Washington Post reporter and editor David Finkel spent eight months embedded with soldiers of the Army’s 2-16 infantry battalion in Iraq during the surge. Finkel’s devastating and widely praised The Good Soldiers (2009) is based on the time he spent with the unit in Iraq. “The good soldiers” are chewed up in the war waged on them by the terror masters in Iran. It is a book that made me rethink our war in Iraq — to rethink it again — in a different way. If we weren’t willing or able to deter Iran from supplying the munitions that mangled our men, we should have kept the soldiers home for that reason alone.
Thank You For Your Service (2013) is Finkel’s sequel. He follows a few of the soldiers from his first book as they return home. Whereas Finkel’s narrative presence is felt in The Good Soldiers, he all but effaces himself from the starkly intimate scenes to which he bears witness in Thank You For Your Service. The second book can serve as a master class in nonfiction narrative.
Adam Schumann, is one of the 2-16 soldiers Finkel met in Iraq. He becomes one of Finkel’s protagonists in Thank You For Your Service. His story lies at the heart of the book and of the movie that was made of it. In the film Miles Teller turns in a wrenching performance as Schumann. The memory that haunts Schumann throughout the film, by the way, is drawn directly from Finkel’s account in the book.
Having written about The Best Years of Our Lives yesterday, I was struck by an thought occurred. As it follows three soldiers home from the war, Thank You For Your Service serves as something of a modern counterpart to The Best Years of Our Lives. Whereas The Best Years cleaned up at the Oscars, however, Thank You For Your Service was a commercial bomb. It lacks uplift. It lacks an inspirational message. It is long on realism.
The Pathway Home (at the Veterans Home of California-Yountville in northern California) figures prominently as a locus of sorely needed treatment for the demons with which Schumann contends. His graduation from the program after four months toward the end of the book is full of pain and hope.
Thank You For Your Service was published in 2013. Five years later, in a tragic real-life postscript, a veteran and former Pathway Home patient took hostage and then murdered the program’s executive director, Christine Loeber, Clinical Director Dr. Jen Golick, and psychologist Dr. Jennifer Gonzales of the Department of Veterans Affairs in San Francisco. The Pathway Home lost two-thirds of its leadership team. The murderer was a recently expelled Pathway Home patient who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The film is imperfect. Among other things, for dramatic purposes, it depicts the Army as a villain. The Army is portrayed as denying the disorders with which the men struggle to come to terms. While seeking VA benefits in one scene, for example, Schumann is instructed by an officer that he shouldn’t be claiming disability because other soldiers might see his example and crack too. I didn’t believe it and found it annoying. With that reservation, I recommend the film. I recommend Finkel’s two books without reservation.
The veterans’ difficulty finding prompt and adequate medical care through the VA (featured in the film) is nevertheless a familiar plight. Reading Finkel’s book, one sees in the person of Army vice chief of staff Peter Chiarelli (now retired) how the Army itself has struggled to come to terms with the stress disorders that the film memorably brings to life. One leaves the film wanting to learn more and do right by those whom we formulaically thank for their service, or to think about what we mean by it more deeply.
