FIRE AND FORGET
Fiction Sunglasses, attitude, and charred boots FIRE AND FORGET: Short Stories from the Long War Edited by Roy Scranton and Matt Gallagher Da Capo Press Reviewed by Marty Carlock Fire and forget. Shoot and shake it off. Kill and care less. None of the above is possible. So say the authors of this collection of 15 stories from the Gulf Wars, who – it is clear – have been there. The detail, the veracity, the inner hurt could not be replicated by anyone just making it up. The editors put it best in the preface: We each knew the problem we all together struggled with, which is how to say something true about an experience unreal, to a people fed and wadded about with lies…Meanwhile, home is a place you lived in once, a different person, a different life, and all the people you loved somehow alien. These fifteen authors are all veterans (except for one very perceptive military wife). The nucleus of them met in New York at the NYU Veterans Writing Workshop. They shared common interests:...