First Meeting: Dispatches and Donuts
As facilitators we want to engage veterans and former service members with literature, drama, poetry, and short stories. But how do we gain trust? During our first training session, we came up with a few questions and guidelines to open a dialogue with veterans who come to our discussion sessions.
We can begin with “What were you assigned to read in the military?” These texts probably help shape a service member’s identity, just as films help shape a civilian’s understanding of war. For this reason, we should ask what films veterans want civilian audiences to watch. Film contributes a great deal to the narrative of war in the U.S., and we plan on screening a few films at our different campuses.
Michael Herr also contributed to the narrative of war with his memoir Dispatches, which conjures up the confusion of war. For us it initiated a conversation about mythic vs. sensory experiences of war. Mythic experiences include John Wayne as the rugged, lone wolf hero. Herr portrays a more visceral experience as he describes the hallucinatory shifts from danger to less danger. Surreal comes to mind when reading Herr’s descriptions of war in Dispatches; otherworldly, too, because the Vietnam war (and war in general) is not a reality most civilians will ever know.
We don’t live in a warrior culture. Instead, we have a warrior institution: the military. Veterans will know better than us how the military functions, which might present an opportunity to gain their trust. Ask them for clarification with military terms or maneuvers; invite them to interject on topics they know. They want to help. That’s why they joined the military according to the director of our Veterans Success Center at CSUSB. In fact, we don’t have to know everything about the military. Instead, they can teach us. This approach might gain their trust, which is extremely valuable according to Jonathan Shay (whom we will discuss during our next meeting).
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