Most people’s experience of war and combat is confined to Hollywood movies, television news reports, and stories told by uncles and grandfathers. But war isn’t like any of those stories. War changes everything. It’s not like the movies. In the war I was in, in Iraq, the hero does not walk away into the sunset after the last round is fired; instead he wakes up three hours later and goes out on patrol again. The weak and cowardly rarely have a change of heart. There are incredibly long hours of boredom on rooftops waiting for the enemy to attack. The anxiety of waiting for the unseen but all-too-present improvised explosive device to detonate cannot be felt through the TV screen or captured on camera. Nor can anyone, including me, ever really explain the unbreakable bonds among men who have shared a guard post under fire, or hidden in a bathtub while rocket-propelled grenades destroyed the walls around them.

We called the war the elephant. We heard it roar and we smelled its stench.

Here are some stories from inside the elephant.

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