THE YELLOW BIRDS: KEVIN POWERS

A critically acclaimed first novel by Kevin Powers, it explores, like another novel,  BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALF TIME WALK, the effects of the war in Iraq on the soldiers when they return to the States.  The protagonist, John Bartle, a lost twenty one year old, enlists in the Army to give his life some meaning and direction.  He certainly gets that during his year in Iraq.  At boot camp, he becomes friends with Murph another lost seventeen year old.  They become good friends and Bartle makes the mistake, as they are ready to head to Iraq, of promising Murph's Mom that he will make sure that Murph comes home.  The story weaves back and forth between their experiences in Iraq, in Tal Afar, and Bartles return one year later.  We don't exactly know what happened when the novel opens, as we get the story of Tal Afar in bits and pieces, as well as Bartle's adjustment to civilian life on his return.  We slowly are taken, by Bartle,  through brutal battles with insurgents, until we begin to see the toll that war and death have on the living, Murph in particularly.  He basically loses control, gives up when he watches a pretty medical nurse blown apart by a mortar round.  Two days later, he is missing  in action and the entire platoon must go through the village, street by street, rifles drawn, looking for Murph.  A vagrant tells them of having seen a naked American walking through the streets a few hours ago.  They find Murph at the base of a mosque, decapitated and disemboweled.  Instead of returning his body to Headquarters, Sterling the Sergeant and Bartle make the instantaneous decision to lower Murph's remains into the Euphrates and let Murph float away.

Dealing with this incident takes over the last half of the book, as Bartle is arrested for not returning the body, court martialed  and imprisoned for a few months, and Sterling, the tough no nonsense Sergeant kills himself.  This book, better than anything else I have read about the aftermath of combat, displays the angst and depression that often adheres to our veterans, often leading them to commit suicide.  My only reservation would be the over use of descriptive passages, somewhat reminiscent of a 19th century novel.  I got tired of reading about the sand, the sky, the town, the desert.  Otherwise, a moving and realistic picture of war and its effects on the soldiers.