Fire and Forget: Short Stories From the Long War - Response

I attended a reading on Thursday April 2th at 7:00 at Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, 58 West 10th Street, between 5th and 6th Ave. At this event there were readings by Matt Gallagher, Phil Klay, and Roy Scranton, author for "Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War". Going into the reading I had an idea of what to expect due to the title of the book and I was curious to hear a creative take on such a upfront, violent subject. This was also particularly interesting to me because as a nursing student I would like to write about my experiences in a hospital, breaking away from the creative writing mold in a similar way. All there writers attending the “NYU veterans writing workshop” which I did not know existed and would like to see something similar along the lines of “writing about medicine”

         There were three stories read by three different people. The first story was about a solider who was on leave and had to go back to war. This detailed the struggle between real life and life once deployed. I was surprised to hear that the solider was actually bored by his civilian life and had mixed emotions about going back to war. The second story was about the flight back to America after a tour in Iraq. I was particularly interested in this one because it seems as though that would be an incredibly exciting and terrifying prospect. Struggling with the desire to get back to normal life and not knowing what the world he is coming back to will look like. The third story was about the interaction between two soldiers who were on guard. They were not in particular danger and this brought to light the monotony of daily life in the war if you are not on the front lines. These stories were not what I was expecting. There were no gunshots and tales of bleeding children but rather they dealt with the state of mind felt by these individuals. It inspired me to write about the day-to-day life of a hospital. Often all we read about is the exciting, drama filled battle scenes, however there is a lot more that goes into a war and I respected the authors for shining a light on that experience.