Most of what follows in this posting is something I wrote last fall so in some ways I suppose it is dated. I refer to what was going on in Falluja and at this point the most intense part of that fighting is over. I'd written this with the intent of posting it to a group I'm a part of but I never did post it because it was so long and I wasn't sure what point I was trying to make, couldn't seem to pull it together into a finished piece.

I read with sporadic intensity about the war in Iraq and last fall with the battle of Falluja, I felt especially caught up in the news of the war. In the preceding year, I'd also read a book by the journalist Chris Hedges, called War is the Force that Gives Us Meaning and had felt very affected by that book. Chris Hedges had voiced what I'd come to suspect about war. It isn't that I think war is a good thing. Quite the contrary. But I have suspected that there is something about war that feeds people, makes it seem as if something important and meaningful is happening. I've read things about veterans talking of the closeness they felt with their buddies, for instance. I think there is something about crisis that does bring people close to their feelings, maybe close to some depths they might not find in every day life. And war represents an ultimate crisis.

One point I'd wanted to make at the end of what I'd written was that I suspect when in the heat of battle, when death seems very close, when one's comrades are dying, I doubt seriously that thoughts of glory or a sense of patriotic duty are much in the minds of a soldier. I suspect it becomes about survival, about pressing one's self up close to death and wrestling with that fear. I often wonder how it is that a soldier can make himself walk into a situation where the odds are not likely to be in his favor. How does one prepare one's self? Sometime in the last couple of years I read several of St. Exupery's books about his life as a pilot during WWII. I recall there was a section in which he addressed this, wrote eloquently about that, though of course I don't recall now off the top of my head what he said.

Anyway, I kept thinking off an on about what I'd written and never posted and then my last issue of Orion magazine arrived. For those who are not familiar with it, it's a magazine devoted to matters about the environment, what might be called deep ecology, and interknit with the articles are beautiful photos, paintings, poems. It's arts and ecology combined. I think it's a beautiful magazine, has no ads to clutter it up. This last issue also had a lengthy article by an anonymous author, a soldier in Iraq, who was sharing bits from his journals about birdwatching while in Iraq. Apparently Iraq is one of the richest places for birdwatching in the world, a place that is along long-established migratory routes.

So pardon the rambling, somewhat non-cohesive points of this post. For some reason it's something I wanted to say even if it isn't entirely clear.

I saw the flock of birds appear in the sky, seeming to burst from theleafy crown of a tree as I drove toward the crossroads of a majorintersection on my way to work. I could see them winging rapidly and realizedas I came to a stop, waiting for the light to change, that they werepigeons. From a distance, I'd thought of the group as something smaller,black birds perhaps. I watched, through the windshield, as the flockcircled over the intersection, changing direction after several passes. I began to count. Four times they flew clockwise, then made a loop thatbulged away from their path and changed direction, flew four times. A living mandala created in the air above an ordinary intersection ofstreets.

In my mind, I flew with them, noticed that the two streets formed thearms of a cross, the birds holding that cross within an energeticairborn circle. I thought of the southeastern Indians, the moundbuilders, andtheir symbol that expressed the reality of the world as they understoodit: a circle containing a cross with arms of equal length. The circlerepresented the earth and the equilateral cross, the four directions,points where invisible ropes that reached to the sky and held the earthin place.

For eight weeks, I've been working very long days on Tuesdays, as staffperson for a course on The Iliad the Museum had offered. A professorfrom the Classics department at Emory was teaching the course and I hadwanted the structure of a class in order to read it. I'd tried on my owna year and a half ago but had bogged down about two thirds of the waythrough it, sickened by the hacking of limbs, the skewering of bladders,the endless spilling of guts and blood. But something about the storyhad also lured me so I was glad to return to reading it in the companyof others.

On Tuesdays I've been taking a longer than average lunch, walking fromthe Museum to Lullwater, the parklike grounds where the president ofEmory University lives. Lullwater is woodland and folds of land coveredby manicured lawn and a large lake edged by a path.Last week, I found at Lullwater, a large pure white bird--a white heronas it turned out-- feeding at one edge of the lake in the shallowshaded waters. Several days in a row I returned to the white heron and onthe third day, after a dear friend had suggested taking binoculars, I satand watched, studied the heron as it searched the water, waited for itsprey. I'd read in my bird guide that herons wait for their prey to comewithin range of them. With my binoculars, I saw the heron do just that,holding perfectly still, mobilizing its body the way a cat will whenstalking some unsuspecting live morsel. The heron's neck, folding intograceful curves, reminded me of the muscular loops of a constrictor as itslithers across branches, waiting to drop silently on some innocent.Intensity and focus and patience defined the heron's search for food.When it struck, it did so with the suddenness, the precision of arattlesnake.

I sometimes imagine that my interest in ancient cultures seems odd oreven a waste of time to others. It is hard, in some ways, hard toexplain the fascination it holds. I think a part of it is that those eventsare complete now and time has sorted and sifted the minutiae from them,sometimes arbitrarily, so that it seems as if it possible to gain abetter picture of the larger themes of those times, without getting lostin all of the daily details. I'm often struck that though the technologyhas improved and life is in many ways more comfortable for many peoplenow, the internal struggles of individuals and the external strugglesof whole cultures has not changed appreciably in thousands of years. Ifeel both comforted and a bit depressed by that sometimes. I searchancient art, ancient writings, for whatever bits of wisdom they maycontain, search for ways they may help me better understand myself and theworld in which I live.I also like the challenge of trying to put myself in someone else'smind even if that someone lived thousands of years ago.

Over these many weeks of reading the Iliad, the war in Iraq hascontinued, paralleling the Trojan War. War seems to be present somewhere inthe world most of the time. I've read the headlines, skimmed articlesabout battles and car bombs and beheadings in Iraq, have felt sickened. Acouple of weeks ago, after I'd been visiting Lullwater, watching theheron, I began reading an article in the New York Times about Falluja.Several paragraphs into the story, I came across a line in which thejournalist had compared a marine as he moved to a heron as it pursues itsprey. I was startled to see that comparison which meant so much more tome than it would have because of my recent bird-watching at Lullwater.That small reference to something connected with the world I do havecontact with had sparked enough interest that I read the entire article.I made a mental note of the author of that article, Dexter Filkins.A few days later, I noticed another article by Dexter Filkins and beganreading it.

“The geese came in from the north, flying in a slightly broken V. Whenthey flew above the booms and crashes of southern Falluja, it was as ifthey had hit a force field—the V dissolved into a tangle of confusedcircles, the migration stopped, the birds veered past each other in thesky, seemingly trapped above a sliver of apocalypse.”

Again I felt startled by this interplay of writing about warfare andthe presence of something as ordinary as a flock of migrating geese. Icontinued to read, drawn in once more by this reference to birds. ThoughI’ve never been in a war, I have watched the migrations of geese andsand hill cranes as they’ve flown over my own front yard. I’ve admiredtheir formations, the ways in which they keep their flock together, themystery of migration. I continued to read the article, noted the way inwhich the journalist described the course of battle, the effect on thesoldiers of the blasts, the confusion in some of the captured men whoseemed mostly to want to get out, to find a way out of the chaos. Thearticle ended with the same flock of geese who had become disoriented bythe concussion from the blasts. They’d reformed their V and continuedon their way. Not only did the writing from this journalist seemdifferent from usual reports of war but again I was reminded of the Iliad. Irecalled that birds and bird-omens figure into the story, that therewere even people whose expertise was the ability to read the bird-omens.

From the Iliad, book one:

“…and among them stood up Kalchas, Thestor’s son, far the best of thebird interpreters, who knew all things that were, the things to come andthe things past, who guided into the land of Ilion the ships of theAchaian through the seercraft of his own that Phoibos Apollo gave him.”

Sunday there was another article on the front page of the Times byDexter Filkins. He wrote:

“The bullets hit the first marine in the face, his blood spattering themarine behind him. Lance Cpl. William Miller, age 22, lay I silencehalf way up, mortally wounded.”

And…the marines’ near mystical commandment against leaving a comradebehind seized the group.”

I read:

“Cpl. Jake Knospler, lost part of his jaw to a hand grenade.“No, no, no!” the marines shouted as they dragged Corporal Knosplerfrom the darkened house where the bomb went off. It was 2 AM, the sky darkwithout a moon.

“No, no, no!”

I continued reading, came to this:

“A man dressed in a white dishdasha crawled across a desolate field,reaching behind a gnarled plant to hide…”

and then this:

“The marines rushed out to get them, as they would days later in theminaret, but it was too late for Sgt. Lonny Wells, who bled to death onthe side of the road. One of the men who braved gunfire to pull inSergeant Wells was Cpl. Nathan Anderson, who died three days later in anambush.Sergeant Wells's death dealt the Third Platoon a heavy blow; as aleader of one of its squads, he had written letters to the parents of itsyounger members, assuring them he would look over them during the tour inIraq.


"He loved playing cards," Cpl. Gentian Marku recalled. "He knew all theprobabilities."

More than once, death crept up and snatched a member of Bravo Companyand quietly slipped away. Cpl. Nick Ziolkowski, nicknamed Ski, was aBravo Company sniper. For hours at a stretch, Corporal Ziolkowski wouldsit on a rooftop, looking through the scope on his bolt-action M-40rifle, waiting for guerrillas to step into his sights. The scope was big andwide, and Corporal Ziolkowski often took off his helmet to get a betterlook.

Tall, good-looking and gregarious, Corporal Ziolkowski was one of BravoCompany's most popular soldiers. Unlike most snipers, who learned toshoot growing up in the countryside, Corporal Ziolkowski grew up nearBaltimore, unfamiliar with guns. Though Baltimore boasts no beach front,Corporal Ziolkowski's passion was surfing; at Camp Lejeune, N.C., BravoCompany's base, he would often organize his entire day around thetides.

"All I need now is a beach with some waves," Corporal Ziolkowski said,during a break from his sniper duties at Falluja's Grand Mosque, wherehe killed three men in a single day.

During that same break, Corporal Ziolkowski foretold his own death. Thesnipers, he said, were now among the most hunted of American soldiers.In the first battle for Falluja, in April, American snipers had beenespecially lethal, Corporal Ziolkowski said, and intelligence officershad warned him that this time, the snipers would be targets.

"They are trying to take us out," Corporal Ziolkowski said.

The bullet knocked Corporal Ziolkowski backward and onto the roof. Hehad been sitting there on the outskirts of the Shuhada neighborhood, anarea controlled by insurgents, peering through his wide scope. He hadtaken his helmet off to get a better view. The bullet hit him in thehead.”

I’ve quoted this section above at more length because it and theseveral other quoted pieces, all of them were things that have their parallelin the Iliad. When I’d tried to read it the first time, as I mentionedI couldn’t seem to get past all of the vivid and individualdescriptions of death. Reading it this time, I felt different about thosedescriptions. I realized there was a point to it all and the point seemed to bethat each death was particular, no two deaths alike, that each deathtook away some particular person and was not simply a statistic. When I’dread all of Homer’s descriptions of the many deaths, the names of eachwho died, I felt reminded of the Vietnam Memorial and the listing ofnames, the power that has, the ways in which people have personalized itwith photos and other momentos so that each death in that war has takenon a particularness that is different from the way in which soldiersfrom other wars have been memorialized. Even Filkins way of referring todeath and how it crept up reminded me of the Iliad, the way death seemsto be this companion that stands closer and closer, steals the lightfrom one soldier after another.

The efforts of the marines to retrieve the body of their dead comradereminded me of two different parts of the Iliad, one in which Patroklos,Achilles friend, is killed. And the other when Hektor is slain byAchilles. In the instance of the former, it is the death of Patroklos thatfuels Achilles rage and spurs him into battle. His comrades strive toget Patroklos' body, as the Trojans and finally Hektor's father attemptto retrieve the body of Hektor.

Toward the end of the article, I read the following:

“Time and again through the week, Captain Omohundro kept his men fromfolding, if not by his resolute manner then by his calmness under fire.

In the first 16 hours of battle, when the combat was continuous and thethreat of death ever present, Captain Omohundro never flinched, movinghis men through the warrens and back alleys of Falluja with an uncannysense of space and time, sensing the enemy, sensing the location of hismen, even in the darkness, entirely self-possessed.

"Damn it, get moving," Captain Omohundro said, and his men, lookingrelieved that they had been given direction amid the anarchy, were onlytoo happy to oblige.

A little later, Captain Omohundro, a 34-year-old Texan, allowed thatthe strain of the battle had weighed on him, but he said that he had longago trained himself to keep any self-doubt hidden from view.

"It's not like I don't feel it," Captain Omohundro said. "But if I wereto show it, the whole thing would come apart."”

I thought again about the flock of geese mentioned in the previousarticle, of Captain Omohundro somewhat like the lead goose with that flockthat had fallen apart, then regrouped to continue their migration. Ifeel an admiration for the kind of outward calm that apparently CaptainOmohundro manages. In that, I feel I hear a person who cares about thoseunder his command. I can not help but notice, too, that he does feelthe strain, but somehow manages. How one does that under thosecircumstances I don’t quite know.

Also in the Sunday paper was Thomas Friedman’s column. Among otherthings, he spoke of the belief that most of the soldiers currently in Iraqbelieve they are there fighting for a just cause and that until theyindicate they thing it is a lost cause or a cause not worth the price, hebelieves we are doing what we should be doing by being there, that thecause is a noble one, if perilous.

Saturday night, I worked. PushPush Theater, a small alternative theaterhere in Atlanta, was in its second night of Aristophanes’ The Birds andI needed to be on hand as a representative of the Museum. I also wantedto see the play. It was a modern translation, retaining the spirit ofpuns and innuendo of the ancient original, coarse and crude and corny.Birds squawked and fluttered, stomped their wings, made light of thegods, squabbled with humans, strutted in their underwear, and workedtoward creating a utopia in the sky as the bumbling gods grew angry--andhungry--for offerings from the humans below.

Last night I went to see a movie with a friend. I'd arrived before shedid and was sitting in my car listening to a report from Falluja. Thereporter was talking to one of the marines about their efforts. Ilistened to the marine talk about the fact that the reality of war wasdifferent from what he'd thought, that under fire, the soldiers were nolonger thinking about whether or not this was a just cause, all they werethinking about was keeping themselves and their buddies from beingkilled. And this also was something that dawned on me as I read the Iliad,that though the apparent reason for that war was to try to get Helenback, that reason was quite forgotten in the middle of battle. War seems tofeed itself.