A piece in Esquire, on reading Vonnegut in Iraq. From a US soldier:
“I have a lot of memories of Iraq, but the one that will stick with me forever was when I was in my room, lying down on my back reading Slaughterhouse-Five, and got to the part where Billy Pilgrim became unstuck in time and saw the war backwards. . .
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into mineral. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody again.
“I imagined the war in Iraq in reverse. I found war to be much more enjoyable when viewed that way.”
