Pilot and Former Soldier Find Release In Writing

Brian Turner writes poetry to express his experience as a former infantry team leader who served in Bosnia and Iraq. 

Turner, who calls war "a fundamental failure," spoke at Stanford’s Tressider Union Tuesday alongside Lt. Col Jason Armagost, a visiting scholar at Stanford and a U.S. Air Force officer since 1992.

The speakers were introduced by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes, who acted as moderator. The symposium, “The Shadows of Bombs,” was part of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) Ethics and War series.

Rhodes pointed out that the earliest western literature was literature of war, written by Homer more than 2,700 years ago.

In his essay, "Things to Pack When You're Bound for Baghdad," Armagost wrote about his experience of piloting one of the first B-2 stealth bombers to attack Iraq:

The eastern edge of the city is passing under the nose of the aircraft, but we will be lit from below for another two minutes. We are not producing contrails. I crave complete darkness. I want Plato’s Cave. I want these missiles to be the shadows of perfect missiles, our bombs to be the shadows of bombs. Sometimes you must do a bad thing to stop something even worse?

Turner’s book, Here, Bullet, features a poem of the same name:

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta’s opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you’ve started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel’s cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

Turner said this is the only poem in the book about him. He also described a poem he wrote about the death of a female soldier after being hit by a roadside bomb and another about an Iraqi weightlifter.

Scott Sagan, co-director of CISAC, asked Armagost and Turner how they dealt with receiving expressions of gratitude from American people after they came home from Iraq. Armagost replied that he felt uncomfortable and that “it took me a while to realize that it’s not about me.”

Turner said he struggled with it. “Nobody ever claps for the police or firefighters or teachers. They’re all jobs that need to be done.”

Rhodes commented on the survivor guilt that was experienced by many Vietnam War veterans. He recommended Achilles in Vietnam by psychiatrist Jonathan Shay as an interesting book on the subject.

A Stanford junior who had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as a Marine asked how writing literature can help. Armagost said it helps understand the nature of war, and Turner said, “I think it’s a healthy process. If you have a few minutes to write the thing down, it will help you years later."

A member of the audience remarked that when his father served in World War II, the rule for soldiers captured by the enemy was to give only name, rank and serial number. He asked the speakers how they were trained to face torture.

Armagost said that since the Korean War, it became known that “name, rank and serial number” didn’t work, and training has changed. He referred to Vice Admiral James Stockdale, who was held captive in North Vietnam for seven years and had been severely tortured but steadfastly refused to reveal anything.

Turner said he was more concerned with us torturing other people. He indicated the little American flag he wore on his sleeve and said, “I wasn’t just Sgt. Turner. I was the USA.”