CSotD: War correspondence from home
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Garry Trudeau’s work in Doonesbury with veterans and with active-duty GIs has been exemplary and I think marks a new point in war coverage and media. Today’s humorous depiction of the modern, plugged-in GI is a pretty good example.
Let me try to get this right without cranking out a six-volume explanation.
The Crimean War (1853-56) was the first major conflict fought with the world looking over the military’s shoulders. Previous to that, you sent the soldiers off and, periodically, the government heard back from its generals and the people heard back from their fathers, brothers, sons and lovers. But, with the advent of telegraphy, steamships and railroads, not only was Palmerston able to closely monitor tactics, but people heard from their soldiers, not quickly, but reliably and with some degree of speed.
For the press, this meant that correspondents’ reports began to appear in newspapers within a relatively short period of time after the events being described. But it also meant another layer of reporting emerged: Letters from the soldiers. One of my favorite authors, and one whose work I collected for quite a few years, was GA Henty, an author of boys’ historic fiction who, before doing that, served as a war correspondent, following not only the British flag but that of Garibaldi and those in the Franco-Prussian War. His start came as a soldier writing letters home from the Crimea that would then be taken to the local newspaper and published.
A decade later, the photographs of Matthew Brady made the Civil War more real for Union families, and the work of newspaper reporters and artists a generation after that in bringing the Spanish-American War home has become legendary (literally — it’s a bit overblown).
World War II gave us Ernie Pyle and Bill Mauldin, the former a reporter who traveled with the troops, the latter a soldier whose cartoons for his own unit’s paper expanded into a job cartooning the war for “Stars and Stripes” and having those cartoons also published in civilian papers at home. Pyle was something of a cheerleader, but he was accurate in his affectionate portraits of the GIs and they loved him for it. They also loved Mauldin’s more gritty depictions of their daily lives, though he was chewed out by Patton, who objected to unshaven soldiers in muddy uniforms complaining about their daily lives and would have preferred something inspiring, more along the lines of a Soviet poster.
Vietnam is called the first “television war,” though the idea that there was live coverage or even same-day coverage is a myth. It was still being recorded on film that had to be flown out and developed before it could be aired, so that coverage of the fighting at Khe Sanh was not markedly faster than coverage of fighting on Guadalcanal had been. The critical point, however, is that it was more immediate and gripping when it did appear (generally about five days later).
With the current wars, however, coverage is all but instantaneous, and the disjoint comes not from time and distance but from the fact that (as in Vietnam) we no longer have major fronts and major battles, and it’s harder to create coverage that tells the complete story. But then perhaps it never was possible, and it was only the existence of major fronts and major battles that made us think we were getting the full picture.
What is certainly gone is the isolation. In today’s war, the GIs can come back to their bases and not just write home but email and Skype with their families. There is an open and ongoing dialogue between home and the front that, while not complete, is by far the most immediate we’ve ever had.
I’ve talked here about the trip made by three cartoonists, Ted Rall, Matt Bors and Steven Cloud, to Afghanistan, but that week-long venture seems overshadowed by the dialogue Trudeau has opened with veterans and active-duty GIs and the ongoing themes of service and recovery depicted in Doonesbury. Trudeau has been on several trips to visit the troops in the field and in hospitals in Germany, including a very recent venture with other cartoonists, but, before he did that, he visited hospitals and veterans’ centers and spoke with veterans there to get his story straight, and he has also opened a blog where they could talk about issues with him and with each other.
His depictions of BD, of Toggle and of other participants in the war are in line with Mauldin’s depictions of Willie and Joe. The difference between Trudeau and Mauldin remains massive and unbridgable — nothing will ever trump being one of the people you depict.
But the difference between Trudeau and Ernie Pyle is more nuanced, and that is a function of how communications has changed in the past century.
(Hey, pretty good. Only five volumes!)
ADDENDUM: Shortly after posting this entry, I came across this video report on Soviet veterans of their Afghan War. Consider how the lack of full and independent war coverage changed their experience!
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