Publisher's Synopsis
After Combat bridges the gap between sensationalized media and reality by telling war's unvarnished stories. Soldiers, sailors, marines, and air force personnel (retired, on leave, or at the beginning of military careers) describe combat in the ways they believe it should be understood. In this collection of interviews, veterans speak anonymously with pride about their own strengths and accomplishments, with gratitude for friendships and adventures, and also with shame, regret, and grief, while braving controversy, misunderstanding, and sanction.
In the accounts of these veterans, Eide and Gibler seek to present what Vietnam veteran and writer Tim O'Brien calls a "true war story"-one without obvious purpose or moral imputation and independent of civilian logic, propaganda goals, and even peacetime convention.