One of the least understood parts of our country’s time at war as we know it today is the transition Guard and Reserve members and their families have to make going and coming home. It’s bumpy for all and sometimes very messy for many; I’ve jokingly referred to being a reservist wife as a never-ending game of hokey-pokey – you never know when one foot will be in or one foot will be out.
After seeing my post on the issues of Guard and Reserve members dealing with unemployment, the publisher of the book As You Were sent me a copy in hopes that I might read it and blog about it.
It’s taken me a while to get to it, but I’m glad I did. Written by Christian Davenport, a reporter for the Washington Post who was embedded with the Virginia Army’s National Guard 2-224th, As You Were shows an intimate behind the scenes view of the reasons people volunteer as citizen-soldiers and some of the issues that have been faced in this 21st century era of war.
Davenport follows six individuals – five soldiers, one spouse – showing the before, the during and the after of what happens in deployment. It is less about combat and more about experience. There’s Miranda, the college sorority sister who misses her senior year to spend it in the Iraqi desert; Kate, a recent college graduate who hastily marries her boyfriend before deploying; Ray, a Vietnam vet who volunteers to go to Iraq at age 58 and his wife Dianne, who is left to cope at home alone; Mark and Craig, both guys in their thirties with dreams of success that have to be put on hold while they fulfill the oath they made to serve their country when called to do so.
The book is well-written, offering an engaging narrative that makes it hard to put down, expertly weaving each separate but related story of each individual’s life and showing the impact of what our Guard and Reserve members experience.
A few of the moments that stood out for me the most:
Miranda, the college sorority sister, enrolling in an Ivy League graduate school after returning from Iraq, dealing with the questions as well as stares from a group of people who have trouble comprehending, not to mention understanding why she would want to be part of a military that goes to war.
Kate, who struggles with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) symptoms after experiencing some traumatic moments in her job as a medic, and then has to struggle all the more when she comes home and is forced to wait through bureaucratic red tape to get help from the VA.
Dianne, the spouse waiting at home, struggling with a number of house disasters and living proof of the deployment gremlins that come when your husband leaves.
Craig, a teacher before he’s deployed, who finds it extremely difficult to find a job after coming back from his deployment, seeing a year pass before he is finally able to get hired somewhere. (One issue I did have with Craig’s story was that he did not handle the communication with the principal of the school where he worked in the best manner possible and he waited much too long after returning to contact his boss to get his job back.)
For me, some of this book resembled and reminded me of a couple of other books I’ve read that showcased stories of Guard and Reserve spouses – anxious to portray “reality”, there is a good bit of what I call negative positioning, pointing out in glowing narrative those Guard members who are against the war, against what the Bush administration did, but they do their duty just the same. By the end of the book I was wondering if the feelings of those members who did agree with the war and felt it was right had been downplayed or kept off the grid all together.
Politics aside, this is a well-written book that does a good job of showing the lives of military Guard and Reserve members. I would encourage Guard and Reserve families to read it, and then to pass it on to your friends and family. A little more insight into what our families deal with and go through certainly couldn’t hurt.
For more information: As You Were: To War and Back with the Black Hawk Battalion of the Virginia National Guard
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Sounds like a book that I need to get…thanks for reviewing it and passing the info along!
Woe to the deployment gremlins! I can relate to that. I am anxious to see what these next few weeks and months bring to our family, post-deployment. My husband was non combat, but I’m sure there’s a lot of other issues with re-entry. We are praying for a smooth transition!