The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell

Author: John Crawford

List Price: $23.95

Pages: 240

Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover(August 4,2005) 

Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.3 x 0.8

ISBN: 157322314X

John Crawford joined the Florida National Guard to pay for his college tuition, willingly exchanging one weekend a month and two weeks a year for a free education. But in fall 2002, one semester short of graduating and newly married -- in fact, on his honeymoon¹ -- he was called to active duty and sent to the front lines in Iraq.

"We crossed the berm the same day as the Army's Third Infantry² Division, leading the invasion of Iraq. When the Third Division was sent home, our National Guard unit was passed around the armed forces like a virus: the 108th Airborne, First Marine³ Expeditionary, 101st Airborne, and finally the First Armored Division. They were all sent home, heroes of the war. Meanwhile, my unit stayed on, my soul rotting, our unit outlasted⁴ by no one in our tenure⁵ there."

Crawford and his unit spent months upon months patrolling the streets of Baghdad, occupying a hostile city. During the breaks between patrols, Crawford began writing nonfiction stories about what he and his fellow soldiers witnessed and experienced.

"The world hears war stories told by reporters and retired⁶ generals who keep extensive notebooks and journals. They carry pens as they walk, whereas I carry a machine gun. War stories are told to those who have not experienced the worst in man. And to the listener's ears they can sound like glory and heroism⁷. People mutter phrases like, 'I don't know how you did it.' And they look at you wondering how you have changed, wondering if you have forever lost the moral dilemma⁸ associated with taking another person's life."

In a voice at once raw and immediate⁹, Crawford's stories vividly¹⁰ chronicle the daily life of a young soldier in Iraq-the excitement, the horror, the anger, the tedium¹¹, the fear, the camaraderie¹². But all together, the stories gradually uncover something more: the transformation¹³ of a group of young men, innocents, into something entirely¹⁴ different.

"I have too many stories to tell, and if just a few of them get read, the ones that real people will understand, then maybe someone will know what we did here. It won't assuage¹⁵ the suffering inside me, inside all of us. It won't bring back anyone's son or brother or wife. It will simply make people aware, if only for one glimmering¹⁶ moment, of what war is really like."

Those stories became this book, a haunting and powerful, brutal¹⁷ but compellingly honest book-punctuated with both humor and heartbreak-that represents an important document revealing the actual experience of waging the War in Iraq, as well as the introduction of a literary voice forged in the most intense of circumstances.