War
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Finding forgiveness for murder
“I’ll tell you the truth, Sheriff. We charged across Iraq and killed everything in our goddamn path, we left a trail of burning vehicles and broken bodies hundreds of miles long. If it moved, then it was the enemy, and we killed our fair share of civilians too. And you people sat back here and [...]
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VA Faces Two Crises: Paul Sullivan
My old friend, veterans advocate Paul Sullivan (formerly with Veterans for Common Sense and now outreach director at Bergman and Moore) writes in the Bay Citizen about the crises facing VA. Hopefully, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki and Congress will “get it” soon and fix VA’s understaffed mental healthcare facilities and VA’s delay and error-prone disability [...]
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Revisiting an old topic: what does it feel like to kill
So, I’m revisiting this topic. Why? It’s come up in conversation a couple of times recently, first of all. Second, in looking at the statistics on my blog, I realized that over the course of the last several years, this has been the single most viewed blog entry on my site. Daily visits with google [...]
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Missing soldier’s wife faces deportation
Specialist Alex Jimenez, along with two other soldiers, was kidnapped by al-Qaeda in May. One of his fellow soldiers was later found dead, the other is still missing. In a video posted on the internet, AQ claims all three soldiers are dead. Here’s the kicker:Jimenez’s wife, Yaderlin, is facing deportation from the United States. This [...]
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Prayer at Rumayla earns spectacular review
A few weeks ago I submitted Prayer at Rumayla: A Novel of the Gulf War for review to the Podler, a book review blog. Last night the review came back, and it was far better than I could have anticipated. Here’s the review, and I want to send my thanks over to the Podler for the very [...]
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What Does it Feel Like to Kill?
What does it feel like to kill? For some reason, that question’s been on my mind a lot lately. With Chris going off into the Marine Corps later this year, it came up at my brother’s party last weekend. We were talking, and I said to him, “The one thing you have to be prepared [...]
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Charles on the Diane Rehm Show: Mental Health and Iraq
10:00 Mental Health and Military Service in Iraq A new study shows more than one in three members of the U.S. armed forces serving in Iraq seeks help for mental health problems. We talk about the types of problems they’re experiencing, the help available, and long term cost to individuals, their families, and the nation. Guests [...]
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I believe I’ve found the correct camp
I think I’ve found the correct camp. According to this website, Hakodate Camp 2-B changed its name first to Tokyo-6, then Sendai-4 (Ohashi). Which means two things, first, that I’ve been looking in the wrong places, and second, that this afternoon I held the file for this very camp in my hand and passed over it. In the [...]
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Too Late
I just discovered that following up with George Stoddard won’t be possible — he passed away on July 10. More on George Stoddard and the U.S.S. Houston here: http://usshouston.blogspot.com/
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Got the cable
I went back to the archives this afternoon, to get the next box they’d pulled — the POW related cables. Here is the cable, which says it is from the Hokadate camp, listing my grandfather. It also lists Captain Lundy Ziegler — referenced in my grandfather’s affafavit — as the senior officer in the group. [...]
