Like many war stories, Brian Williams' tales might be 'untrue truths'

I have been covering military and veterans issues for more than a decade now, and if there’s one thing I’ve come to understand, it is this: Many war stories are fictional.

I first came to realize this when interviewing military members returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. About a singular, specific event, I’d hear one story from one soldier and a very different story from another.

These were not errors on the margins of memory. It was not the difference between a gunfight with six insurgents and a shootout with eight. It was the difference between a gunfight and nothing at all.

In the wake of revelations that NBC anchor Brian Williams has long been telling an apparently fictitious story about being in a helicopter that was struck by a rocket in Iraq, I’ve been thinking a lot about these warriors’ stories.       

Over the years, I’ve listened to a teary-eyed veteran talk about watching the death of a man who didn’t die. I’ve heard a soldier describe shooting people he did not shoot. I’ve heard an airman detail war wounds he received in a war he wasn’t in. I’ve heard a military commander describe burying a subordinate he did not bury.

I’ve heard stories of firefights that didn’t happen and bombings that didn’t occur.

In some cases, I’m quite certain, I was simply being lied to by people who wanted to make their wartime service seem more dramatic than it was. In most cases, though, I don’t think I was being lied to at all.

Rather, I have come to believe that in most situations I was being told an untrue truth — a fiction that helps its creator make sense of things they felt in times of physical, psychological and moral stress.

Decades of research demonstrates that human memory is a fragile thing. It can be easily lost. It can also be easily re-created. I reflected upon this in an article about war service and memory for The Salt Lake Tribune in 2010. Those trying to make sense of Mr. Williams’ comments might find this exploration illuminating.

In reporting this piece, a Salt Lake City attorney named James Holbrook told me a story about the moments after he stepped off a plane in Vietnam in 1969. The memory of that experience is burned in his brain, he told me, and he’s never had any desire to embellish the story. But, he said, he can’t be 100 percent certain that it happened the way he remembers.

Holbrook said he has come to the realization that there is a difference between “literal truth” and “meaningful truth.”

I have, too.

I have dedicated my life to telling stories that are literally true, but having heard so many false wartime stories from people I genuinely like, respect and even admire, I have sometimes asked myself whether I might also be harboring some untrue truths.

Was gunfire really the first thing I heard when I stepped off the plane in Baghdad? Did I really see a bulldozer turning over the blood-soaked soil following a rocket attack in Ramadi? Was I really awoken by the sound of incoming mortars in Balad, only to laugh, roll over and fall back asleep? Did I really step out of my armored vehicle to relieve myself on a street known as “IED Alley” when the convoy in which I was riding was halted?

I honestly believe that all of these moments happened. I’ve been thinking about these and many other experiences for more than a decade. I’ve shared some of these stories in public.

But insomuch as each of these memories helps illustrate and explain something about my experiences in Iraq, I must acknowledge the possibility — slight though I do believe it is — that these recollections might be more meaningfully true than literally true.

I have no way of knowing whether Mr. Williams is a liar or, like so many other people who have been to war, is an unwitting purveyor of an untrue truth.

But when it comes to war stories, I have long since resolved to give Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines the courtesy of not being called liars when their stories turn out to be literally untrue. And when it comes to memories fashioned during one of the most physically and emotionally stressful times of my life, I sure hope that — if anything I recall of my time in Iraq turned out to be untrue — I would be afforded that same courtesy.

The fog of war is thick indeed. And if those who have felt its effects cannot lean on one another for support, we’ll all surely be lost.