"'Ya hadda good job and ya left. Yer right,' recruits bray in cadence as they march, with little enough thought to that ages-old lesson learned by returning soldiers, scapegoats dismissed with a wave from our social circle to avenge us, to project our power out among the damned of the earth. They do our dark bidding amid filth, horror, fire, and death . . . then come back to: ‘. . . another damnation full of divorce decrees, drugs, and broken bank accounts.' Jason Poudrier reports for yet another lost generation of returnees to be greeted by 'a moment's awkward embrace of a family knowingly never understanding.' The classic tale of separation, initiation, return recounted with vitality, authenticity, dark humor by one of the living shades among us with whom we can likely have no communion save by reading the spare, passionate verses of Red Fields.”
—SGM (Ret.) Alan Farrell, Professor of French, VMI
Author of Expended Casings: Poems of the Great War (The One I Was In)
