Rapid Review - The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell

The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq by John Crawford. Another book that was recommended by The Daily Show, and another one I had to wait awhile to get after putting it on hold at the library.

This is a series of short stories, eighteen of them, about the experiences of Crawford as a member of the Florida National Guard in Iraq. They were promised a short tour, three months, maybe six months at the most. They spent more than a year in Iraq, outlasting the other units that they entered Iraq with. Most of the men in Crawford's group signed up to pay for college. Crawford himself had already served in the Army Airborne and didn't expect to get called up, which is why he calls himself an accidental soldier.

There is no polite way to put this. Crawford got screwed by our military. There is no acceptable reason that a National Guard unit should spend more time in a foreign invasion than the regular Army (in fact, there is no acceptable reason for sending the National Guard to fight on foreign soil, but we'll overlook that for a moment). It makes no sense whatsoever that they should be stuck over there LONGER than anyone else, being constantly lied to about when they are returning home. That is the central injustice of the book. These guys are stuck. They know they are stuck. But they do their job anyway the best they can, and attempt to stay human while they do it.

And that is the central theme of the stories... staying human. Crawford is a superb storyteller, and he tells the tales so simply and clearly that it's only after you read them that you think of how incredibly horrific they are. The events he is writing about are not things that a normal person can experience without losing something of the soul. And it's clear from his writing that he feels that he's losing his soul. He recognizes the hate that he is being trained to feel, and he recognizes that it's wrong, but he cannot bring himself to try to overcome it because it's keeping him alive.

This is a book about the costs of war on the soldiers who fight it. It's about the destruction that war brings to everything it touches. While Crawford makes his politics clear, he also makes it clear that he would do his job regardless of what he thought of the war. But now that he's out of it, that he's one of the men who survived, he can tell what the price he, personally, paid. And if you read this book through, there's little doubt that you'll realize he was forced to pay too much.