Editor’s note: This article as well as “Afghanistan,” “Another suicide story,” and “Seeing the elephant” are laid out to model a SITREP reading. The reading begins with an introduction to the program and publication by Jacqueline Wilson or another faculty advisor. Then, veterans read their creative essays, stories or poetry. The program concludes with a question-and-answer time with the veterans. All pieces are published with permission of the authors. — Teri McDowell Ott
I can trace my inspiration for creating a literary magazine for veterans and service members to meeting two Vietnam veterans as a teenager. These two men knew my father and were best friends — kindhearted, funny, slightly crazy, long-haired hippies, songwriters and guitar players who carried service revolvers in the glove compartments of their pickup trucks. At the time, around 1978, I opened the cover of one of their handwritten songbooks and read in neat cursive, “Tet Offensive, January 30, 1968.” They did not talk about the war, and I did not ask, but I could sense that they were carrying it. I learned decades later that one of them, an 18-year-old draftee, lost his best friend in the war. The other’s Vietnamese girlfriend and her family were slaughtered by the Viet Cong.
Flash forward to 2008: A student named Chris in my Introduction to Writing course at Western Illinois University told me my narrative collage assignment about life in school didn’t work for him. “Ma’am,” he said politely, “I’ve been to war. I don’t remember my life in school.” Chris, a Marine who had returned from active duty in Iraq, went on to write a chronicle of his service as an officer, including a scene where he came to the aid of a comrade whose legs had just been blown off. I thought back to my friends and their silence about Vietnam. I thought about all the stories that they and others must be holding on to. As a writing instructor, I wanted to be on the listening end of those stories, to hold space for those writers to bring their words to the page.
In 2014, this dream came to fruition when my compatriot and colleague Barbara Lawhorn and I decided to create a literary magazine. That semester, at a professional development session Barbara organized, president of the student-run Western Illinois University Veterans Club told us, “When you come back from Afghanistan, not many people want to hear your story.” Our magazine, first called Veterans’ Voices: Personal Stories of Combat and Peace, later renamed SITREP: Veterans’ Perspectives on Combat and Peace, answered this call by bringing together writers from the university and surrounding communities with readers from our region and the world. (The term SITREP comes from Situation Report, which provides military decision-makers with a quick understanding of the current circumstances.) In the space of five years, we published 118 works, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry and photography. Our contributors, who represented all the major branches of the service, served as infantryman, corpsman, air liaison officer, healthcare specialist, nuclear machinist mate, B-52 pilot, seabee, sergeant first class, supply officer and an expert on depleted uranium who testified before Congress, to name a few. They served in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and many other locations, stateside and overseas. Several of them suffered wounds of war, including PTSD. They are diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation.
In this endeavor, we partnered with undergraduate and graduate student veterans who served as editors. We heard many times that a poem or a story that reached the pages of our magazine had been waiting decades to be told. Contributors who suffered from PTSD shared that the work of writing, publishing and reading aloud assisted in their healing. The many public groups we addressed expressed their genuine appreciation by listening to the work and asking questions. The annual readings also promoted intergenerational friendships. After the 2017 event, a Vietnam veteran and an Iraq veteran sat at my dining room table and talked about how they tell the truth about the war, who will listen, how they cope with disability and moral injury and what they do when they are suicidal. SITREP gave them a space where they could speak. Our work was very much a collaboration, with Barbara and me working together for five years as co-advisors. The Western Illinois University Veterans Resource Center and the Buchanan Center for the Arts in Monmouth, Illinois, provided funding and other support that helped to sustain us. The efforts of our student and citizen editors, Chris Bell, Ryan Bronaugh, Luke Cummings, Ian Covington, Daniel Holst and Jared Worley, were indispensable. The greatest gifts were offered by the contributors themselves, who took the risk of committing their work to the page. All of us would agree that this work to “serve those who have served” was, and is, profoundly important.
Jacqueline Wilson has taught writing and American literature classes for 33 years. Serving as a co-adviser for SITREP: Veteran Perspectives on Combat and Peace from 2015-2019 was one of her most rewarding achievements. She lives in Macomb, Illinois, and enjoys spending time with her teenage daughter, raising rescue dogs and cats and playing acoustic guitar.
