Editor’s note: Your ProbateShark has a tender spot for our Vets who are in harms way. Granted, this Shark’s only blood shed for his country was by the ferocious Florida mosquitoes. He is still proud of his service. Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com

A Soldier WritesMarch 21, 2013, 9:00 am4 Comments

The End of War Stories

By BRANDON FRIEDMAN

Courtesy of Brandon Friedman Brandon Friedman with an AK-47 in an Iraqi arms room on a captured base in Hillah in early April 2003, on the way to Baghdad.

I can’t remember the last time I told a real war story — the kind you recount with waving arms and an animated voice, impersonating friends you haven’t talked to in years. The kind you really get into.
I realized about a year ago that, at some point, I got out of the business of telling stories. It wasn’t deliberate. They just sort of dried up.
When people ask me about the war now, I go through the motions, reciting lines long memorized. It’s robotic, sterile, almost as if I’m telling someone else’s tale instead of my own.
“When the first al-Samoud missile landed nearby, it was a bit uncomfortable,” I say. “But we expected that sort of thing on the border.” Or, “After the shooting stopped, when we pulled the guy’s body from the car, he was a real mess.”
Many veterans open up about war only after time and distance have lowered the volume on memories that echoed inside for years. But I was different.
When I left the Army after two combat tours, I couldn’t shut up about it. I had to put the memories somewhere. So many were toxic, and I needed to purge. I would tell stories to anyone who would listen.
I would stay up late at night, tapping away at war story after war story. My girlfriend — who later became my wife — would see me in the early morning glow of the computer screen, as I sat staring, motionless. “You’re not even writing anymore,” she’d say. “Why don’t you come to bed?”
“Just taking a break,” I’d explain. I never slept at night — at least not for the first five years after I left the Army.
I used to remember every detail of every story: the words, the expressions, even the time of day. The time of night we crossed from Kuwait into Iraq. What was said over the radio when we attacked Hillah during the march up. The sound of Waseem’s deep voice, in broken English, when he said, “Something is not right,” just before the shooting started. These things were etched into my brain.

Courtesy of Brandon Friedman With two other infantry officers.

The writer Anthony Loyd once described the unpredictable nature of war memories as surprising him at times like a “blood-soaked jack-in-the-box.” And that’s true. It is sometimes like that.
But I left Iraq intact. And then I left the Army. Years went by. I went to grad school. I published a book. I got married. I went on television. I worked for the government. I bought a house. We had a son.
It was a decade.
This week, when I tried to remember the day we invaded, I couldn’t remember if it had been the 19th, the 20th, or the 21st. When I tried to think of the date we sustained our first killed in action in July 2003, I couldn’t remember that with any certainty, either. And when I tried to recall everyone I knew personally who’d been killed in the last decade, I came up with a list of half a dozen guys. But I wasn’t sure if it was everyone.
These are dates and names I once told myself I would never forget.

Courtesy of Brandon Friedman With his platoon sergeant in Baghdad in late April 2003, a couple of weeks after the fall of the city.

Most of my war stories now sit on the shelf in my living room, locked in a 256-page time capsule that I never open. Writing about the war was cathartic and served its purpose. I don’t really go there anymore. I don’t have to. The memories are trapped on the pages, like wasps in a jar. They have been stripped of their intensity, of the associated sounds, smells and feel. It has freed up space on my mental hard drive.
I sleep at night now. I have finally dropped my ruck.
The stories have all been told. And with that, I will step away from the keyboard as soon as I hit “send.” I am going outside with my wife and my 3-month-old. And I’m going to enjoy what’s left of the day.
Brandon Friedman is the author of “The War I Always Wanted” and a vice president at Fleishman-Hillard in Washington. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan as an infantry officer with the 101st Airborne Division. Follow him on Twitter at @BFriedmanDC.

http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/the-end-of-war-stories/?emc=eta1