Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives.
By Jim Sheeler
Penguin, 2008.
ISBN 978-0-14-311545-8.
ISBN 978-0-14-311545-8.
* * * *
When asked if American objectives in Iraq have been worth their human cost, Gold Star mother Betty Welke does not equivocate. “No, it wasn’t worth it,” she states. But she goes on to remark, “The public doesn’t want to deal with it because heaven forbid they were wrong.” (270-71) Welke doesn’t speak for all of those who lost loved ones, but it’s confession time; she sums up exactly what this reviewer both has thought and has failed to feel. I kept Jim Sheeler’s book about military families unopened on my shelf for quite some time because I am angry about the senselessness of the war, but I also ignored it because I’m weary and didn’t want to—in Welke’s words—“deal with it.”
Deal with it we should and must. On the surface, Jim Sheeler’s Final Salute deals with fallen warriors, but its essence lies in the well-chosen adjective “unfinished” in the title. It is not about soldiers and death as much as about the struggles of those left behind who don’t have the luxury of non-contemplation. Sheeler, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, takes us deep into six Gold Star families and confronts us with the fallout from combat that transcends politics, military clichés of valor, and reason itself. It is, in short, a portrait of pain that is, at turns, heart-breaking and heart-warming.
Sheeler covers all the bases, making sure that we consider all the aspects of war we’d rather not. By the time he’s done probing the psyches of casualty assistance officers--those young men who knock on doors and deliver the news no one wants to hear--you understand perfectly those who say they’d rather be the victim than the messenger. Sheeler also takes us inside the minds of those we’d probably not otherwise imagine: gravediggers, tombstone carvers, passengers on an airliner watching a coffin being offloaded, children who’ve lost fathers, lost-for-words neighbors who detour when they see a young widow….
How does one make sense of such a war? Army Private Jesse Givens drowned in the desert; his tank took a mortar round and tumbled into a canal; Navy Corpsman Christopher “Doc” Anderson perished from a mortar round just moments after saving another man’s life. Sheeler shows us the various ways in which families cope (or fail to do so)—Brett Lundstrom’s community held a Lakota Sioux healing ceremony, Melissa Givens writes letters to her dead husband, Joyce Cathey has her dead brother’s portrait tattooed to the back of her neck…. The only constant in the book is that the military’s emphasis on brotherhood is far more than hollow rhetoric; as Sheeler shows, comrades-in-arms feel each loss deeply and many are there for the families long after their official ceremonial duties are over.
This is a deeply personal and powerful book that lets emotions unfold honestly and without comment. It is neither a war-as-video-game nor war-as-senseless-loss book. It does not preach, moralize, or instruct; in fact, there is no discussion whatsoever of the U.S. mission in Iraq beyond remarks made by Sheeler’s subjects. And in the end, this makes it the best didactic tool imaginable—one that allows readers to form their own conclusions. I cannot say that this book changed how I view the war, but without a doubt it touched my soul.
When asked if American objectives in Iraq have been worth their human cost, Gold Star mother Betty Welke does not equivocate. “No, it wasn’t worth it,” she states. But she goes on to remark, “The public doesn’t want to deal with it because heaven forbid they were wrong.” (270-71) Welke doesn’t speak for all of those who lost loved ones, but it’s confession time; she sums up exactly what this reviewer both has thought and has failed to feel. I kept Jim Sheeler’s book about military families unopened on my shelf for quite some time because I am angry about the senselessness of the war, but I also ignored it because I’m weary and didn’t want to—in Welke’s words—“deal with it.”
Deal with it we should and must. On the surface, Jim Sheeler’s Final Salute deals with fallen warriors, but its essence lies in the well-chosen adjective “unfinished” in the title. It is not about soldiers and death as much as about the struggles of those left behind who don’t have the luxury of non-contemplation. Sheeler, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, takes us deep into six Gold Star families and confronts us with the fallout from combat that transcends politics, military clichés of valor, and reason itself. It is, in short, a portrait of pain that is, at turns, heart-breaking and heart-warming.
Sheeler covers all the bases, making sure that we consider all the aspects of war we’d rather not. By the time he’s done probing the psyches of casualty assistance officers--those young men who knock on doors and deliver the news no one wants to hear--you understand perfectly those who say they’d rather be the victim than the messenger. Sheeler also takes us inside the minds of those we’d probably not otherwise imagine: gravediggers, tombstone carvers, passengers on an airliner watching a coffin being offloaded, children who’ve lost fathers, lost-for-words neighbors who detour when they see a young widow….
How does one make sense of such a war? Army Private Jesse Givens drowned in the desert; his tank took a mortar round and tumbled into a canal; Navy Corpsman Christopher “Doc” Anderson perished from a mortar round just moments after saving another man’s life. Sheeler shows us the various ways in which families cope (or fail to do so)—Brett Lundstrom’s community held a Lakota Sioux healing ceremony, Melissa Givens writes letters to her dead husband, Joyce Cathey has her dead brother’s portrait tattooed to the back of her neck…. The only constant in the book is that the military’s emphasis on brotherhood is far more than hollow rhetoric; as Sheeler shows, comrades-in-arms feel each loss deeply and many are there for the families long after their official ceremonial duties are over.
This is a deeply personal and powerful book that lets emotions unfold honestly and without comment. It is neither a war-as-video-game nor war-as-senseless-loss book. It does not preach, moralize, or instruct; in fact, there is no discussion whatsoever of the U.S. mission in Iraq beyond remarks made by Sheeler’s subjects. And in the end, this makes it the best didactic tool imaginable—one that allows readers to form their own conclusions. I cannot say that this book changed how I view the war, but without a doubt it touched my soul.
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