper sense of despair about the situation our country has gotten itself into through arrogance, naivete, bad luck, and bumbling. The human dimension of the war, that came through so well in the personal narratives of people who have been there, made me feel hopeless that any resolution to the ongoing tragedy is possible.

The one thing I did glean was that more killing is unlikely to do anything than lead to additional killing. None of the poetry or narratives presented in either film represented the violence of wartime as a solution to anything.

The piece that touched me most deeply was the final one in “Operation Homecoming.” It was a narrative by a Lt. Colonel in the Marines who volunteered to accompany the body of a dead soldier to the boy’s hometown in Wyoming. He wrote beautifully of his sense of duty and to his fallen comrade and the compassion he had for the youth’s family. When, at last, the soldier’s coffin was lowered to the grave, he said he felt utterly useless.

That’s pretty much how I felt today, too.