Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire Paperback – November 13, 2015

Billy Wilder was an Academy Award winning director and writer. He said, “If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.” Randy Brown, A.K.A. Charlie Sherpa must’ve heard this quote before he wrote his great book of poetry titled Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire.I have experience with vacations to the Middle East. So, when I read Charlie Sherpa’s poem “Laundry List” where he mentions “Embraced the Suck” as something that he did downrange, it rings true. Whenever somebody complained near my squadron weapons officer in Iraq in 2005, he’d cradle his arms and pretend he was kissing a baby and say, “Embrace it!” I smirked and read on, knowing this stuff was worthy.But you don’t have to be a military person to get wrapped up here. Sherpa does a great job blending the world of combat with the civilian world back home. He’s good at contrasting the foreign with the familiar. And for you civilians out there, there are a bunch of notes at the end explaining some of the terms and acronyms that might have you stumped.The poems range from the outright humorous to the dark. Sometimes just lines apart. In “wait for it” he sandwiches the following between two funny sections:War also is often more boring than not.Then, it is scalding. Do not covet action. And in “Hamlet in Afghanistan”:So make a choice, and remember:Over-thinking makes cowards of us all.After you’ve been in a couple of scrapes, you realize the truth of what Sherpa is saying.The poem “what sacrifice has been” does an excellent job of portraying the anguish military folks feel at being thanked. You wouldn’t think that would be a problem, but it is. I think this is where civilians and members of the armed services are trying to reach out to each other and not quite connecting. I read this at least ten times. Maybe someday we’ll realize we’re all on the same team. That there is no “other” to be thanked. Until then, poets like Sherpa need to keep writing bits like this one.Read “Dulce et Decorum est, Redux.” You may remember the original from school. You may want body armor before reading this one. Sherpa says, “You were not there to sniff the air with us,…” and I find myself nodding.He ends with “Suburbistan.” He perfectly captured the feelings of someone who has escaped into the safety of the future and, for some reason, still looks back fondly on the scary past.I liked Charlie Sherpa’s book of poetry. So, now, let us reference “The Sherpatudes.” This is a list of 26 of his maxims. Let us now turn to Sherpatude #21 to explain Randy Brown’s book:Knowing how it works is more powerful than knowing how it’s supposed to work.Charlie Sherpa’s poetry works. I don’t know how. I’m not a trained writer, so I don’t even know how it’s supposed to work.I can tell you this: It does NOT suck. But you should embrace his book anyway.

Poetry expresses that which cannot be said any other way. In his first book of poetry, Randy Brown, known to his blog followers as “Charlie Sherpa,” beautifully and simply relates his experience of war. As the name of the book implies, much of his work takes the form of haikus, though the author also delves into longer poetry that, both in its free meter and rhyme, often reminds me of Randall Jarrell’s The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner. The brevity of the haiku, perhaps the form’s greatest strength, speaks to my own love of short poetry. In just 17 syllables, Brown’s pieces capture a year’s worth of moments in Afghanistan. That is what I identified with the most: those word images that remind me of the unbearable, yet cherished, memories that make up a combat deployment. Though I have never been to Afghanistan, reading his work stirred deep, emotional memories of my own time in Iraq. The first time I read his poem night vision, which recounts a patrol between American soldiers and their Afghan counterparts, it seemed to rip me from the comfort of my living room back to the worst—and best—memories of my adult life. Like any good soldier, of course, the author often recounts the incomprehensibility of combat with a healthy dose of humor. I found myself grinning unconsciously while reading “your convoy leader writes haiku,” picturing any number of grizzled non-commissioned officers specifying road speed and following distance in classical Japanese form. Moreover, I could not help but enjoy the author’s use of the Army’s famously esoteric jargon to make beautifully original poems. The author uses the Army’s acronyms and pidgin English felt like he was winking knowingly at me and the other the veterans who will read the book. As you can probably tell, I greatly enjoyed Randy Brown’s Welcome to FOB Haiku. My dog-eared copy proudly sits on my shelf—when I am not taking packing it off to the couch to read again. His well-written, beautiful, funny, and jarringly honest portrayal of a Global War on Terrorism deployment exemplifies what I believe poetry was made for: saying that which will never be able to be said in any other way.L. Burton Brender is an associate member of the Military Writers Guild and the coauthor of In Cadence, a book of poetry from two Army officers. Follow his blog, Swords & Pens, at yobousensou.blogspot.com.

I was medically disqualified from uniformed service but served as an embedded contractor supporting the US military, including multiple deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. In this role, I shared many (but certainly not all) of the experiences of my uniformed brothers and sisters. This time was a milestone in many lives and Welcome to FOB Haiku reflects on it through verse.Welcome to FOB Haiku is not quite Rudyard Kipling's "Tommy" or other classic war poems. It doesn't take itself that seriously, but it reflects our time at war, which included as boredom and levity as well as fear, courage, and pain.The poems capture the full breadth of the experience: grief for lost comrades; the gallows humor that helps us get through stressful situations (if you've ever wondered why the sanitation ponds on big FOBs like Victory Base Complex and Bagram didn't get hit with more mortar rounds, this book has the answer!): the strange, perhaps never complete, process of readjusting to "normal" life; and the near-constant draw that many of us feel to return to a singular time in our lives and a fight that is still far from finished.I think it is healthy and necessary to reflect on such a life-altering experience as war. Welcome to FOB Haiku is a thoughtful and friendly companion to such reflection.

...leading us through a fusion of pride, grief, snark, lunacy, and wisdom. Formally diverse, deeply felt, sometimes hilarious. A favorite book of mine, and I am deeply picky about my war poetry.