The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

This book that offers a perspective on American soldiers in Iraq. The book has immediately been called a masterpiece. On a par with Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and almost certain to be heavily rewarded next year when the book awards are announced.

Most likely we will see a movie as well. However being ahead of the curve is a blessing and you want to read this book now. It is incredible.

Our narrator is Bartle a 22 year old soldier, or ex soldier, as the book is told from some years after his experience in Iraq. Bartle has been asked by his Sgt to look after an eighteen year old private named Murphy. To increase his responsibility at family day before the unit shipped out Murphy's mother had also extracted a promise that he would look after her son.

Just a boy himself at twenty two we hear Bartle's internal dialogue as he ventures into war. The feelings of the soldiers on the ground, some of the passages stand up as memorably as the passages in Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls.

The contrast however is staggering. While Robert Jordan felt a sense of duty and volunteered for his service our boys in Iraq feel a sense of helplessness and desperation s they advance and fall back and fight over the same ground on what becomes more and more like a schedule. The constant savagery of their actions, the inability to determine friend or foe, the constant guilt over their actions builds up.

Murphy disillusioned like all the solders struggles more. At eighteen and a young eighteen at that he becomes somber an disengaged. He tells Bartle that he cannot let the war define him, that in fact he n longer wants to be his friend as they only thing they have in common is the war and he wants nothing in the war in his soul. Bartle telling the story in the future, looking back, is torn up with regret. We learn early in the book, in the second chapter that Murphy dies, we see his fall into a pit of despair. At one point Murphy takes to sitting outside a small hospital so that he " can see hope in action" or watch a young female medic " that offers a glimpse of something beautiful" where everything is ugly.

Late in the book we learn what happened to Murphy and how his friend Bartle reacted to it and the repercussions of that action. Having manipulated his answers on his stress test before release to seem like he had no concerns or issues about his war experience Bartle later goes into a long soliloquy about his true feelings about the war, his actions, their meaninglessness, and perhaps most enlightening on his feelings about the new American way of appreciating and thanking American soldiers on their return in an almost overdone way.

For the great proportion of the population who do not think about the wars we get involved in or who rationalize our lack of concern over the soldiers with the knowledge that they all volunteered this is an eye opener. An understanding has to be had that wars of occupation and nation building are much different than wars where one's own country has been attacked, that psychologically the difference is staggering. We also need to understand that volunteering for the military is in a great percentage of cases due to a lack of opportunities state side.

This book is heart rending and magnificent. Before you thank another soldier for his service it would be wise to read this book, to get a slight glimpse on the profane and black thoughted life he has led before he returns home.