Just Another Soldier

If you’re unfamiliar with Just Another Soldier, you should immediately go over to his site and sign up. He’s a National Guardsman currently stationed in Iraq. He regularly writes about and photographs his experiences and sends updates by email. He used to have a weblog, but the US military shut it down. He’s an excellent writer, unflinching and very readable:

His eyes were half open. Being a product of American pop culture, I knew that the thing you were supposed to do now was shut his eye lids, one of those arch-typical things that everyone wishes they could do just once in their life but know they never will, like leaving a small stack of warn cash on a whore’s nightstand. I put my hand over his face and tried to shut his eyelids. They didn’t really move, or they just moved back to the half-shut and dead-looking position. I tried harder. Still not budging. Now I was just feeling stupid, it’s not like making him look more like he was asleep instead of dead was going to be giving him any comfort and frankly I didn’t care how he looked, I just wanted to give him some dignity in death.

The content and photography can occasionally be gruesome, but it’s probably the truest account of life for soldiers in Iraq that you’re going to read. It’s also largely apolitical, as far as I can tell.