Garry Trudeau on writing about the Army

Garry Trudeau writes Doonesbury, which I like, and have for as long as I can recall (though I thought the stuff he did for a while after his sabbatical was a tad weak).

Despite that I had grave reservations when B.D. was wounded. Yes, it was timely, yes, it was honest, but I was afraid he would trivialise it. He didn't.

Now I know how he managed that.

He talked to troops. He talked to them in '90, and he talked to them today. He has e-mail correspondence from them. He recently gave a speech about how he did this.

Behind the Lines

For instance, I recently spent the day in Silver Spring, Md., at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post and a vet center, talking to two veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom who are about to leave the service and make their way back into civilian life. ...

soldiers, with the help of incredibly dedicated counselors, are trying to figure out how to live with their emotional wounds as they make the transition out of a military culture that still stigmatizes post-traumatic stress syndrome, and then into a civilian population that can't possibly understand what they've been through.

The reason that I've been listening to their stories is that my character B.D. is now at that precise point in his own life, and I need to learn about what that must feel like before I can write about it.

When and if I finally do, I have to do another terrible thing: I have to make it funny. And I have to find a way of doing so without contributing to the suffering that these young veterans are enduring.

And that, I think, is why the military has given me such access to wounded warriors and their caregivers. There are so many ways I could get it wrong, they figured, I could use all the help I could get.

So, thanks are due to GEN Sullivan, who back in '90, when he found out Doonesbury wasn't ruining morale, had the wisdom to reach out to Trudeau.

Kudos to COL Nash, who had the courage to smuggle Trudeau into Saudi Arabia, so he could see the war.

And gratitude to Trudeau, for managing to get it right.

I wish I'd been there when he was at Mologne House.

(correction: I initially misspelled Mr. Trudeau's name, it properly has two "r"s)

Good to the last drop

A little bit of humor, from British advertisers, by way of Making Light.

Good things come to those who wait.

We have two things going for us...

ginmar tagged me, so...

Two Names I Go By: Terry, Murphy
Two Parts of My Heritage: Irish, Czech
Two Things That Scare Me: Drivers in Seoul, and hand grenades
Everyday Essentials: cuddling, cutlery
Two Things I Am Wearing Right Now: Army sweats, a knife
Two of My Favorite Bands or Musical Artists: Mozart, Warren Zevon
Two of My Favorite Songs: Come Sing Me a Lullaby, I Have a Name
Two books that changed my life: (Two? You out of your fucking mind?) The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, On Food and Cooking; the Science and Lore of the Kitchen
Two Things I Want in a Relationship: Limits, Freedom
Two Physical Things that Appeal to Me: Eyes, Movement
Two of My Favorite Hobbies: writing, fighting (those were hers, they mostly work for me too; often I get to combine them)
Two Things I Want Really Badly: A six burner, double oven with gridle and broiler; A katana by Oso
Two Things I Want to Do Before I Die: Fuck if I know. Spend leisure time in Ukraine and Russia, Spend a great wodge of time with riding about Ireland with a pack horse.
Two other things that I wanted to add:

Two other languages I want to learn: Greek and Hebrew
Two things I hate: Aphids, spots on the sensor of my camera

I don't tag people, feel free to amuse yourself with this anyway.

Stanislav Petrov saved your life

By way of deyo I got details of something I'd heard whispered around various watercoolers.

1983, the movie War Games came out. The movie opened with a test of the crews in missile silos. Many of them were said to have not launched when given what looked to be legitimate orders.

This was a tense time. People still went to sleep at night and wondered if some odd-fluke would cause the Soviets to bomb us. In 1984 the movie "Red Dawn" came out, about an invasion of the Rocky Mountain States by Russian paratroopers, and the subsequent resistance.

We were fighting a proxy war by helping the Mujahadin in Afganistan.

On Sept. 26, 1983 COL Stanislav Petrov was on duty, in a bunker outside of Moscow. His job was to watch the early warning radar, so that, in the event of a U.S. attack, the Russians could implement Mutual Assured Destruction.

He got a warning. A missile was headed for the Soviet Union. He decided the Americans wouldn't send just one missle, so he called it a false alarm.

A little later he got a string of missles on the radar. He decided (with great trepidation) that they too must be false alarms.

He was right.

What, one wonders, would have happened if he'd reported it; even with the caveat that he thought it a false alarm. Tensions were high. This was the time of Reagan. Big buildup of the Army; and deployment of the Pershing 2 SSSM, and howitzers with nuclear shells in Germany. The trident submarine, and a larger Boomer fleet. A president who thought nothing of joking he'd given the order to launch the missles.

Would the officers above him have been willing to roll the dice that this wasn't an attack, because it was only a small handfull of missiles, and they'd still be able to retaliate? No one will ever, Thank God, know.

All because Stanislav Petrov was on duty that night.

We need to celebrate, so I intend to raise a toast, on Sep. 26, in honor of him, with thanksgiving and singing.