Like all wars, America’s Global War on Terror (GWOT) has produced a wide array of literature, both fiction and nonfiction. It’s my humble opinion that Bill Glose’s new collection of short stories titled All the Ruined Men (St. Martin’s Press, 2022) will be counted among the greats.
Glose’s collection is a fictionalized chronicle of the wartime and post-war experiences of a squad of young, 82nd Airborne paratroopers, men whose lives are forever scarred by the violence and loss they endured over multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Glose offers readers insights into the minds of American soldiers whose traumas have left them used up, stunted, broken, and, for many, feeling tossed to the wayside. This work feels reminiscent of Tim O’Brien’s definitive Vietnam collection, The Things They Carried, only for the GWOT generation. It is dark, honest, and vital.
All the Ruined Men begins, appropriately, from the perspective of Staff Sergeant Berkholtz, the squad leader for the group of boys whom the rest of the book will follow. I use the word “boys” here because that is the term Glose uses through Berkholtz and because that is what many of us were after 9/11. Boys who were looking for a fight. Though his physical presence is limited, Staff Sergeant Berkholtz’s influence becomes one of the main threads weaving together Glose’s stories. The wisdom and discipline Berkholtz bestowed upon his soldiers, both in training and in combat, became pillars in their post-war lives – memories of these lessons serve as a touchstone of sanity for minds on the verge of collapse. Berkholtz’s recurring influence echoes an underlying theme of how our actions—good or bad, intentional or unintentional—resonate and influence those around us. For Glose’s ‘ruined men’, their actions and inactions during and after the war have dire consequences not only for themselves but for their families, friends, and brothers in arms.
