Two University of Delaware professors were selected to participate in a special National Endowment for the Arts project called Operation Homecoming, which is providing troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq assistance in expressing their firsthand impressions of war.
McKay Jenkins, professor of English and author of The Last Ridge about the exploits of the U.S. Army's elite 10th Mountain Division during World War II, and Marilyn Nelson, then professor of English, were among 16 writers who visited
military posts this summer to work with the soldiers.
Operation Homecoming, which is being conducted in cooperation with the Department of Defense, will provide for both oral and written works.
"There is real energy behind this program from the highest levels of government," Jenkins says, noting that the April 20 launch of the project was attended by Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense.
The idea for Operation Homecoming originated in a conversation between Nelson and Dana Gioia, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, at a conference of state poets laureate in April 2003. The conversation turned to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the very different worlds of literature and military service, and it resulted in a project that combines the two.
Nelson, who has since left UD to begin a writers colony in Connecticut, says she hopes the workshops will help soldiers "find their voices and the words to express themselves, whether they want to write about their experiences at war or not."
The project had special meaning for Jenkins because he was assigned to work with soldiers at Fort Drum, N.Y., home of the 10th Mountain Division about which he had already written. He also had a leg up on other participants because he had experience speaking with and reading the letters of those who served in combat.
Jenkins says he believes the project will have benefits for both the military personnel and for the writers, who he says can "learn a lot from the men and women who served on the front line, rather than just sitting back and thinking abstractly about war."
For the soldiers involved, he expects they "might have a less simplistic view of war, having served."
"It is likely they will have all kinds of impressions of war, some very patriotic, some very cynical," Jenkins says. "There will be stories of heroism and stories of tragedy."
Jenkins says that by working through memoirs, essays and poetry, the service men and women "may feel freer to express themselves than if they were being interviewed by a reporter."
"There is a richness to real life experiences, and they will have incredible stories to tell," Jenkins says. "They may not know techniques to get those experiences down on paper, and that's where we can lend a hand."
The fact that the Department of Defense has thrown its weight behind the project is impressive and somewhat surprising, Jenkins says, because once back from the front and "off the leash," the soldiers can say anything.
Jenkins says it is a great honor to be asked by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Department of Defense to participate in the project. "There have long been strained relations between the military and the arts communities," he says, adding, "This is a great opportunity in which writers can help soldiers learn to express themselves to people who think differently than they do."
Jenkins is the author of a book that tells the complete story of the 10th Mountain Division's feats during World War II, from the days in training to a strange mission in the Aleutian Islands and, ultimately, the division's final battle
in the Apennines. The Last Ridge is based on more than 1,000 pages of personal letters written by soldiers training at Camp Hale in Colorado and fighting in Italy, as well as hundreds of military documents.
--Neil Thomas, AS '76