First Look at FUBAR A Collection of War Stories

This is my second collection. My first was Multiplex Fandango, which contained all of my best published and original work to date. The collection was a Bram Stoker Finalist and extremely popular. I think it's still for sale over at Dark Regions. I still get a lot of requests for autographs on Multiplex Fandango, and frankly, I thought it would be twenty years before I had enough material to publish a second collection.

Then came the idea of collecting war stories; not just fiction mind you, but non-fiction also. The editor of Cohesion Press, who you might remember from his SNAFU series of anthologies, and I spoke about the possibility and came up with a solid idea. You see, I'd recently been to Afghanistan on an all expenses paid vacation, so I had several essays which I felt were powerful enough to be included. I also had quite a few military-themed stories which I felt had something to say. Some you might have read before, some others are just now seeing the light of day.

FUBAR went on sale yesterday in a very reasonable paperback. To celebrate this, I'd like to share the introduction and the table of contents. I'll also be at Phoenix Comiccon this weekend and will have about 20 to hand sell if anyone is interested. For those who can't come to Phoenix, the link down and over to the right will take you to the promised land.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to FUBAR. As most of you know, FUBAR stands for Fouled¹ Up Beyond All Recognition and is one of those military terms which has invaded common speech. Like the acronyms SNAFU² and REMF³, FUBAR finds the most use when bad things happen. And in the military, bad things are always happening. We’re ether doing bad things to other people or planning to do bad things to other people, or other people are doing and planning to do bad things to us. We often find that it’s our own kind. I can’t tell you how many times a drill sergeant or platoon sergeant has exclaimed that either me or my kit was FUBAR. There were times when the word was used so often I considered changing my name to FUBAR.

It certainly would have made things more interesting.

I can see it now.

“Who’s that over there?”

“That’s Private Fubar, sir.”

“Ah, finally a fitting name.”

You see, because although I was athletic, I was also prone to accidents. I didn’t pay attention to things and in the military, it’s all about paying attention. Just look at the claymore mine. It was architecturally engineered for people who don’t pay attention. It has the words FRONT TOWARD ENEMY emblazoned on the deadly side for a reason. If one were to ignore that specific guidance and place, arm, and fire their claymore, they’d be FUBAR’d for one brief magnificent second, right before seven hundred ball bearings flew through them at twenty-six hundred miles an hour.

Thus the idea of creating a collection of war stories called FUBAR was born.

As I searched for pieces to curate for this collection, I struggled to find a theme. I didn’t want the works placed randomly. I wanted them to mean something. My desire was for you the reader to experience this in a way that would give you the most benefit. For those of you with little or no military experience, it was to give you a little insight, a peephole, if I may, into the life of a warrior. For those of you with experience, I wanted to provide stories that I know will resonate. In a crazy trick of Schrödinger time, I can see you in the future, nodding and chuckling as you read, acknowledging and recognizing something I’ve written, while remembering in your own past, how it had been for you in a similar situation.

Then when I saw Welcome to the War Zone, I knew that it had to be the first story. I wrote that within hours of landing in Kabul, Afghanistan. I wrote it in such a way to get your adrenaline up, to demonstrate the immediacy of the danger, and to raise you pucker factor to eleven. The essay fittingly sets the stage for the rest of the book.

Then I set about trying to curate pieces that would represent me as a lifetime warrior. Long ago, I set out to determine what type of warrior I wanted to be and what kind I refused to be. Looking at my history, I can trace my warrior lineage in every American conflict and war dating back to the Revolutionary War where Captain Michael Motz of the Northumberland Militia attached his men to the 3rd Pennsylvania Regiment, Continental Line in order to fight for the independence of a new nation.  We’ve had all sorts of warriors in my family. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, Indian scouts, Indian fighters, cavalry officers, WWI grunts who were mustard-gassed in the trenches, Civil War regulars who fought against each other, infantry men who fought island to island in the Pacific, and sailors aboard the USS Arizona, now resting beneath the azure waters of Pearl Harbor. As I learned of them, I also learned about what sort of persons they were. When I could, I sleuthed what they believed in.

The one continual theme I encountered as I searched my own past was that they were all humanists.

So what is humanism? Humanism is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers critical

thinking and evidence over established doctrine or faith (Wikipedia).

…the value and agency of human beings…

Yes, I sang cadence about nuking people until they glowed.

Yes, I dehumanized my country’s enemies by calling them names.

Yes, I played the Us vs Them game.

And of course I inculcated a hatred for those who would do despicable things to my fellow warriors.

But I never ceased realizing that these enemies of mine were once children with

their own dreams, born from mothers and fathers with their own dreams, and with families who had their own dreams.

I never ceased believing that these enemies of mine weren’t as deep and thoughtful and as intelligent as myself. In some cases this task was extraordinarily difficult, but I strained to be the humanist I was determined to be.

I felt the same way about the minority groups within my own military. Part of being from a family of humanists, I was raised to treat everyone with respect. Black, white, brown or yellow, Jewish, Muslim, Christian or Atheist, straight, gay, bisexual or transgender. Everyone. Respect. All the time.

So this idea of humanism and respect was front and center as I curated these stories, because I believe that a keen-eyed, blood-covered warrior can be a humanist at the same time they’re fighting for those guys and gals in the foxhole next to them. Not only are there blood, guts and bravado war stories in this collection, but we also have thoughtful pieces about PTSD. You’ll find works about gay soldiers and about spousal abuse. You’ll find stories about the ultimate cost of responsibility and the terrible toll of war. I included a broad spectrum of my works because if you’re going to read a collection about me, I want you to understand me. This collection you’re holding in your hands or listening to, for all intents and purposes, it is me.

I’ve even included a piece I originally created as performance art on the web.

Inspired by the inestimable Coeur D’Alene American Indian poet and story teller Sherman Alexie, I created a twenty minute piece that has never been in print until now, but has been viewed hundreds of times on military holidays. I wonder if those who saw it got that it is meant to be both patriotic and protest. Just as Welcome to the Warzone was meant to get your heart kicking and your blood pumping, Doctor Doom’s Guide to the Universe and Special Rules for the Burial of Christian Insects is meant to show you the complete immersion and indoctrination basic training can be.

Which is sort of what this collection is.

So welcome to FUBAR.

This is my journey.

And now it’s yours.

1 – Alternative word for Fucker

2 – Rear Echelon Mother Fucker

3 – Situation Normal All Fucked Up

FUBAR Table of Contents

Welcome to the Warzone ©2013 Living Dangerously
When I Knew Baseball ©2013 Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd.
Family Man © 1999 At the Brink of Madness
We All Wanted to Be Heroes When We Were Young © 2012 Soldier of Fortune Magazine
The Last Kobyashi Maru © 2010 Crossroads Press (Originally titled Butterfly Winter)
Fugue on the Sea of Cortez © 2010 Multiplex Fandango
Rhythm © 1997 Cochise College Literary Magazine
PTSD in Fiction ©2014 Living Dangerously
Righteous © 2012 Psychos: Serial Killers, Depraved Madmen, and the Criminally Insane
Tarzan Doesn’t Live Here Anymore © 2010 Multiplex Fandango
My Daddy’s Private Things © 2015
Every War Has A Signature Sound © 2015
On Tranquility Tides I Ride © 2015
The Importance of Building Your Own Shadow © 2013 Living Dangerously
The Road to Painted Rock © 2015
Hiroshima Falling © 2007 A Dark and Deadly Valley
Doctor Doom © 2015
Finishing School © 2014 Living Dangerously

Living Dangerously Weekly: You Are Who You Read

I saw an article about Gary Paulsen in a trade magazine the other day and clipped it out. For years I'd been trying to think of the title of this book I'd read when I was a kid, and there it was in the article.  Hatchet. 

Or so I thought. 

You see, when I lived in New Jersey as an eight year old kid, I'd read this book that stuck with me.  It was about a boy who is lost in the woods... you'll have to forgive my memory. Some of the details are sketchy. The setting was the Catskills, which were not all that far from where I lived. As a kid in 1973, I had a pretty idyllic life. I had the run of the small town we lived in, pedaling my bike furiously from one place to the other. I had one of those banana handle bar, ten dollar, indestructible bikes bought from a creepy guy at the edge of town who sold bikes and lawnmowers and probably hooch. My folks worked far away and I remember getting out of school, rushing home, throwing my books down and taking my bike everywhere. There wasn't a trail in the woods I didn't know.  I knew of the special places, like the bushes with the broken beer bottles where I'd occasionally kneel and sniff like an animal, the smell of stale beer as foreign to me as it would be to any creature of the forest. I remember finding the skeleton of a small animal and storing it in a box that I buried in the woods; one which I'd come back to and investigate with the reverence of a Smithsonian scientist. 

Then my mom brought home a book.     

 Hatchet is about a young boy who survives a plane crash in the Yukon, but that wasn't the one I was thinking of. My Side of the Mountain is the one I'd read back then and damn, but that book affected me. This boy runs away from home and lives off the land in the Catskills for two years. He carved fish hooks. He made his own bowls.  He was like a Jedi-Eagle Scout and I remember wanting to be him.  Every time I'd pedal away from home after that I told myself that I could survive out there if I wanted to. I could run away and be able to fish and eat and hunt just like that kid.  There were times I almost didn't come back. After all, I'd read the book, and like any How-to Manual, as long as I followed the directions of Jean Craighead George, I'd be able to survive.

The next year I read My Brother Sam is Dead.  By James Lincoln Collier, I think this was the first book that made me cry. The novel thrust me into the American Revolution with the protagonist who lived and breathed 1775. I learned about patriotism, duty, loyalty and death. This novel truly affected me. Later when I was a father, this was a book I bought specially for my son, just so he could maybe experience some of what the book meant to me. 

The next year we moved to Tennessee. This would be about 1975 when I was ten, or maybe the next year, I can't be sure. I remember ordering a book from the weekly reader program. I brought the exact change in, put it in the envelope with the paper I'd filled out, and waited an impossible three weeks. When it came, I was astounded.  For the life of me, I cannot figure out the title, though.  I googled and searched, but I just can't find it.  But I can tell you the plot. The book was about a young boy kidnapped and taken to communist China by his father's nemesis. The boy learns Chinese and the ways of the people. He's treated as a second son by the Chinese man, but the boy knows better an always holds the hope of rescue in the back of his mind.  Eventually his father comes and saves him. After a perilous journey, they both escape China. To this moment I can remember lines in that book. I know that you have to boil the liche nut to get it to make a dye so you can cover your skin. 

Fast forward to now.

I've read thousands of books, but arguably, these three books I mentioned affected me more than any others.  They directed my life.  After twenty years in the Army, most as an intelligence guy who speaks Chinese, I can't help but believe that each of those books had a major influence in my life.  I can set a snare as easily as I can boil a liche nut.  Sam taught me humanity, the same humanity I levied as a soldier bearing one of the greatest responsibilities a country can bestow. 

It's utterly amazing how books can influence us.  And with that knowledge, I'm becoming more and more cognizant of what I write.  There were times as I was learning my craft that I wrote pretty much anything that came to mind.  And that was fair.  After all, I was in the learning process.  How could I learn without practice?  But now I feel I have the bones to do about anything I put my mind to. 

A few years ago, I was asked and wrote a story that I took the greatest care with in the WW II anthology A Dark and Deadly Valley. I was concerned that, because I was writing about the immediate aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, I might not do the horrible day justice. I spent an inordinate amount of time researching and trying to find the perfect way to write the story. Eventually I settled on a personal account by a survivor who'd related how he'd been waiting for a train in the station when the bomb had gone off.  When he awoke, he and hundreds of other commuters were fused together, their skin melted by the blast. I decided to begin there.  So far every review has pointed that story as a star of the book. Hiroshima Falling is a story of which I'm proud. I couldn't have written it ten years ago. I couldn't have written it five years ago. I doubt I could have even written it two years ago.  I think I've grown in my writing and in that growing found a way to see past the story to the reader.  

I hope one day I can write a story that will affect a child or an adult in the way those books affected me. I could have been a businessman, I could have been a doctor, or I could have been a priest.  But those books, the amazing writing and characterization and description somehow wove their way into my subconscious and directed who I was to become. 

To direct one's future.

Now, that's talent.

Incidentally, the rest of the Gary Paulsen article went on about how he was proud to be a teller of tales.  So I'll leave you with this:

"I'm a teller of stories.  I put bloody skins on my back and dance around the fire, and I saw what the hunt was like.  It's not erudite; it's not intellectual.  I sail, run dogs, ride horse, play professional poker and tell stories about stuff I've been through.  And I'm still a romantic; I want Bambi to make it out of the fire."

I think I'm more like Paulsen than any other writer. I write about the stuff I've been through. Pretty much all of my writing is experiential fiction. I envy those who can create whole cloth plots from the ether.

I'm not that guy.

And I'm not sure if I'm a Bambi guy, either.

But I am a romantic and I'd give anything if Old Yeller would survive.

 

Weston Ochse is the Bram Stoker-winning author or Scarecrow Gods, as well as the author of a number of novels including Empire of Salt, and soon to be published Blood Ocean (Abaddon Books). His most recent publication is an original eNovel called Velvet Dogma.