Behind the Steel

by Joe Carvalko

Excerpts from my latest book of poetry, Behind the Steel, narrate military themes, not to honor or exaggerate war, but to give meaning to what men and women in service face. As writers, who have military experience, we serve an important role of observer-narrators, a tradition that has existed in Western literature for over 3,000 years. Homer crafted the epic poem Iliad in the eighth century BCE, about the Trojan War, and Julius Carv3Caesar reported on the Gallic Wars, in the first century BCE. War themes often exemplify the dualities of grace and horror, or human virtue and vice. Against this backdrop, I have strived to convey the power of emotions of those caught in the vortex of military life on and off the battlefield. In my seventies now, I have assimilated the subject, in ways (as all of us must) that reflect my own experience: as a cold war veteran who served in a combat-ready wing, as the son of a decorated WWII infantry combatant and as an advocate that went searching for POWs lost during the Korean War. But if that summarizes my “official” connection to the topic, Carvalko3my inspiration often comes from less well-documented encounters: Mr. White, a WWI veteran who gave me his gas mask when I was about ten; my friend Pat, dead now, but who in a long rang reconnaissance patrol walked the width of Vietnam; a law partner in the ‘80s, who was committed after years battling PTSD following his service there; Lloyd Pate, POW, Camp 5 North Korea, who spoke truth to power and forced the Army to admit that after hostilities ended it left soldiers behind. I believe that as physical, spiritual and emotional beings we represent the eyes of the Universe (no other creature can do this), and as writers this obliges us to express that which otherwise would be forgotten. Here are a couple of poems from Behind the Steel:

“ETHERING DAWN”

Carvalko2In the winter of 1917, the enemies were two sides to Sisyphus pushing in opposite directions. Each side inhabited the trenches by day and at night they ventured into no man’s land, where gas, exploding shells and bullets filled the void between two sides occupying the same deadly space, each breathing the same deadly air. Yet, down to a soldier, each man differed from the other in how he internalized the fear. Each man charged forward. Each leftover retreated. Each survivor waited for the peremptory and rhetorical question “Are you ready men?” to charge again, in an endless cycle of, cold sweat, foreboding, revulsion, and abandon.

Morning yesterday morning dew
Ethering dawn appears anew
Rolling over marshy bogs
Suspended over fallen logs
Vesicants seem ethereal
Fragrances seem funereal
Gas, gas, gas

Falling into the dark abyss
Condensing into earth’s deep kiss
Coughing puking stinking quagmire
Slimy sweat, vaporous lungs afire,
Where is the air, where is the mask
Where is the chaplain, must I ask
Gas, gas, gas

Never had a kid— or lovely wife,
Want one last gasp to harbor life
To honor burdens before I go
To raise the flag, the fife to blow
To beat the drum, to watch them fall
Face down choked, in a muddy pall
Gas, gas, gas

FLAT AND STILL”

Lay flat and still
Follow life,
On a fallow hill
Flatted feature,Carvalko2
Stoic,
He too, must
Infiltrate,
Seeker of sorts who seeks a kill
Before the morning shadows fall,
Still,
In a game to gain
An unnumbered hill,
Madman’s chorale,
Songs of praise;
Neither spear nor
shot,
Innocence—,
Knows not,
His fated turn,
Rifle,
Squeezed for
mortality
Panned along a line
To define—Inside
The “V” of a bore sight,
To burden the trigger,
Springs and pivots,
Proximate cause,
A firing pin
Into the backside of a bullet
Sliding
Across a cosmos unglued by anthems—,
To fell
My fellow man,
Flat and still.

Letters to War and Lethe

f2Letters to War and Lethe is a collection of poems about war: its deprivations, its strange gifts, and its remembrances. “Whether set in Afghanistan or an American supermarket,” writes Boston-based poet Joyce Peseroff, these poems “upset platitudes and assumptions about those who fight, what they remember, and who speaks for them.” Farzana Marie’s book, Peseroff says, “is an essential addition to the literature of war and remembrance.”

Bruce Weigl, a Vietnam veteran and author of best-selling prose memoir The Circle of Hanh (2000) as well as numerous books of poetry, describes Letters to War and Lethe this way: “Writing bravely and eloquently from the point of view of a woman war veteran, Farzana Marie gives us a vision of war and its more terrible aftermath that we haven’t seen yet.  However deeply sorrowful these songs most often are, we are made wiser by their presence among us.  Not the least important accomplishment in this collection of poetry is a virtuoso performance by someone who understands the entire range of musical options that prosody is and therefore deftly weaves meaning and form together into a richly formal tapestry.  I am happy to welcome you to this fine talent and these powerfully real poems.”

**Pre-order the book here.


f3Farzana Marie is a poet and doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona, where she studies Persian Literature and Creative Writing. Farzana’s poetry has appeared in print and on-line journals including The Rusty Nail, Adanna, When Women Waken, Fourteen Hills, and Blue Streak: a Journal of Military Poetry as well as anthologies including The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home (Holy Cow! Press, 2013). She is also the author of the nonfiction book Hearts for Sale! A Buyer’s Guide to Winning in Afghanistan (Worldwide Writings, 2013). Farzana served over six years on active duty in the U.S. Air Force, including two consecutive years deployed in Afghanistan. She now serves as president of Civil Vision International, a nonprofit charitable organization focused on positively influencing international relationships through connecting, informing, and inspiring citizens.

Follow Farzana on Twitter @farzanamarie or check out CVI’s website, www.civilvision.org


Author Contact:
Farzana Marie
farzanamarie@gmail.com / 520-303-4650 / cell 719-351-5991
Twitter @farzanamarie
3616 W Cantaloupe Dr. / Tucson, AZ 85741

Publisher Contact:
Leah Maines, Editor
LeahMaines@aol.com / Finishingbooks@aol.com www.finishinglinepress.com / 859-514-8966 / Twitter @FLPress
Finishing Line Press P.O. Box 1626 / Georgetown, KY 40324

 

Spotlight: David P. Ervin and Leaving the Wire: An Infantryman’s Iraq

When I got into the room and took all my gear off it hit me hard.  What exactly it was that hit me I could only describe as an avalanche of horror and hopelessness.  I felt like I was trapped in my own death.  There was no way out, and I had to play the dice game over and over.  It didn’t matter if it happened today, tomorrow, or in the coming months, but it was going to happen, and it was going to be painful, brutal, and ugly.  As much as I tried, I couldn’t muster up another thought.  It was just all so fucked up, I thought.  There was nothing good about this place except for surviving a patrol, and when that happened it just meant that you’d be right back out there the next day.  The tears began to well up, but then reason took over.  I lit a cigarette.

–excerpt from Leaving the Wire: An Infantryman’s Iraq

David P. Ervin served as an infantryman in the Iraq War in 2005. But it was a Thanksgiving dinner with his family that made him write about it. 

He describes that day as one of those in which “the walls seemed like they were closing in and the anxiety kept ratcheting up.” Continuing, David relates the aftermath of wartime service in a way that many veterans are all-too-familiar with:

My family was gathered together for Thanksgiving and I was there. But, at the same time, I wasn’t.  I went outside for a smoke, and my younger brother followed me out.  He asked if I was OK.  I just told him it was a bad day, head stuff, and that I would be fine.  Then he asked me a really simple question, “Where does it all come from?”

David claims that non-veterans like his younger brother have “no frame of reference” for understanding what is endured during service. Upon returning home, he majored in history because he was drawn to the work of preserving the stories of veterans. But it was the disconnect he saw between those who’ve served and those who’ve not that made him want to write his own history:

It dawned on me after he asked his question that I hardly understood what had happened to me.  I served as an infantryman from 2002-2006, and did a tour in the Sunni Triangle just south of Baghdad for OIF III.  We saw it all there.  My company, Echo Troop 2-11 Armored Cavalry Regiment, took five KIA and several more wounded.  Most of us who came back are haunted by what happened there.  Nothing really made sense, even though I knew I’d experienced what amounted to the essence of the Iraq War; IEDs, mortars and rockets, car bombs, snipers, sectarian violence, and all the rest.  I remembered it well, so I figured if I wrote about it maybe I could understand.  Maybe I could get to the root of the things troubling me and start dealing with them in a real, tangible way. 

David recently completed Leaving the Wire: An Infantryman’s Iraq, an account of his experiences there in Iraq circa 2005. 

I wrote about everything.  I didn’t pull any punches, and I forced myself to make it emotionally honest and as graphic as the experience itself.  I write about being scared out of my wits, callous to the horrors witnessed by others, and the conditioning I put myself through to make it out of there without snapping. 

He understands that he’s entering a market filled with stories of special operations, the invasion, and some of the larger battles of the war, but I he feels that his story of the “average” experience isn’t out there. 

The majority of combat veterans are dealing with an experience that was fairly typical for the war but not so sensational that it would garner a blockbuster movie status.  Their story needed to be told, too, though, and I figured if I could tell mine it might help people “get it.” After studying history in college I knew that the only way we had an idea of what the past was like was from the written record of people who experienced things.  In a way this was making sure what we did was remembered. 

At the moment, David is working with his fellow veterans in one of Military Experience’s online writing groups. This group will lead to the production of Blue Nostalgia, a collection of stories about post-traumatic growth and resiliency produced by The Veterans’ PTSD project. The anticipated release date for that collection is December 2013. You can find Leaving the Wire as an e-book in late October. Follow his continued journey as an author and veteran on Facebook here.

Flashes of War by Katey Schultz

I’d like to share an excellent book. Katey Schultz’s 2013 Flashes of War a collection of 31 fiction short stories offering multiple perspectives to the Middle Eastern conflicts of Iraq and Afghanistan.

I found this book to offer an accessible “insider” view of common military experiences. Take for example the piece “MREs”; in MREs Schultz writing style embodies the humor of military-service personnel though she personally has no military experience. The lingo and humor of pieces like MREs and others in her collection provide an insiders view for outsiders like me (a lowly civilian).

Flashes of War is an excellent collection for those that teach war literature in that it is funny, touching, engaging, intelligent, and highly accessible to the insider world of the “military experience.”

I highly recommend it. Read and enjoy. Oh, and let me know what you think when you’re done!

Contact me:
@maregrohowski (Twitter) | VP@militaryexperience.org (email)