{"id":40032,"date":"2022-06-19T18:27:35","date_gmt":"2022-06-20T02:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=40032"},"modified":"2022-06-19T18:27:35","modified_gmt":"2022-06-20T02:27:35","slug":"a-trail-of-tears-war-wounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/19\/a-trail-of-tears-war-wounds\/","title":{"rendered":"A Trail of Tears: War Wounds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally posted at TomDispatch<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

America\u2019s Father\u2019s Day was first celebrated on June 19, 1910, in Washington State. That was only a few years before Ann Jones\u2019s father went to war. His was the Great War which turned out \u2013 with its trenches of frozen mud, rats and lice, poison gas, and machine-gun death \u2013 to be not so great. It was supposed to be the War to End all Wars, but all it did was bequeath to humanity a more terrible war that would be even more worldly.<\/p>\n

Jones\u2019s father returned from the trenches with a passel of medals, a lifelong disability, and a book of horrors that she was never allowed to see as a child. I don\u2019t know if he was part of the reason that she felt compelled to report on such horrors herself, but I\u2019m glad she did. The result is some of the finest journalism about this country\u2019s ongoing, never-ending era<\/a> of Forever Wars.<\/p>\n

In 2013, Dispatch Books published Jones\u2019s modern masterpiece, They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America\u2019s Wars \u2013 The Untold Story<\/i><\/a> and TomDispatch published the excerpt<\/a> that we offer again today, almost a decade later, for your Father\u2019s Day reading.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still in awe of her reporting for that book. At 73, she strapped on body armor and headed to war in Afghanistan, so you didn\u2019t have to. She watched the sort of meatball surgery that would have left you doubled over and retching. She asked the hard questions of soldiers, veterans, and their family members that you never could. And she wrote it all up with passion, eloquence, and unsparing clarity. They Were Soldiers<\/i> offers a still-unprecedented look at the carnage Americans never saw and the toll no one talked about.<\/p>\n

The scenes Jones narrated couldn\u2019t have been more vivid or jarring, but the dialogue was on another level. She has a way with people. She found America\u2019s soldiers where they were, put in the time, and they opened up, offering quotes that blossomed like wildflowers in the spring, even if it was a spring in hell.<\/p>\n

In the piece that follows, a longtime Army officer, heading home for \u201cpsych reasons,\u201d reveals the \u201ccon\u201d to which he devoted his life. \u201cWar is absurd,\u201d he says. \u201cBoys don\u2019t know any better. But for a grown man to be trapped in stupid wars \u2013 it\u2019s embarrassing, it\u2019s humiliating, it\u2019s absurd.\u201d His sons, he said, were in college and would not follow their father\u2019s path to war. \u201cThey won\u2019t have to serve,\u201d he told Jones. \u201cBefore that happens, I\u2019ll shoot them myself.\u201d Happy Father\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

Read the excerpt of Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America\u2019s Wars \u2013 The Untold Story<\/i><\/a> at TomDispatch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally posted at TomDispatch. America\u2019s Father\u2019s Day was first celebrated on June 19, 1910, in Washington State. That was only a few years before Ann Jones\u2019s father went to war. His was the Great War which turned out \u2013 with its trenches of frozen mud, rats and lice, poison gas, and machine-gun death \u2013 to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":336,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-40032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/336"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40032"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40034,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40032\/revisions\/40034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40032"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=40032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}