Invisible Wounds

July 4, 2022
Ruliffson’s provocative debut profiles 12 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with sensitivity and unflinching honesty. The subjects represent a range of military experiences, including a gay combat soldier who first served in the closet under “don’t ask don’t tell” before deciding “I’m fighting for this country as who I am”; a Vietnamese American platoon leader who felt that “when 9/11 happened, I was relieved I didn’t have to be the bad guy anymore”; an airman who had trouble accessing veterans’ services after his gender transition; and a lieutenant colonel who was punished by the upper brass after reporting her assault by a fellow officer. Most of those profiled express disillusionment with the wars they risked their lives for, recalling how high-minded plans for counter-insurgency and rebuilding were abandoned when the fighting began in earnest. All of the subjects struggled to rejoin civilian life (“Somehow between Iraq and home I had become a raw nerve”), but many have found meaning in creative work, helping communities, or getting back to nature. Ruliffson’s sketchy artwork, colored in bold limited palettes, captures the vets’ personalities in broad strokes; she has a gift for summing up a moment in a well-chosen image or gesture. This vital collection of veterans’ narratives brings home the fact that there’s no such thing as a typical war story.

Starred review from July 1, 2022
This is the account of 12 U.S. military veterans who have returned from Afghanistan and Iraq, having served in a variety of capacities. Each story is wholly unique and touches upon all aspects of identity: age, race, gender, sexuality, and location. While many books describing war experiences take a stance, Ruliffson (herself the stepchild of a veteran) is careful not to do so. Guilt and pain play into the majority of experiences, but those are not always at the hands of the government; situations range from difficulties with individuals of similar rank within the military to difficulties at home affecting the subjects' psyches. What stands out is the individuality of each story and the person telling it, and how being a veteran is not a person's sole method of identity, nor is service the same for all military personnel. The illustrations use a consistently detailed style throughout, and for such a moving book, the facial expressions certainly match the tone. The drab tans and grays are great at setting the desert atmosphere found in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the muddled feelings of the veterans. This is an exceptional war chronicle that has something for everyone; panels are mostly free of gory imagery, allowing the power of the personal accounts to do the heavy lifting.

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Starred review from December 2, 2023

An Air Force brat herself, Ruliffson (Trained To Fight the Enemy) went to art school and then became drawn to depicting veterans' stories. These 12 come from both women and men, diverse in sexual identity and race, who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. A few vets found satisfying stateside post-discharge careers in the National Park Service, as a firefighter, or as a successful writer. Others felt like permanently twisted outsiders, broken beyond repair or redemption. Shocking hostility and incompetence from other military people, the surprising humanity of "the enemy," a constant fear of being blown apart by hostiles or "friendly fire," and the cluelessness of everyday Americans about the wars unmoored them. All describe toxic mental disruptions that continued after discharge, and all struggled to reconcile their wartime experience with their postwar lives. The art is an empathic broad-brush realism, with dominant bold tones of gray, tan, blue, and orange, and no explicit violence. VERDICT These dozen dramatized interviews speak for the uncountable war veterans throughout history who died with their PTSD, guilt, and pain undiagnosed and misunderstood. Highly recommended for readers willing to brave the wars inside veterans and thus better understand the wars outside them.

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