Books like Terminal Lance: The White Donkey

I have been a proud anti-war protestor all my life, from Vietnam through the Iraq wars. The Vietnam draft ended just as I was supposed to go. I am a pacifist, which a vet might say is a luxury not everyone can afford, but I support vets; as they might say, they fought to give me the option to be a pacifist. Like almost everyone, I have lost family members to various wars, and mourn and salute them for their sacrifices. That said, I did not initially really want to read this graphic novel in part developed from the author's online popular work. Especially a work that is written by an artist popular with active combatants and veterans everywhere. I was a little worried it was going to be macho justificatory in some way. Some comics are like that, and they are entitled, but see above, I'm a pacifist. And as it turns out I really really liked this and was moved by it and learned a lot about the various perspectives of combatants I would otherwise not have known. Uriarte is an Iraqi war vet, who knows what he is writing about, and it shows. The story he tells is of a guy who enlisted and was bored not to see much action for months, and then saw it, more than he ever would have wanted to see, and it traumatized him, major ptsd. In the light of what we know about vet depression and suicide, it was good and important to read this story. Every line of dialogue feels real, and as a guy who never served, I learned a lot about how it might have felt to be there, the complications, the boredom, the anxiety, the fear. It's not political work, it's more psychological, to help us understand what it is like to be there. And we get multiple views, from long term combatants, and newbie "boots." Tough guys and people probably more like me, guys who are ambivalent, not career soldiers, let's just say. Very vulnerable. So I was pretty moved by it. I suggest you check it out. Then I was also impressed by this review from my good buddy Goodreads friend and also vet sud666, who writes this passionate response to the book, seeing it from a vet angle I could not of course have seen, and also learned a lot from: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...