“These troops, to me, are not just stenographers mechanically recording their experiences. They have created and crafted real literature, and like all great works of art, they have transcended the subject matter. They are not just about war. They are about despair ,grief, hope, resilience; all these emotions that civilians and military alike can empathize, understand and learn from.”

--Andrew Carroll
Speaking about contributors to Operation Homecoming

Andrew Carroll’s career as an author and founder of the Legacy Project has taken him to every state in the U.S. and 40 other countries, including Iraq and Afghanistan. He has made it his mission to encourage Americans to record and preserve their own wartime experiences, through letters, e-mails and other writings.

It’s fitting that the author of the best-seller “Letters of a Nation” and several books of American wartime letters, is one of a host of American writers now involved in Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, a National Endowment for the Arts initiative.

The NEA, with funding from Boeing, has asked authors to visit American military installations around the world, leading writing workshops for troops and families, encouraging them to record and submit their experiences to Operation Homecoming.

Carroll visited bases and posts across Germany this month. I attended his presentation at the Landstuhl post library and wrote about it in Spouse Calls on Sept. 15.

Earlier submissions to the project were published in Operation Homecoming, edited by Carroll. The book was the basis for an Emmy- and Oscar-nominated documentary. New contributions will be archived to preserve the historical record written by soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and their families. Carroll said. Collecting letters for his previous books, and now for Operation Homecoming, he said he found these writings “put you at the epicenter of history.” Speaking at Landstuhl, Carroll described one Operation Homecoming contributor’s reasons for writing his wartime experiences:

“He said ‘First I wrote for myself. It was cathartic. I had to get these emotions out. I had seen too many things. The second is that I wanted civilians to have a better idea of what we go through and what our brothers and sisters in arms go through and what these troops have sacrificed, and third,’ he said, ‘I was writing for myself because I have friends who are in the military, and we come home and some of us are really struggling …We have nightmares … I want them to know they’re not alone.’ ”

“Amidst all the heartbreak of these pieces,” Carroll continued, “there is, I think, a glimmer of hope and that's what is ... so special about these pieces.”

Writer’s workshops in the current phase of Operation Homecoming are centered on Veteran’s Administration medical centers, military hospitals and affiliated centers around the United States, Carroll said.

He described the quality of writing in the military community:

“Troops make phenomenal writers. They have a great economy of language,” he said. “Troops are taught to communicate efficiently … They’re more creative, because they are taught to improvise … They’re disciplined.

“What I love about being around the military, when you shake their hand, their word is their honor, their bond.

“For writers, words are sacred for us too.”

To find out more about Operation Homecoming and how to contribute your wartime experiences, go to www.OperationHomecoming.org.

For more about Andrew Carroll’s other books and his ongoing efforts to preserve correspondence, see www.warletters.com. and see Spouse Calls from Nov. 11, 2007.