Name: Thank You for Your Service
ISBN: 9780385680967

David Finkel

A look at the lives of American veterans following their service in the Iraq war.

Thank You for Your Service

Siya S

4.5/5 Stars 

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https://thebleedingeyes.wordpress.com/

This is one of those books that has an ability to sucker punch you in the gut half way through and leave you with nothing else to say by the end you reach last page. Thank You For Your Service is an ironic name that says all about invisible wounds that rip the soldiers apart from the inside. Not only their lives 

The narration is out of this world; it reads like a script of an award-winning movie (my favorite is Chapter 10 about Kristy Robinson dealing with the death of her husband, Jessie). This book will move you to tears. It will haunt you for days. The story has been crafted based on a noticeably good researching works, and told in a neutral, informative, nonjudgmental voice. It shows a horrendous psychological impact of war, which is something everyone should really read about at least once in a lifetime. It shines a new light on the perceptions of an army, American society, modern warfare, military men, and PTSD. The best part is, you don't even have to be American or know someone with career in the military to be drawn into this book. 

I heard from somewhere long ago, that if you're going to war it's better not to come back alive. If you have questions regarding that statement, this book can help explain why. And next time you hear someone saying negative things about the military men out there defending the shit out of the country with their lives (and ultimately with the lives of their loved ones) most of the time without even really knowing what for and why, well, just hand them this book. Save yourself a whole lot of time.

Melody Izard

There is no way you will enjoy this book. You will probably be pissed that the high ratings swayed you to read it. These are troubling, troubling stories. Stories of the men who fought in wars because they felt it was their duty, or because they thought it was their only option in life - it doesn't matter why - but they did it and they came back broken. Stories of their wives and children who try to piece together a life with a man who just might snap at any time. Snapping might mean a hole punched in the wall of the house that is on the brink of foreclosure or it could mean a punch in the face. Snapping might mean that one day his wife will come home and find him hanging from a noose made from his paratrooper lines on the staircase, while their daughter sleeps in the back bedroom. These are stories of the just above minimum wage earning case workers who try to work with scarce resources to help these broken men learn to just put one foot in front of the other. No, you will not enjoy this.

But I think we, at the very least, owe them one teary-eyed read. So we can be one step closer to understanding that the problems war might solve might be so very much overshadowed by these tranquilized former soldiers who try to carry on with a life that has become so very off-kilter.

No journalist is better situated to reckon with the psychology of war than David Finkel. In The Good Soldiers, his bestselling account from the front lines of Baghdad, Finkel shadowed the men of a US infantry battalion as they carried out a gruelling 15-month tour that changed all of them forever. Now, Finkel follows many of those same men back home, in a journey that is less about geography than of psychological terrain, undertaken by people trying to heal or at the very least survive. In Thank You for Your Service, Finkel writes with tremendous compassion about the soldiers, and about their partners and children: the heartbroken wife who wonders privately whether her returned husband is going to get better, or kill her; and the heroic victims, with the fresh taste of a gun in their mouths, who will either make the journey back to sanity or to final ruin. Finkel takes us everywhere that the war is seeping into as it infects America: to the courtrooms that are being filled with divorce and abuse cases, and worse; to bars; and to Fort Riley, in the mental-health clinic to which the army is outsourcing its post-traumatic stress disorder cases. Thank You for Your Service is an immense act of understanding — shocking but always riveting, unflinching but deeply humane.

Thank You for Your Service

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