In their March/April 2009 edition (online), STANFORD Magazine published this brief essay, a rebuttal to my own perspective, Email from Iraq, from five years earlier.

“. . . . I have not been victimized by my military experiences, or by the Army. Claiming so is such a common refrain among veterans I’ve been tempted to adopt it, simply because it would require less explanation. In truth, I’ve benefited from my experiences. I have no complaints about pay, though I would likely have done better following through with my long-forgotten computer science degree. I haven’t suffered from shortages in benefits or care, though I don’t doubt others have. I enjoy the respect and credibility veterans seem to get for free and entirely independent of their competence. I’ve made many friends, and got to bear witness to that mysterious and heavily mythologized thing called combat. The great responsibilities I’d been entrusted with—leading men in combat as a platoon leader, preparing paratroopers as a jumpmaster, serving as a diplomat with Iraqi councilmen or Afghan tribal leaders—taught me much about myself and about people.

I think the breadth and depth of these responsibilities overwhelmed my perceptions when I wrote “E-mail from Iraq.” To me, now, it reads like war propaganda—a demonstration of the goodwill, energy and character of war’s participants, while beckoning the reader to ignore how we got there. . . .” (Read more at STANFORD Magazine)

From the Lava Tower, we began a two-and-a-half day traverse of Kili’s southern slope. That afternoon, we descended to the beautiful Baranco camp, with steep cliffs on either side of the broad valley, the snows of Kilimanjaro peaking through the clouds behind us, and villages glimmering through the blue haze on the distant plane to our front.

Cartoon-like trees called Senecio Kilimanjari in my guide book stood throughout the valley.

The porters, who’d walked directly from Shira to Baranco, had already set up camp. They rested in their crowded little tents or stood with hands in their pockets, joking with one another.

I was lucky. My body adjusted well to walking and altitude and I had been wondering if it wouldn’t be truer to the spirit of adventure to carry my own tent, food, fuel, but I quickly grew accustomed to the luxury porters provide.

My only task upon arrival at camp was unzipping the door of the tent they had pitched, pulling some belongings from my pack, and waiting for the assistant cook to summon me in his broken English to dinner. (Read more from GoNomad.com)

Also, see more photos here.

I don’t imagine too many people would vacation nowadays in Afghanistan, especially not in Kunar Province, but maybe. The most likely (and cheap) way for an American to get there is to be in the Army, or, as in my case, get called back to the Army after three years of civilian life for one more combat tour.

Bull Hill was the name of one of the observation posts overlooking my base. Usually, we changed guards on Fridays, because Fridays are the weekend in Islamic countries, and a good day to reorganize. There were generally fewer attacks.

Also, since we were a Provincial Reconstruction Team and did business with local government officials, tribal elders, contractors and other Afghan big shots, there wasn’t often reason to run missions on their weekend. . . .

Anyway, Bull Hill. Occasionally, I joined the soldiers making the climb to relieve last week’s guards. . . . (Read more on GoNomad.com)

I arrived in Bagram Air Force Base (BAF), Afghanistan on Sept. 27th, 2008, and over the course of two days, turned in my ammunition and sat through briefings about vehicle safety, family discord, suicide awareness, and mental health. Collectively, soldiers call them the “don’t-beat-your-wife classes.”

BAF is a sprawling military base full of shipping containers, new construction, gravel fields, military vehicles, hangars, fast food restaurants, Port-A-Johns and strangers in Army, Navy, Marine, Air Force, French, Polish, and Egyptian uniforms, or with Lockheed Martin t-shirts, or Slavic accents and Kellog Brown & Root (a subsidiary of Haliburton) ID tags hanging from their necks. People would salute me and wear reflective belts at night, which, having newly arrived from the highly kinetic Kunar Province, felt ridiculous. (Read more of my essay on atlantic.com)

Well, almost a year after my tour of the Holy Land, I published the essay about my trip. It’s long – almost 8,000 words. Two fairly well-known magazines expressed interest, then said no. Finally, the great travel-writing website, GoNomad.com published it. I’m very proud of this essay.

A Brief Tour of the Holy Land

     Last summer, my friend Steffen and I decided to follow through on plans to visit Israel and the Palestinian Territories. We wanted to see what all the fuss was about, and went despite the war between Israel and Lebanon that had just begun.
     We happened to be Iraq veterans – in addition to fishing partners, drinking partners, each other’s wingmen, concerned citizens of the world, and students of the Arabic language, which was how we met at the University of Iowa. Officially, I was an M.F.A. student in the Writers’ Workshop. Steffen was moving to Jordan to continue studying Arabic, so it seemed a natural detour for him, and I still had deployment money left from my time in Iraq. I promised my mother to not get hurt, and to stay away from the actual fighting in Lebanon, Northern Israel, and Gaza. (more)

“Email from Iraq” was originally published in Stanford Magazine March/April 2004.

About the Essay: Stanford solicited me for their “alumni notes” section. When I told them that I was an infantry officer in the 82nd Airborne Division serving in Iraq, they suggested I write about my experiences for them. I had limited access to email, and our correspondance took weeks. By the time I agreed, they reneged their invitation because they had another veteran alumni. The fact of her being a woman aparently blew my chances out of the water. (her story) Some time later, the editor(s) changed their mind again, and I wrote the essay below.

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“Email From Iraq”

I’m always scared before a jump. Paratroopers in films never seem to have any equipment, other than their parachutes. In the 82nd Airborne Division, we have lots of it, and it’s very heavy. It feels even heavier because we jump tired, in the dead of night; because of the heat in the aircraft, the crowding, the wait for the green light, the plane swaying to align itself with the drop zone; and because the guy next to me is always airsick. Just before the jump, my mind often wanders back to the Farm, to the difficult nights I spent massaging lines of code in Sweet Hall, or struggling through the Physics 60 series. I don’t need to be here, but the green light comes on before I take that line of thought to its logical conclusion, and I stumble out the door. (Read more: Original Version|Published Version)