Now enrolled at MU, Brian Van Reet was in action for a year.
It is 3 a.m. on Thursday, April 8, 2004. Brian Van Reet sits in the gunner’s seat on top of a Humvee two miles east of Sadr City, a poor section of Baghdad, Iraq. His view across the open field is dotted with rudimentary mud-brick shanty huts. Van Reet likes to call this part of Baghdad “a Shiite slum.”
It is Van Reet’s eighth day in the U.S. Army’s installation, known as Camp War Eagle. In the cold air of the desert night, Van Reet drifts in and out of sleep. He is part of a crew of three, including the Humvee’s driver, Pfc. Jorchin, who steers the metal beast at a steady seven or eight mph, and a commanding officer, 2nd Lt. Roy. Van Reet can’t recall their first names. Spc. Van Reet’s job this morning is to search for improvised explosive devices.
“Crazy,” he said, “since you usually can’t see an IED until it’s too late.”
A loud screech shatters the heavy night air, and the peace of this Thursday morning is disturbed by several rocket-propelled grenades hurled at the crew. Van Reet’s assignment has begun.
“Me and a couple of other dudes start spraying this field with machine gun fire. Afterwards, we look around to see if we hit anyone,” he recalled.
It takes a few minutes before a captain joins the adrenaline-addled team to “see if they hit anyone.”
This was the first time Van Reet felt the thrill and cold of steel and shrapnel. The first time that he had ever fired a bullet in defense. The first time since his tour in Iraq began that he would kill an innocent person. And it was the first time he put a human face on collateral damage, a military term used to describe the deaths of noncombatants in times of war. That Thursday, the driver, the commanding officer and Spc. Van Reet killed a woman, a man and a horse. But you probably never heard about it, because it was never reported in the press.
It’s been a year since Van Reet has returned home from Iraq, almost two since that day in the open field. Spc. Van Reet is now Sgt. Van Reet, honorably discharged from the Army, awarded a Bronze Star for Valor not long after he returned home. He is 24 years old, but if you saw him, you would think him older. From his stories and experiences, he should be older then 24.
Sipping a cold beer from a frosted glass in the darkened back end of Willie’s bar in downtown Columbia, he reeled off story after story. Between sips he said that he’s back now, back physically and mentally, back and wanting to do something different.
Brian Van Reet is part of a growing trend of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom soldiers that are publishing their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan via blogs on the Internet. He is one of more than 500 members of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. The group claims the support of about 50,000 civilians and posts blogs from about 20 veterans, including Van Reet, on its Web site, www.iava.org.
He is doing what he claims journalists and war reporters cannot. He said he is reporting from the ground and firsthand.
A Houston native, Van Reet grew up in Maryland and spent his freshman year at the University of Virginia. Prompted by failing grades and Sept. 11, he dropped out of school and joined the Army. He was to be honorably discharged in late 2003, but the Army extended his service when it needed additional soldiers for the war in Iraq. He is currently enrolled as a prejournalism student at MU.
His blog, www.oneveteransvoice.com, allows Van Reet a cathartic channel of release for all the rage and emotion, for all the scenes and bloody imagery, and the chance to tell his story. It’s through his blog that the public can read stories about that first Thursday, and all the other days that followed.
“I’ve done things that a lot of people haven’t done, a lot of Americans haven’t done,” he said.
He wants people to know about them. About his 12 months in Iraq, his confusion in that alien culture. He’ll talk about the change in his attitude from animosity to empathy and even regret. He’ll write up the obituaries of the men and women who died, whose obituaries never made it into any paper. He’s blogging this to tell the public because he’s adamant that people wouldn’t know otherwise. He doesn’t want his readers to think that he’s doing this to fulfill some grudge against the Army. Instead, he believes in the U.S. military and its soldiers, but thinks this war is misguided. He thought long and hard before he took his views public through his blog.
“When soldiers say what I’m saying, people automatically dismiss us as s--t-bags.”
His start into cyber storytelling was awkward at first, but then automatic.
“I brought a digital camera with me. I pretty much had that with me the whole time. Halfway through, my dad sent me a video camera and I had a laptop out there, so I was pretty much taking pictures, putting them on the computer, e-mailing them to friends and family and stuff like that,” he said.
“I was consciously documenting, but it wasn’t like I was sharing that with the world at the time.”
Van Reet had been home for seven months when he launched www.oneveteransvoice.com in October 2005.
The Department of Defense monitors and sometimes censors the blogs of soldiers in service through a program called Operational Security. Van Reet said he was asked to remove several photos from his Web site, specifically those of the tank that he worked on in Iraq.
Lt. Col. Carl Ey, an Army spokesman, said that soldiers who are blogging are required to register their blogs while on duty in Iraq. The Army is currently looking at its options for having veterans like Van Reet register their blogs once they leave active military duty.
Van Reet does not call himself a journalist; his motives are personal.
“I guess in the fall I just got increasingly irritated with the way the war was being spun, and people weren’t getting the truth,” he said.
He refers candidly to the discrepancy in reporting when it comes to Iraqi body counts. Hence his decision to tell his stories and share his pictures.
Van Reet feels that the Army uses Operational Security to stifle the flow of information coming directly out of Iraq, or at least from those who witnessed Iraq and the war firsthand. He believes wholeheartedly in the soldiers who are still over in Iraq, but he questions the purpose.
As for his blog, Van Reet said, “I plan to write until I have nothing left to say.”