{"id":1915,"date":"2016-05-31T07:34:37","date_gmt":"2016-05-31T14:34:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=1915"},"modified":"2016-05-31T07:35:28","modified_gmt":"2016-05-31T14:35:28","slug":"a-close-look-at-a-forgotten-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=1915","title":{"rendered":"A new look at a forgotten war"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before he was a journalist or a public school teacher or administrator, and before he was my husband, Lloyd Brinson was a young U.S. Marine officer who served in Vietnam. He finds much that\u2019s worthwhile in a new book by a writer who was a young soldier in a different war.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lloyd Brinson<\/p>\n

PUMPKINFLOWERS: A SOLDIER\u2019S STORY. By Matti Friedman. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. 242 pages. $25.95.<\/p>\n

\"pumpkin\"<\/a>Welcome to Matti\u2019s world\u2026 and to Avi\u2019s\u2026 and Eran\u2019s\u2026 and Mordecai\u2019s and\u2026. on and on \u2013\u00a0a seemingly endless roll call of Jewish teenagers doing their obligatory time in the Israeli Army to protect the artificial borders of that country from her neighbors in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

Pumpkinflowers<\/em> is Matti Friedman\u2019s crisp, matter-of-fact description of how the army turns boys just out of high school into soldiers and then sends them to do dangerous things for reasons no one seemed (then or now) to understand. The author describes eloquently the purpose of this tale: It is to put on record one account of a war that nobody realized was happening. These teenagers suddenly: \u201c\u2026 found themselves in a war \u2013 in a forgotten little corner of a forgotten little war but one that has nonetheless reverberated in our lives \u2026 and in the world since it ended one night in the first spring of the new century. Anyone looking for the origins of the Middle East today would do well to look closely at these events.\u201d<\/p>\n

After basic training \u2013 aka boot camp \u2013 Avi and Matti and the other boys-turned-soldiers in this story were sent to man The Pumpkin, the name of an outpost on a hill in Lebanon<\/em>, ostensibly placed to deter terrorism. As the story progresses, the reader begins to see how the Hezbollah used the Pumpkin and the other botanically named outposts to train personnel, experiment with tactics and exploit the Israelis, turning that \u201cParty of God\u201d into the powerful threat it is today.<\/p>\n

Few of us \u2013 even those of us with combat experience \u2013 enjoy spending much time reflecting on the absurdities, atrocities and contradictions of warfare. Even fewer people who enjoy books want to be handed a platter of hors d\u2019oeuvres detailing the human suffering of the participants of war and the agonies of the innocent \u2013 and some not so innocent \u2013 bystanders.<\/p>\n

But this tale of the life and death of the Pumpkin \u2013 and the lives and deaths of its inhabitants — is such compelling reading that I wish it could be required reading for anyone running for public office in any civilized country.<\/p>\n

The Pumpkin was not decorated with flowers, or much of anything except the bare necessities for defense, for observing the enemy and sending out patrols. One of these new soldiers\u2019 first view of the Pumpkin was \u201ca jumble of dun netting and concrete.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFlowers\u201d meant trouble. When the young soldiers \u2013 many of them teenage girls doing their time \u2013 at the operations center in Jerusalem heard the radio operator from the Pumpkin say \u201cflowers,\u201d they sent helicopters, to pick up the wounded (flowers) and fly in replacements. \u201cOleanders\u201d were worse news. Those were the dead.<\/p>\n

There are officially three parts to this gripping account of that drab little Lebanese hill: The first describes Avi\u2019s experiences in the early and mid-1990s; the second details how Jewish civilians \u2013 led by the mothers of the \u201cflowers\u201d and \u201coleanders\u201d \u2013 reacted to the Pumpkin\u2019s worst disaster; and the third is the time Matti and his friends occupied the outpost. The last 34 pages of narrative (preceding the footnotes) are sort of an epilogue, but are as riveting and insightful as the preceding pages. Matti tells us how he tried to draw a conclusion \u2013 to reach an end to the war he fought: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a conclusion. On the hill we had been at the start of something: of a new era in which conflict surges, shifts, or fades but doesn\u2019t end, in which the most you can hope for is not peace, or the arrival of a better age, but only to remain safe as long as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matti survived his time on the Pumpkin, became a journalist and is still trying \u201cto remain safe as long as possible.\u201d You\u2019ll have to read this little masterpiece to find out about the others\u2026 and to find out about the ultimate fate of the Pumpkin. The rest is still a work in progress.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before he was a journalist or a public school teacher or administrator, and before he was my husband, Lloyd Brinson was a young U.S. Marine officer who served in Vietnam. He finds much that\u2019s worthwhile in a new book by a writer who was a young soldier in a different war. Reviewed by Lloyd Brinson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,253,308,20],"tags":[854,856,855,19,857],"class_list":["post-1915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemporary-nonfiction","category-memoir-biography","category-military","category-military-history-history","tag-israeli-wars","tag-matti-friedman","tag-middle-east","tag-military-history","tag-pumpkinflowers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1915"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1918,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915\/revisions\/1918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}