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.

To the man who followed my wife home from the grocery store

To the man who followed my wife home from the grocery store the other day,

These days, it’s easy to give in to fear and suspicion. To believe we’re less safe than we ever have been. To imagine no one can be trusted.

Over the past three days I’ve been reminding my wife we don’t have to do that. That fear doesn’t keep us secure. That we’re actually more safe, in the incredibly blessed circumstances in which we’ve found ourselves, than the vast majority of people in our society since its founding. That most people are good people, with good intentions.

And that you’re probably — almost definitely — a good guy who made a stupid decision to follow her home from the grocery store.

She is beautiful, after all. Striking. If I didn’t know her, and if I was a single guy (as I assume you are) I’d want to get to know her, too.

But here’s what I wouldn’t have done: I wouldn’t have waited for her to check out and then followed her into the parking lot. I wouldn’t have gotten into my car and pulled up behind hers on the road. I wouldn’t have followed her, turn for turn, as she serpentined this way and that through the city. I wouldn’t have thought that such driving was normal — and so I would have assumed that the person I was pursuing was nervous about what I was doing.

She thought she lost you when she no longer could see you in her rear-view mirror. And she believes, as I do, that we shouldn’t always assume the worst about people. She figured it was all in her head.

Not for nothing, since you are an African American man and she is a white woman, she was conscientious about the possibility that the fear and suspicion she so loathes when she sees it in other people could somehow be materializing in her own subconscious. She didn’t want to feel that way about you, though she didn’t even know you.

She told herself that everything was fine and she drove home.

Then you pulled up to the curb. You were cordial, she says, though nonetheless creepy. You told her she was beautiful. You asked for her number. You persisted when she told you she was married (a recognizable and time-tested statement of declination — regardless of whether it’s true and regardless of the questionable sanctity of that tradition in our society.) You asked if she was on Facebook and if she wanted a friend.

Again, she said no. Finally you apologized and drove away.

That’s where it ended for you. Not, though, for her.

The past few days she’s been second-guessing herself. She’s been wondering if she made a mistake in coming home. She’s been thinking she should have kept driving — maybe right to the police station — and that she should have given into fear. She posted your description and a description of your car on Facebook, though neither is particularly detailed — you’re a tall, well-dressed 20-something black man in a late-model gold sedan — so she’s apprehensive about adding to the already terrible environment of profiling faced by men who look like you do.

And she’s scared. She knows it’s incredibly unlikely that she needs to feel that way, but that’s how she feels nonetheless. It may or may not be a logical response, but it is an absolutely reasonable one.

To my knowledge (and I think it is good knowledge, but no man is ever entitled to assume) my wife is not one of the 28 million American women who have been raped in their lifetimes. But you don’t know that. You couldn’t know that. So, for all you know, in addition to the fear your actions could have incited in any person, you might very well have been re-awakening a past trauma in her life.

Damn you.

It’s not really my place to stand up for my wife. She can do that for herself and she did it quite well the other day. But men who don’t consider how their actions are likely to be perceived by women are likely not to listen to women either. And because it seems highly possible that you are irrational in this way, please allow me to tell you: You need to stop doing this sort of thing.

It’s not cute. It’s not charming. It’s not an acceptable way to strike up a conversation with a person you’re attracted to. If you want to talk to a woman you don’t know, approach her in public when she is surrounded by other people. Take “no” for an answer. And take anything that seems like it’s remotely like “no” for an answer, too.

Yes, I’ll bet you’re a good guy who made a stupid decision. But I’ll bet you’ve done this before. And I’ll bet you’ll do it again if you’re not shamed for it by other men.

So shame on you. Start acting like a man.

Sincerely,

matthew

If not Congress, then Christ: Seeking the right response to the illegal immigrants who live among us

Maybe someday they'll do something.

They'll build a wall. They'll offer amnesty. They'll offer economic help to the nations whose citizens are crossing our borders because they cannot find work within their own. They'll fund a mass deportation. They'll actually punish the businesses and individuals who exploit illegal labor. 

They'll do something. Hell, they'll do anything. 

Someday.

But not today. Not tomorrow. Not a week from now. Probably not a year from now.

And not yesterday. Not the day before. Not a year ago. Not five years ago.

It has been nearly three decades since the United States Congress last agreed on a substantial immigration reform bill. And over the past 10 years, in particular, even the best of efforts to align our nation's immigration laws with the needs and desires of its population have been stymied by partisan bickering and political infighting.

In the meantime, the number of people living illegally in this country has grown.

Five million. Seven million. Nine million. Eleven-point-seven million — a number greater than the populations of New York City and Chicago combined.

It is completely appropriate to debate what our laws should do about this situation. It's also a largely theoretical exercise. Congress, because it is Congress, has failed to do its job when it comes to making laws that are actually effective in governing our borders and regulating who may work in this country. And that is unlikely to change any time soon.

The next question, then, is what should we do?

For whatever reason, these days I hear about this issue most often from my Christian friends. And they all seem so very angry. One recently lamented that "illegal aliens" in our nation, "get free housing, free health care, free contraception, free education, free transportation and the right to vote," and wondered why, if that was all true, he couldn't get some "free ammunition."

Notwithstanding the myriad inaccuracies of his statement — and setting aside the menacing insinuation as mere hyperbole — I was still struck by how incredibly unChristian his words seemed.

It has been a long time since I attended church, though. Perhaps, I thought, I've forgotten a thing or two along the way. So it was that I took the stairs to our family's library and dusted off the Bible my parents gave me when I left for basic training, nearly 20 years ago.

Here is what it (and a little bit of surfing on a handy Bible search tool) told me:

If they are homeless, shall we not give them shelter? Leviticus 25:35 says: "If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you." 

If they are sick or injured, shall we not help nurse them back to health? Luke 10:25-37, the parable of the Good Samaritan, seems pretty clear on this: "He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine," Christ told his followers. "Go and do likewise."

Shall we turn their children away from our schools? What kind of a world would that beget? Proverbs 22:6 says that Christians should "start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it." And, of course, Matthew 19:14 is among several gospel renditions of a story in which Jesus rebukes his followers for pushing young would-be disciples away, saying "let the little children come to me." 

I don't know what the political solution will be to this crisis, but I do know that is it not coming. Not any time soon, at least. 

In the meantime, it seems rather clear to me what the Christian approach should be to those living among us in this, a nation in which about three-quarters of our citizens identify themselves as Christian.

We should treat them as friends, as neighbors, as brothers and sisters. We should treat them as fellow children of God.

A Very Utah Christmas

Elenor Heyborne and Marina Gomberg apply for a marriage license on Dec. 20.
Photo by Jim Urquhart

‘Tis the week before Christmas, and all through the state,

Wedding bells are ringing for those who can’t wait.

For a window was opened, and soon it might close

If cold-hearted grinches get what they propose:

A stay on the order that lifted the ban;

And marriages only for a woman and man.

But if ever there was a time and a place

For a state to perform an abrupt about face,

It’s here in a state that was founded by men

Who lived not with just one, but many women;

And here in a place, where our leaders do strive

To keep government rules out of all of our lives;

And here in a world where so many do trust,

That freedom means fairness for ev’ry one of us;

And here in a place with a great history

Of changing our laws when it’s clear it needs be.

For instance, that time in Nineteen-Thirty-Three,

When we were the deciding state to decree,

Prohibition should end in the nation at large,

Even though most the people who were then in charge,

Partook of no liquor, not one single drop.

Repeal did not change that, did not make it stop.

And then there was the year Eighteen-Ninety-Six

We elected a woman into the mix

Of Utah’s state senate; the first woman to be

Serving such a role in the land of the free.

Yes, Utah has had its fair share of regrets,

Banning blacks from the priesthood was bad as it gets.

It wasn’t until Nineteen-Seventy-Eight,

That the Mormons would fix that awful mistake. 

And it wasn’t until just this very year,

The church’s leaders made it perfectly clear,

There was no good reason for the racial ban.

It wasn’t God’s will but the fault of a man,

Who let a few passages from the Good Book

Influence him to blatantly overlook

The teachings of someone who many now say

Was our Lord and Savior, born on Christmas day.

Is it hard to think that today we might have

A law on our books every bit as bad,

Begun with the best of intentions and yet

Will someday be something we’d like to forget?

With this all in mind is it too much to ask,

For one brave and audacious holiday task?

Dear Governor Herbert, please look in your heart,

And think about what our state might just impart,

Upon our great nation if you’d just command

That Utah won’t be where hate makes its last stand.

You don’t have to change any deep-held beliefs

About what a good marriage really should be.

Just let us all have the same rights you enjoy.

To marry our partners, to share all our joy,

Our betters and worses, our deaths to us part.

And simply allow this next New Year to start

With love and compassion, instead of a fight.

A Merry Christmas for all, when we all Choose the Right.

It's time to move the Olympics — to Salt Lake City

There’s a movement afoot to convince the International Olympic Committee to move the 2014 Winter Games out of Russia.

Rightfully so. In the wake of the passing of that nation’s horrendous “homosexual propaganda” laws — and assurances from the host nation’s sports minister that the laws will be enforced on athletes and visitors alike during the games — the Sochi experiment can rightly be considered an abject failure.

So far, The New York Times has observed, “those who organize, broadcast and underwrite the Games have offered little beyond tardy and lukewarm criticism.”

I wonder how that might change, though, when the “protests, boycotts, and terrible publicity,” promised by actor, human rights advocate and social media magnate George Takei, are underway.

“Trust me,” Takei wrote today, “if you are a corporate brand, you do not want to be associated with the Sochi Olympics.”

Moscow, of course, has never been one to acquiesce to social, cultural, political or economic power.  

And so, as tens of thousands of people have already demanded on a Change.org petition, it’s time to move the games.

To where? The quick response is Vancouver, which hosted the last Winter Olympics. I’m not sure how the residents of Terminal City are going to feel about that, though, given that the last round of the games left their town with a $1 billion hangover.

Those games were also the unfortunate victim of an unseasonably warm winter, which resulted in cancelations and delays of several events and none-too-favorable conditions for many others.

All of which and more is why I say: Come to Salt Lake City.

Like Vancouver, most of the facilities and infrastructure that helped make the 2002 games such an incredible success are still here. Ski ramps? Check. Bobsled course? Check. Olympic oval? Check. So too are most of the 20-something-thousand volunteers who made those games a success. We could probably even get former Salt Lake Organizing Committee president Mitt Romney to come lend a hand — word is that he’s been looking for something to do lately.

Our highways are better than they were in 2002. Same thing for our light rail and commuter rail systems. Salt Lake City’s new public safety building is virtually built to  be the epicenter of a massive security operation. And even in a bad snow year, the eight world-famous ski resorts within an hour’s drive of downtown Salt Lake City are considerably better off than many resorts are in a good year.

Greatest Snow on Earth? You’re damn right. 

And, not for nothing, our population is gayer than ever — so says The Advocate, which last year named Salt Lake “the gayest city in America” (this year, we dropped to a humble sixth.)

Lastly — but perhaps most importantly — we could actually pull it off. No doubt in my mind. None whatsoever. They say that the fact our city is completely surrounded by mountains makes it hard to see past our own horizons. I’ll accept that. But it also makes it hard to believe in limits.

If the Games aren’t held in Russia — and they shouldn’t be — bring them here.

Matthew D. LaPlante is a journalist and assistant professor of journalism at Utah State University. 

Boom goes our freedom — at a cost to our vets

Two months sure felt like an awfully long time.

But compared to the year-and-even-longer combat tours being served by Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines back then, my first reporting trip to Iraq was nothing.

Still, those two months have stayed with me, in big and small ways, ever since. And every July, I get a little extra reminder in the form of fireworks and firecrackers.

For the first few years, the sudden staccato pops and unexpected booms would send my heart racing. I’d get agitated. I’d lose focus on what I was doing. I’d feel scared.

Worse still were the flying pyrotechnic mortars, which — at least to my untrained ears — sounded eerily like the real thing.

I felt guilty and embarrassed about this for a long time. Turns out, though, that I wasn’t alone.

Shortly after my last trip to Iraq in 2010, I met a Vietnam veteran named Tony, who told me that he had spent every July 4 since the early 1970s holed up in a one-man backpacking tent in the mountains. When he moved to Utah in the mid-1980s, he began making two summer trips to the high Uintas, since people in this very patriotic place also enjoy celebrating the state’s Pioneer Day, on July 24, with fireworks. Some time around the late-1990s, he said, folks here seemed to decide that the whole month of July was a good enough occasion to set’em off.

Much too old, now, to spend an entire month in a little tent, Tony cobbled together enough money to buy an old Airstream trailer and takes it out as far as he can into the wilderness for the full month.

“Do you enjoy those trips?” I asked him.

“Not particularly,” he said. “But it’s better than hiding under my bed.”

And Tony’s not alone, either.

Christopher Packley, a former Marine from Illinois, told the Chicago Tribune in 2011 that the even the smell of fireworks can trigger powerful memories of his time in Iraq during the siege of Fallujah, more than seven years earlier.

Cyrus Hackworth, a Navy veteran who served in Vietnam, told The Army Times in 2012 that he’s still troubled by the sound of fireworks, even when he hears them in the distance.

Iraq War veteran Matt Veil told The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette in 2012 that once, during a dinner out with his girlfriend, he instinctively hit the ground at the sound of the first blasts of a fireworks show at a minor league baseball stadium a half-mile away.

“It echoed down the buildings, and it just made an eerie sound,” Veil said. “The sound reminded me so much of mortar fire or heavy artillery fire.”

It’s ironic, I’ve long thought, that these noisy celebrations come in recognition of a nation founded on the blood of America’s very first war veterans. And it’s a little sad to me that so few people have taken note; we shouldn’t have to be told, or ordered, to do something decent for the men and women who have worn this nation’s military uniforms.

Now, I’m not so naïve as to think that we’ll ever ban these things, nor so dumb as to think we should. For some people — even some veterans — the pop-pop-ratatat-pop-pop-boom of pyrotechnics is the sound of freedom.

But I wonder if we can all agree, like gentlemen and gentlewomen, that there’s a time and place for it all. Not a law, just a kindness — a measure of respect for those whose brains have been wired just a bit differently as a result of their service in one of our country’s wars. July 4 from dusk ‘til midnight? That seems fair, right?

To be clear, I’m not asking for me. The whistling mortars sometimes still make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, but only very occasionally when I’m not expecting them. These days, I’m largely unfazed and, in fact, I’ve really grown to like fireworks again. The soccer team I cheer for has a big fireworks show coming up after the game in a few days, and I’ll be there, sitting on the pitch, taking it all in with my wife and daughter.

But there are many veterans among us for whom these sounds might never be anything but unsettling. For Tony and Christopher, for Cyrus and Matt, and for thousands upon thousands of others — compared to the sacrifices they’ve all made, this one seems particularly paltry.

Matthew D. LaPlante is a veteran of the U.S. Navy and an assistant professor of journalism at Utah State University. He covered military and national security issues for The Salt Lake Tribune from 2005 to 2011.