Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning
Written and Narrated By: Elliot Ackerman / Summary of Action By: Mark Deakins
Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
(Mostly) Engaging, but -not- STUNNING… until that last line
Waiting for Eden tossed, all pellmell like, author Elliot Ackerman way on up to the top of my: This Person Can WRITE! list. In it, Ackerman managed to blend savage horror and despair with the. most. drop dead. GORGEOUS last line EVER (Tho’ m’ Sis haaaaaaated it, still brings it up as Worst Story-crafting EVER).
I FELT so much with that book; I also thought Ackerman was doing some topnotch educating as he wrote, showing Civilians what it’s like for Military Spouses, the desperation, the despair, the poor choices, the fervent love that has nowhere to go when the worst happens. I thought he conveyed the bitter, BITTER result of war, the devotion to duty and comrades—those the serviceman/woman would kill and die for… all sooo very well, and he managed to do it with beautiful, lyrically-wrought prose. Plus? MacLeod Andrews rocked the narration.
So I KNEW Ackerman would be a keen observer of humanity, would have the razor-sharp vocabulary skills, would be soooo able to gather the results of five deployments together, add the Quest for IT following his deployments, and he’d knock his (Secondary title): On War, Revolution, and Returning outta the park. It was SURE to be a stunner!
Alas, I went in with Expectations Galore (I KNOW! Boooo, meee!), and what I got was an assortment of articles and musings narrated in his own lackluster tones. Now, this isn’t to say that Places and Names isn’t a stellar work; it’s just that recently I’d listened to and reviewed Michael Herr’s classic war-journalism piece, Dispatches, Herr’s time writing and reporting in Vietnam.
Ackerman, whilst Uber-talented, does NOT (Currently) have the grounding to all that is Earth, all that is Life, all that is Coming To Terms with who one once was that Herr seemed to make a tragic peace with. Herr KNEW he was a goner, even years after his War, and even DURING the War, he knew he was dying to Life piece by piece, coming Home as a mere shell that housed only brutal imagery, and? Loss, unimaginable Loss.
Ackerman ain’t there yet. Here in Places and Names, he opens the book with his search for IT, that ineffable sense of Lack, of Loss of Purpose, that longing to Be In The Shit, no matter where, and no matter how he can get there. Revolution(s) occurring in the Middle East? He’s THERE. Continued chaos and bloodshed? He’s THERE. Finding ex-Military who are desperately seeking IT in any way they can as well? He asks Why? and receives only cockeyed glances: What? Wellllll, Why Are YOU Here?!
Parsed up by geographical areas and concepts and people and timeframes from his experiences, Places and Names serves to show just what our returning Veterans have to cope with as they come to terms with Life After Being In The Shit, as they come to terms with seeing much-loved friends torn to shreds, or seeing them bleed out as an evac chopper is waited upon, not coming in time when all is said and done.
It’s about always wearing a band around the wrist in a Forever Memory of a Forever Moment when a Forever Friend was shot dead by a sniper on a rooftop; about how this band serves as a counterpoint to the little bracelet of strands made by a daughter, worn as a reminder: Without that buddy Dying, the daughter would not have been Born. One Greatest Sacrifice has made the other Greatest Gift possible.
There are demonstrations in the Middle East that are attended, as communities battle against oppression and ex-Military wander and take selfies; there are former foes Ackerman eats lamb kabobs with, drawing a map with places and dates each Was There, how they cross, how they juuuust don’t quiiiiite meet at the same time, but they’re shared and honored nevertheless. There are stories of men who were betrayed by a fellow serviceman’s desertion and how lives were lost trying to find the guy… when he told the Taliban his fellow men left him behind… and stories of young men hopping planes to Syria, find The Shit to be In, and then zipping back, the coolest dude in the College Creative Writing Class but who’s still feeling unbelievably Numb, Pointless, Left Out.
Again, this is a really really good collection of stories, some poignant writing, excellent observations, but it’s not a Slug To The Gut…
…until the end… where all that Ackerman’s been alluding to, an experience during the Second Battle of Fallujah, takes place and is expounded on. THIS is where Ackerman’s skills explode onto the page, where aaaallll those emotions, all the terror and frustration and desperate sorrow, are in his grasp. It’s this battle where Ackerman’s writing sears and scorches, where he’s able to convey exACTly… What IT Is Like, the attempts to keep one’s men alive, the attempt to keep the self alive. The attempt to destroy all that would kill in turn. It’s a devastating piece, and Mark Deakins narrates the Summary of Action read at the Award Ceremony for Ackerman’s Silver Star. Deakins reads the staid and emotionally-dead writing, and Ackerman fleshes it out with horror and shame and terror and regret and blood and guts. And death, so many dead, so many wounded, his men listening to him as he gives orders, knowing that his words might, just might, lead to their deaths, their dismemberment (When a fellow survivor asks him, “You’re in a car going 150-miles per hour; you wanna be the driver, or you wanna be stuck in the passenger seat? You don’t know what I’m feeling”, Ackerman is stunned and ashamed).
Then there’s Ackerman doing what Ackerman does best:
The last line, the final blow.
The slug to the gut I was expecting…
…but was NOT ready for…
Bravo, sir. I am gutted.
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