As nearly everyone knows now, when the Marines of BRAVO! and nearly every other veteran returned from the war in Vietnam, our reception was not what we expected. So it’s with great pleasure that today we can say a big thanks to the state of Idaho for an outstanding reception.

BRAVO! was celebrated throughout the state in late March and early April with screenings in Lewiston, Boise, Twin Falls, Caldwell and at Mountain Home Air Force Base. Capacity crowds amounting to well over a thousand folks came out to generously support the fundraisers and see the film, and as always, we feel we touched a lot of lives.

In concert with the screenings, we worked with a wide array of veterans’ service agencies to support veterans’ courts, the Idaho Veterans’ Network, and the Lighthouse Rescue Mission veterans’ programs. The screenings were fundraisers for these organizations as well as educational events to alert community members to the extensive variety of veteran’s organizations available here in Idaho that help veterans in need.

The people who came together to help us get the film screened were amazing: The Idaho court system, police and sheriffs’ departments, military units, veterans groups, humanities organizations, libraries, private organizations that help veterans, artists, colleges and
other passionate individuals.

Prior to the screening at the Egyptian Theater. Left to right, Ken Rodgers, Alan Heathcock, Norma Jaeger, Betty Rodgers, Ken Korkow
© Mike Shipman 2015

We were honored that the screenings in Boise and Caldwell were included as the culminating events for the annual Read Me Treasure Valley series, which had a Vietnam veteran focus this year. Nationally known authors who have written books about war and Vietnam came and shared their work. Historians from Boise State University gave lectures on the Vietnam War. In addition, the award-winning author of VOLT, Alan Heathcock, led book discussions. There was a presentation about orphanages in Vietnam, a discussion about PTSD, and a program about music of the Vietnam era.

Joining in the screenings with this wonderful bunch of supporters and participants were BRAVO! Marines Ken Korkow, Steve Wiese and Ron Rees. All three of these Khe Sanh survivors participated in panel discussions following one or more of our events. Ken Korkow also was the guest of honor at a faith-based event at Boise’s Gowen Field, home of Idaho’s Air and Army National Guards. Joining in on the various panels were Dan Ashley, Mischa Brady, Julia N, Mary Kelly and Brian Taylor.

Color Guard entering the Egyptian Theatre on 3-30-2015.
© Mike Shipman 3-30-2015

Also on hand was BRAVO!’s editor John Nutt. John is a veteran of decades of film work and the Vietnam War. As part of the Boise event, John was presented with an award by the director of Idaho Veterans Services, Colonel David M. Brasuell, United States Marine Corps Retired, for John’s exceptional work on BRAVO!

BRAVO! supporter and friend Terry Hubert, also a Marine, came up from Nevada and participated in workshops about disturbed and incarcerated veterans.

Also attending was BRAVO! friend and Marine Dave Beyerlein who originally helped set up our website for the film. Dave served in Vietnam and even though we’d talked to him a bunch, we’d never met him in person.

Noted Boise author, Al Heathcock, once again emceed our Boise and Caldwell screenings and was impressive with his passion, insight and aplomb. Among other duties at the Egyptian Theatre event, Al introduced Boise city council member T J Thompson who read a proclamation from Boise Mayor Dave Bieter declaring March 30, 2015, as Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day. At the Caldwell event, Caldwell Mayor Garret Nancolas greeted the audience prior to the screening and talked about Caldwell’s Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans proclamation. A color guard from Charlie Company, 4th Tanks, 4th Marine Division posted the colors at both the Boise and Caldwell screenings.

Chamber music quartet playing prior to the start of the Caldwell screening.
© Mike Shipman 4-1-2015

We would be remiss if we didn’t thank all the individuals and organizations that made the screenings of BRAVO! a smashing success: The indefatigable leaders of this massive effort, Norma Jaeger and Mike Moser aided by Christina Iverson of the Idaho Supreme Court, Reverend Bill Roscoe of the Boise Rescue Mission, Jamie Shropshire, Steve Orr, Linda Wright, Rich Neu, Steve Conger, Dan Ashley of the Boise Vets Center, Bill Bankhead, Travis Dryden, Mike and Monique Shipman, Pam and Lance and Kearney Thompson, John and Heather Taylor who are cousins of BRAVO! Marine Ken Korkow, Heather Paredes of the Eagle Field of Honor. Thanks too, to Mark Heilman, Lori Sprague and R K Williams of Boise State University; Mitzi Cheldelin and the rest of the folks at the Boise Police Department; the Ada and Canyon County sheriff’s departments, BRAVO!’s longtime supporters Leland and Trisha Nelson; Dona Butler of the Canyon County Veterans’ Court; the Idaho Division of Veterans’ Services; Cloverdale Cemetery and Funeral Home; Blue Planet Photography; Rick Ardinger and the Idaho Humanities Council, Mary DeWalt and Ada Community Library, Business Psychology Associates, Idaho Army National Guard, Joining Forces for Treasure Valley Veterans, Idaho Veteran’s Network, Office Depot, Destiny McGinley and the staff of the Egyptian Theater; Diane Raptosh and the folks at College of Idaho; Lewis and Clark College in Lewiston, Idaho, College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls, Idaho, Terry Hubert, Ken Korkow, Steve Wiese, Ron Rees, John and Ann Nutt and all the other individuals and organizations who helped out with this event.

Back in 1968, thousands of Vietnam Veterans came back home to, at best, a tepid reception, but in Idaho during March and April 2015, they received a hearty Welcome Home.

In March and April of 2015, BRAVO! COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON VALOR will be screened in a number of Idaho locations as a fundraiser for the Idaho Veterans’ Network and for Veterans’ Treatment Courts. These screenings are scheduled for Boise, Caldwell, Lewiston, Pocatello and Twin Falls.

Before giving some details about the events, we first want to delve into the existence of Veterans’ Treatment Courts. What exactly is happening in this country that would support forming courts specifically for and exclusive to veterans?

First, the thing that should not have to be said, we will state: If we require our warriors to go off and participate in combat, then we have a responsibility to see that they also have every opportunity to integrate back into our society and lead successful, productive lives. Combat causes veterans to experience trauma that often makes that integration difficult. Veterans’ courts are one way in which we acknowledge the fact that combat related trauma is a cost that needs to be dealt with by our society.

Now for some data on veterans of the Middle East conflicts alone, notwithstanding the recognition that a large number of Vietnam Veterans as well as men and women who served in earlier wars also have combat related issues that continue to affect their lives:

-Roughly one in five combat veterans from the Middle East conflicts has symptoms of mental disorder or cognitive impairment including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and/or Traumatic Brain Injury.

-Roughly one in six veterans of the current conflicts has substance abuse issues.

Poster for screening of BRAVO! at the Egyptian Theater, March 30, 2015

-PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury can lead to mental disorder or cognitive impairment and substance abuse, which can lead to issues with the judicial system.

-There are approximately 2.5 million veterans of the current conflicts.

-A one in five ratio indicates there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 500,000 veterans of Middle East wars with mental disorders or cognitive impairment.

-A one in six ratio amounts to approximately 400,000 veterans with substance abuse problems.

Why veterans-only courts?

Veterans’ courts allow for the veteran to appear before judges and court officials who are familiar with the problems brought on by combat-related PTSD and Traumatic Brain Disorder.

The staffs at veterans’ courts link the men and women appearing in their venues with various veteran service groups such as the VA and state organizations that can help them get back on track. They also require the veterans to go to counseling and to undergo drug screening if necessary.

We are pleased to announce that proceeds from the upcoming Boise screening of BRAVO! at the Egyptian Theatre on March 30, 2015, will go to help fund the Ada County Veterans’ Treatment Court non-profit as well as the Idaho Veterans’ Network, both of which help veterans who are taken into the Veterans’ Treatment Court system. Your attendance at this event will provide funding to help defray the costs of transportation, mandatory drug testing, rewards for participation, and other necessities.

To further illuminate the good work being done here in Idaho, we offer the Idaho Veterans Network mission statement: The mission of the Idaho Veterans Network is to help distressed veterans and their families by facilitating peer-to-peer support and guiding them to resources available to them in order to create a veteran population that is capable, confident, and committed to their community.

So please join us for the Boise screening at the Egyptian Theatre on March 30, 2015. Doors open at 6:00 PM with program beginning at 6:45, film at 7:00, followed by a Q & A session from 9:00 to 9:30. Several of the men who are in the film will travel here to be on hand for the discussion, along with other local veterans and the producers, Ken and Betty Rodgers. Master of Ceremonies Alan Heathcock, Boise’s world-renowned author of VOLT, will make the introductions and facilitate the panel discussion.

Tickets may be purchased online as soon as they are available on the Egyptian Theatre’s website.

Come on out, bring a friend or relative, and support the efforts of our Ada County Veterans’ Courts and our Idaho Veterans Network.

As soon as details are available about the other upcoming Idaho screenings of BRAVO!, we will pass them along to you.

Poster for the screening of BRAVO! in Casa Grande, AZ on 1/15/2015

Also on the screening front, mark your calendars for a fundraising screening in Casa Grande, Arizona, on February 15, 2015, at the historic Paramount Theatre. Doors open at Noon, lunch served at 1:00 PM, screening of BRAVO! to follow at 2:00 PM. Ticket cost: $15.00 advance purchase or at the door. Proceeds will benefit the Mobile Veterans Center and Emergency Veterans Services in Pinal County.

If you or your organization would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town next spring or summer, please contact us immediately.

DVDs of BRAVO! are available. Please consider gifting copies to a veteran, a history buff, a library, a friend or family member. For more information, go to https://bravotheproject.com/buy-the-dvd/.

BRAVO! has a page on Facebook. Please “like” us and “share” the page at https://www.facebook.com/Bravotheproject/. It’s another way to stay up on our news and help raise more public awareness of this film.

Last Thursday evening, 9/25/2014, BRAVO! was screened to an enthusiastic crowd of more than one-hundred folks at the Nampa, Idaho, Elks Lodge as a fundraiser for the Wyakin Warrior Foundation.

The audience included ROTC cadets from Boise State University and Northern Nazarene University, veterans of multiple wars, long-standing friends of BRAVO!, and folks from the general public. BRAVO! Marine Ron Rees, whose interview for the film was nothing short of electrifying, traveled with his family from Cove, Oregon, to be on a Q & A panel that included Iraq War veteran George Nickel and Vietnam Vet and United States Army chopper pilot Cliff Gaston who pulled two tours in Vietnam. BRAVO! co-producer and co-director Ken Rodgers rounded out the panel.

Al Heathcock speaking to the audience.
© Mike Shipman, Blue Planet Photography 2014

The event was expertly emceed by Boise-based author Alan Heathcock, whose short story collection, VOLT, is an outstanding look at the agony and ecstasy of being human. VOLT has won many prestigious literary awards.You can find out more about Al at http://alanheathcock.com. Joining Alan on the program was Wyakin Warrior Foundation co-founder and board president Jeff Bacon. Jeff is a cartoonist whose work is published widely, and you can read more about his work at http://blogs.militarytimes.com/broadside/about/. You can also learn more about the Wyakin Warrior Foundation and their important mission at http://www.wyakin.org/.

Panel discussion following the screening of BRAVO!. Left to right: Ken Rodgers, Ron Rees, Cliff Gaston, George Nickel.
© Mike Shipman, Blue Planet Photography 2014

Events like this don’t just happen and we are very proud to shoot an energetic OORAH! to Mr. Ed Willson, the Exalted Ruler of Elks Lodge #1389, Mr. Lawrence Manning and Betty Mallorca of Hill Street Studios/Track 13, Whiskey River Bar and Restaurant, business development professional Mr. Jeff Foster, Thorne Printing and Copy Center of Nampa, and International Minute Press of Boise.

We extend special thanks to Tom Frazee and Nancy Roché of Admagination for the spectacular audio/visual set-up and to Mike and Monique Shipman of Blue Planet Photography for organizing the entire shebang. Mike Shipman is the graphic designer for BRAVO! You can find out more about Admagination at http://www.admaginationstudios.com/622013_ad/and Blue Planet Photography at https://www.blueplanetphoto.com/.

A member of the audience addressing the ROTC cadets at the screening of BRAVO!
© Mike Shipman, Blue Planet Photography, 2014

We made a lot of new friends for BRAVO! at this event, and we cherish every single new relationship as we drive onward in our quest to have every American see this film. More of the new friends we gained at the Nampa screening are the staff at Wyakin Warriors Academy headed by Roy Ledesma. Roy was instrumental in rounding up the bulk of the crowd for the screening. Thank you, Roy!

We look forward to upcoming screenings at the Meridian Library in Meridian, Idaho, on October 22; Oceanside, CA, on November 1; and Newport Beach, CA, on November 15, 2014. Please join us and invite your friends.

BRAVO! Marine Ron Rees, left, speaking to volunteer members of the Wyakin Warrior Foundation.
© Mike Shipman, Blue Planet Photography 2014

If you would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town this winter or spring, please contact us immediately.

DVDs of BRAVO! are available. For more information, go to https://bravotheproject.com/buy-the-dvd/.

BRAVO! has a page on Facebook. Please “like” us and “share” the page at https://www.facebook.com/Bravotheproject/. It’s another way to stay up on our news and help us reach more people.

In anticipation of the September 25th screening of BRAVO! at the Elks Lodge in Nampa, Idaho, we repost a visceral essay by the screening’s Master of Ceremonies, Alan Heathcock. Al is an award winning short story writer and in this piece he muses on Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor, his life, and the value of story.

The Valor of Story: Why the Silent Man Fights Alone, by Alan Heathcock

The day was sweltering, the sky a shimmering white. It was July in Hazel Crest, the town where I grew up, in the southland area of south Chicago. I was nineteen years old, working at a public swimming pool. After my shift, I was to walk to a friend’s house a couple miles away. Coming out of a neighborhood, approaching a highway overpass, I spotted a large man on the walkway ahead of me. This road was isolated, and there was no one else around. Growing up in Chicago, I knew not to look people in the eye, knew to change course if it seemed there was trouble ahead. But I knew this guy. I worked the front desk at the pool, knew everybody. This guy was not a regular, but he’d been there. He smiled at me, and I nodded to him.
“Hey little man,” he said. “You got some money I could borrow. My car’s out of gas and I just need a few bucks to get to work.”

Alan Heathcock
Photo by Mathew Wordell

I was no fool. I guessed the man probably didn’t have a car or a job, and for some reason that mattered. “No,” I said. “Sorry, man.”

“Just a couple of dollars,” he said. “I’ll pay you back.”

“I don’t have it. Wish I could help.”

And then, in a blink, he hit me, his huge fist striking the side of my head like a stone on a chain. I fell hard, wheeled in a panic to see him standing over me. I scrambled to get away, but he had my shirtfront and hit me again. His face had changed. His eyes were crazy. I reached into my pockets and thrust the few wadded dollars I had up at him. Then he let me loose. He didn’t run, didn’t look around to see if anyone had witnessed what’d happened. He just walked away.

I walked away, too, holding my busted lip, and just went on to my friend’s house.

I’ve never told this to anyone. Even at the time, I said nothing to my friends, not my parents, certainly not the police. At the time it didn’t seem like a big deal. Or I tried to make myself believe it wasn’t a big deal. These things happened. We all took our turn. In fact, I’d been hit before, hit harder. So I just got on with things, went about business as usual.
The money was not missed. The bruise on the cheek faded. What remained was a feeling. It never went away. I feel it now, writing this essay. An anger pointed at the man who hit me, at the world that created him. Anger at myself for not spotting the potential danger. Shame in being beaten down, in not fighting back, in just giving up the money (though that was the right thing to do). Mainly, I feel a heavy sadness, a profound disappointment in the world of men.

All these years I’ve carried this stuff around inside me, its weight a part of how I slog myself around, wary always of who’s standing on the walkway.

When I was nine years old, my Grandpa Heathcock sat me up on his lap and told me a story about a time he was working as a foreman for Sinclair Oil. He said he was driving a one-lane road through the oil fields when his truck came nose to nose with another truck. The road was too narrow, the ditches too steep, for either truck to pass or turn around. One of them would have to back up the way they came. My grandpa said he got out of his truck and told the other driver he was trespassing on company land and had to put his truck in reverse. The man refused. I remember clearly my grandpa balled a big meaty fist and told me, “So I hit that man until he went back from where he came.”

For a long time I thought my grandpa was giving me instruction on the nature of man, on how a man has to stick up for himself, sometimes has to fight. But then an interesting thing happened. Several years after his death I was on a fishing trip with my father and brother. I told them the story of Grandpa’s fight on the dirt road. My brother had never heard the story. My father agreed that he vaguely remembered something like that happening, but never recalled Grandpa ever talking about it. After asking around, I came to realize my grandpa had told only me, and that fact changed my understanding of the telling.

I now see that the story wasn’t a lesson at all. It was a burden. I’m convinced that for the same reasons I’d never told anyone about being robbed by the highway, Grandpa had never told anyone about the incident in the oil field. I’m convinced the reason he told me about the incident was compelled by the likewise impulse I have now in writing this essay.

The other night I was granted the privilege of seeing the first cut of Ken Rodgers’ film, Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor, a documentary about the seventy-seven day siege where 6,000 men faced relentless attacks in the Vietnamese valley of Khe Sanh. These were Marines, the toughest of our toughest, the born warriors. These were some of the best-trained, most tenacious soldiers the world has ever known. The film consisted of interviews, with fifteen survivors talking about their experiences during those seventy-seven days and beyond. What was striking to me, beyond their amazing and often terrifying stories of ambushes, of fox-holes filled with bodies, of soldiers lost and alone on a battlefield, of mortar fire that never ceased, was that for the most part the men had kept these stories to themselves. If you were to meet them on the street, or in the grocery store, or down the pew, you couldn’t glimpse the roil of combat still alive inside them.

One of the Marines, a sharply dressed gentleman in a coat and tie, one of the men I’d wrongly supposed—judging him strictly by appearance—had been able to find his equilibrium after the war, said that even forty years after the fact, each and every morning he pulled his legs out from the bed covers, put his feet on the floor, and heard mortar fire. Bombs. Every morning. Secret bombs. Bombs exploding inside him. Bombs silent to the rest of us.

The highest purpose of story is to give voice to silent bombs. I write so that my grandpa’s pain is not lost to the grave. I write about my own fights so that they don’t sit like stones in the depths of my private shame. Even more profound is the document Ken Rodgers has created with his film, not meant to politicize war, not meant as propaganda to bolster the military, to mythologize the soldier. Ken Rodgers simply allowed his fellow Marines to release the truth, muted for too long inside men whose stories are the foundation of the greater human drama that has always included warfare, from the first hurled stones to the H-Bomb. Silence breeds confusion. Silence enables Hollywood’s trite action-figure nonsense to be peddled to the masses. There’s nothing more noble than the voice that finally breaks the silence, even and especially if the message delivered is one that makes us confront the best and worst of who we are. Who we all are. The message Ken Rodgers’ film delivered was not that war was separate from us, made from some government machine, some blueprint drawn up in a windowless room in the basement of the Pentagon, but that warfare comes from us. We are war. It lives inside us. It is not the violence, but the men, in all their bravery and heroism, in all their shame and demons, in all their pride and tears. And in their silence that is silent no more.

Not long ago my mother sent me pages from the diary of a man named Floyd Barker, a great uncle of mine five generations back. Floyd’s writings covered a lot of subjects, family life, marriages and travel and farming, but there was a passage that shook me awake. It reads: “After passing the present site of Brandenburg, Ky., the party was attacked by Indians and those not killed were made prisoners. It is said that one of the Barker boys tried to escape by swimming the river but was killed in the water and his body caught and the heart taken out and broiled and an effort made to compel his mother to eat it. However, this she refused to do.”

Upon first reading this, after the momentary shock of it, the brutality of the images making me recoil, I felt a deep connection with Floyd, a comfort. For isn’t this the truth of stories—the one Floyd told, the one my grandpa told me, the stories spoken by those brave Marines in Ken’s film, and my own stories, too—that we find, as almost a surprise though it should be obvious, that we are made of the same stuff, are plagued by the same feelings, are bolstered in that we are as much the same as different and by letting our stories be known, by breaking the silence of shame and anger and sadness, we are connecting with the greater fabric of humanity and from that point forward we are unburdened, made lighter, in simply understanding that we are not alone.

Alan Heathcock lives, teaches and writes in Boise, Idaho. He is the award winning author of VOLT. For more information, visit www.alanheathcock.com.

If you would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town this fall or winter, please contact us immediately.

DVDs of BRAVO! are available. For more information, go to https://bravotheproject.com/buy-the-dvd/.

BRAVO! has a page on Facebook. Please “like” us and “share” the page at https://www.facebook.com/Bravotheproject/. It’s another way to stay up on our news and help us reach more people.

Award winning short story writer Alan Heathcock, muses on Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor, his life, and the value of story.

The day was sweltering, the sky a shimmering white. It was July in Hazel Crest, the town where I grew up, in the southland area of south Chicago. I was nineteen years old, working at a public swimming pool. After my shift, I was to walk to a friend’s house a couple miles away. Coming out of a neighborhood, approaching a highway overpass, I spotted a large man on the walkway ahead of me. This road was isolated, and there was no one else around. Growing up in Chicago, I knew not to look people in the eye, knew to change course if it seemed there was trouble ahead. But I knew this guy. I worked the front desk at the pool, knew everybody. This guy was not a regular, but he’d been there. He smiled at me, and I nodded to him.

“Hey little man,” he said. “You got some money I could borrow. My car’s out of gas and I just need a few bucks to get to work.”

I was no fool. I guessed the man probably didn’t have a car or a job, and for some reason that mattered. “No,” I said. “Sorry, man.”

“Just a couple of dollars,” he said. “I’ll pay you back.”

“I don’t have it. Wish I could help.”

And then, in a blink, he hit me, his huge fist striking the side of my head like a stone on a chain. I fell hard, wheeled in a panic to see him standing over me. I scrambled to get away, but he had my shirtfront and hit me again. His face had changed. His eyes were crazy. I reached into my pockets and thrust the few wadded dollars I had up at him. Then he let me loose. He didn’t run, didn’t look around to see if anyone had witnessed what’d happened. He just walked away.

I walked away, too, holding my busted lip, and just went on to my friend’s house.

I’ve never told this to anyone. Even at the time, I said nothing to my friends, not my parents, certainly not the police. At the time it didn’t seem like a big deal. Or I tried to make myself believe it wasn’t a big deal. These things happened. We all took our turn. In fact, I’d been hit before, hit harder. So I just got on with things, went about business as usual.

The money was not missed. The bruise on the cheek faded. What remained was a feeling. It never went away. I feel it now, writing this essay. An anger pointed at the man who hit me, at the world that created him. Anger at myself for not spotting the potential danger. Shame in being beaten down, in not fighting back, in just giving up the money (though that was the right thing to do). Mainly, I feel a heavy sadness, a profound disappointment in the world of men.

All these years I’ve carried this stuff around inside me, its weight a part of how I slog myself around, wary always of who’s standing on the walkway.

When I was nine years old, my Grandpa Heathcock sat me up on his lap and told me a story about a time he was working as a foreman for Sinclair Oil. He said he was driving a one-lane road through the oil fields when his truck came nose to nose with another truck. The road was too narrow, the ditches too steep, for either truck to pass or turn around. One of them would have to back up the way they came. My grandpa said he got out of his truck and told the other driver he was trespassing on company land and had to put his truck in reverse. The man refused. I remember clearly my grandpa balled a big meaty fist and told me, “So I hit that man until he went back from where he came.”

For a long time I thought my grandpa was giving me instruction on the nature of man, on how a man has to stick up for himself, sometimes has to fight. But then an interesting thing happened. Several years after his death I was on a fishing trip with my father and brother. I told them the story of Grandpa’s fight on the dirt road. My brother had never heard the story. My father agreed that he vaguely remembered something like that happening, but never recalled Grandpa ever talking about it. After asking around, I came to realize my grandpa had told only me, and that fact changed my understanding of the telling.

I now see that the story wasn’t a lesson at all. It was a burden. I’m convinced that for the same reasons I’d never told anyone about being robbed by the highway, Grandpa had never told anyone about the incident in the oil field. I’m convinced the reason he told me about the incident was compelled by the likewise impulse I have now in writing this essay.

The other night I was granted the privilege of seeing the first cut of Ken Rodgers’ film, Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor, a documentary about the seventy-seven day siege where 6,000 men faced relentless attacks in the Vietnamese valley of Khe Sanh. These were Marines, the toughest of our toughest, the born warriors. These were some of the best-trained, most tenacious soldiers the world has ever known. The film consisted of interviews, with fifteen survivors talking about their experiences during those seventy-seven days and beyond. What was striking to me, beyond their amazing and often terrifying stories of ambushes, of fox-holes filled with bodies, of soldiers lost and alone on a battlefield, of mortar fire that never ceased, was that for the most part the men had kept these stories to themselves. If you were to meet them on the street, or in the grocery store, or down the pew, you couldn’t glimpse the roil of combat still alive inside them.

One of the Marines, a sharply dressed gentleman in a coat and tie, one of the men I’d wrongly supposed—judging him strictly by appearance—had been able to find his equilibrium after the war, said that even forty years after the fact, each and every morning he pulled his legs out from the bed covers, put his feet on the floor, and heard mortar fire. Bombs. Every morning. Secret bombs. Bombs exploding inside him. Bombs silent to the rest of us.

The highest purpose of story is to give voice to silent bombs. I write so that my grandpa’s pain is not lost to the grave. I write about my own fights so that they don’t sit like stones in the depths of my private shame. Even more profound is the document Ken Rodgers has created with his film, not meant to politicize war, not meant as propaganda to bolster the military, to mythologize the soldier. Ken Rodgers simply allowed his fellow Marines to release the truth, muted for too long inside men whose stories are the foundation of the greater human drama that has always included warfare, from the first hurled stones to the H-Bomb. Silence breeds confusion. Silence enables Hollywood’s trite action-figure nonsense to be peddled to the masses. There’s nothing more noble than the voice that finally breaks the silence, even and especially if the message delivered is one that makes us confront the best and worst of who we are. Who we all are. The message Ken Rodgers’ film delivered was not that war was separate from us, made from some government machine, some blueprint drawn up in a windowless room in the basement of the Pentagon, but that warfare comes from us. We are war. It lives inside us. It is not the violence, but the men, in all their bravery and heroism, in all their shame and demons, in all their pride and tears. And in their silence that is silent no more.

Not long ago my mother sent me pages from the diary of a man named Floyd Barker, a great uncle of mine five generations back. Floyd’s writings covered a lot of subjects, family life, marriages and travel and farming, but there was a passage that shook me awake. It reads: “After passing the present site of Brandenburg, Ky., the party was attacked by Indians and those not killed were made prisoners. It is said that one of the Barker boys tried to escape by swimming the river but was killed in the water and his body caught and the heart taken out and broiled and an effort made to compel his mother to eat it. However, this she refused to do.”

Upon first reading this, after the momentary shock of it, the brutality of the images making me recoil, I felt a deep connection with Floyd, a comfort. For isn’t this the truth of stories—the one Floyd told, the one my grandpa told me, the stories spoken by those brave Marines in Ken’s film, and my own stories, too—that we find, as almost a surprise though it should be obvious, that we are made of the same stuff, are plagued by the same feelings, are bolstered in that we are as much the same as different and by letting our stories be known, by breaking the silence of shame and anger and sadness, we are connecting with the greater fabric of humanity and from that point forward we are unburdened, made lighter, in simply understanding that we are not alone.

Alan Heathcock lives, teaches and writes in Boise, Idaho. He is the award winning author of VOLT. For more information, visit www.alanheathcock.com.