Redeployment by Phil Klay is a collection of short stories about a war and people at war. The author builds a bridge between military people and civilians, helping the latter group to understand veterans. Before launching into a discussion about horrors of a war and its destructive effects on the human mind, let’s pay attention to Klay’s writing style. He is honest with his readers, doesn’t try to portray soldiers as fearless people, who do everything they are ordered to do without a doubt. On the contrary, his protagonist is anything but perfect.
Klay pays a lot of attention to a problem of readjustment to a civilian life. One of the most troubling issues is that veterans can’t find words to express what they feel. On the one hand, there are people who treat them like heroes. On the other hand, there is an army of pacifists who accuse them of wrongdoing. As the result of this situation, a large number of veterans prefers to keep silence. Loneliness and PSTD become their constant companions. The question is, why the government doesn’t take care about a proper program that would help veterans to reclaim their place in the society. Of course, there are some benefits, but if readers have a look at a suicide rate among veterans, they will see that it remains high. This is the first signal that the steps that the government takes are not enough. They can give a veteran Purple Heart, but they can’t give veterans their dead friends back or mend their broken relationships with their families.
However, the author doesn’t concentrate only on negative issues. For instance, there is a stories about a Marine who falls in love with a project he does. Women’s clinic is the work he can be proud of. In spite of numerous financial problems, he refuses to give up on it. The same exact story explores an issue of useless philanthropy. Here we see the millionaires who send baseball uniforms to Iraq, believing that it is going to help to build a democratic society, who donate money for the sake of donating money, who are not particularly interested in the problems of that region, but send money anyway, for it is going to help them to create a positive image in the press.
Redeployment is not written to evoke a feeling of pity or guilt; its main goal is to help people to understand their fellow compatriots. A military man is not a killing machine; first of all, he or she is a personality who – just like the rest of us – can be scared, hopeful, resentful, happy, elated, exhausted. Nothing can prepare a soldier for a war as it is, for every person is different and it is next to impossible to predict this or that reaction to a certain event. Redeployment is the work that encourages us to be more compassionate, understanding, and not to be presumptuous. It urges us not to pry, trying to learn more about that so called “real life experience.” It urges us to be honest and kind-hearted.
