In addition to the 60,000 American casualties, both dead and wounded, of the first 11 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, there have been hundreds of thousands of cases of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. No one knows how many more may be undiagnosed victims of these latter disabilities, but clearly the work of treating our veterans is an enormous undertaking that will last for many decades. One small but successful approach is exemplified in the work of Christine Dumaine Leche, a creative writing professor who left her husband and family for the war zone in Afghanistan, where she teaches active military personnel to overcome the stress of war by writing about it.
In Outside the Wire, Leche collects the stories of 32 soldiers whose first-hand accounts not only describe their personal experiences and frequent ambivalence but also illustrate the therapeutic powers of storytelling. We see a soldier's life from enlistment ("The 'hood don't give a damn about you! There's no future for you out here! The Army can open a whole new world to you!") to combat ("War has its rules... if you pass a fallen enemy, it is illegal to turn around and shoot him, so be sure to shoot him twice before you step over him") to coming home ("I feel like I let everyone down. Life is not good for me right now. But maybe someday it will change").
This is powerful stuff. We can only hope the power of written self-reflection can somewhat mitigate the pain so many soldiers are suffering. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.