By Clyde Haberman The New York Times
He was a civilian again, four months back from Iraq. Yet he still wore his dog tags. The metal clinked against his chest, announcing that the Army remained part of him.
“I’m not a writer,” he said. He sounded almost apologetic. He was about to read aloud from something he had written, and he was a bit on edge.
No need. His audience was just like him: 12 other men and 2 women who had known war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and wanted to write about it. That desire had led them to a Greenwich Village town house and a workshop for veterans run by New York University’s Creative Writing Program.
On this afternoon, they had 30 minutes to write a short piece of fiction about someone who is forced to make choices. For the man with the dog tags, a former Army specialist uninterested in seeing his name in print, fiction was rooted firmly in reality.
He wrote about going on patrol with a chest-thumping lieutenant who fell apart and became totally useless once the bullets started flying. Yet this officer wound up being decorated with medals that included a Bronze Star for valor. “So I guess cowards with big mouths get rewarded in the Army,” the writer concluded. Yeah, others in the room said, that’s how it is. Officers catch the breaks.
Read more at The New York Times
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