5 Riveting Soldier Blogs

By Brian Bennett

One of the main ways in which the current war differs from its predecessors is the direct access that soldiers have to those at home via online blogs. Those diaries give ground-level views of the highs and lows of soldiering in Iraq. Here are five of the more thoughtful, writerly and engaging posters-at-arms.

A SOLDIER'S THOUGHTS MISOLDIERTHOUGHTS.BLOGSPOT.COM

An Arabic linguist on his second tour in Iraq, Zachary Scott-Singley, 24, understood the fighting part. It's the setting-up-the-democracy part he doesn't get. "I do feel like we were lied to about our reasons for being here," he writes in his meditative, almost daily blog about life in Saddam's hometown, posting pictures of what he sees on his base: a headless palm tree that had been hit by a mortar, for example, or a gold carp caught in the Tigris. "Here," he writes, "they teach you to trust no one because anyone might be your enemy."

BOOTS IN BAGHDAD BOOTSINBAGHDAD.BLOGSPOT.COM

Mark Partridge Miner remembers lying on a beach in St. Augustine, Fla., looking at the stars and wishing he were fighting in Iraq. So he dropped out of college and volunteered. When he arrived last November, he spent months grudgingly guarding a gate to Baghdad International Airport and yearning to be on the convoys heading into the red zone. His early posts, some of which are addressed to the insurgents ("The whites of my eyes are the last thing you will see before you kiss the feet of my God ..."), are zealous and antsy for action. His later ones, after he starts going on foot patrol, ducking mortars and witnessing car bombs, are less gung ho, as when his unit shoots into the cab of an oncoming car and hits a teen boy: "I constantly look back on that night."

LIFE IN THIS GIRL'S ARMY SGTLIZZIE.BLOGSPOT.COM

She's home from Iraq now, and her posts include bubbly accounts of horsing around with her little brother and sparkling close-ups of her new engagement ring. But even when her transport truck was blown up by a roadside bomb in December, Sergeant Lizzie--who declines to share her full name--wrote about the event with the same bouncy style, flip asides, exclamation points and smiley faces. Describing herself under the destroyed truck, gashes on her face, she writes, "I made the remark that I wouldn't be pretty again LOL." The medic teases her for wearing a matching bra-and-panty set in a war zone. But in quieter moments of the blog, tinges of survivor's guilt emerge: "Why did I walk away from a wreck that killed a comrade and a friend?"

365 AND A WAKE UP THUNDER6.TYPEPAD.COM

Danjel Bout, 32, a logistics captain, writes to digest what he sees, to make sense of his experiences and most of all to escape. From a group of fellow officers being fed a sheep's-head dinner to missing his wife to watching a robot disarm a roadside bomb that nearly blew him up, Bout gives vivid, sometimes lyrical, descriptions of the smells, tastes and sounds of the Baghdad he sees. The cooling summer mornings, he says, "settle around you like a light winter coat." He uploads lots of photos too. "Some soldiers immerse themselves in video games; others click on their DVD players," he says. "I just write."

MA DEUCE GUNNER MADEUCEGUNNERS.BLOGSPOT.COM

A self-described "gun nerd," he posts photographs of himself posing with a confiscated rocket-propelled grenade launcher, and he named his blog after his M2 heavy machine gun. Between glory shots with guns and photos of the Jungle Falls Suite in Idaho, where he stayed with his wife while on leave, Ma Deuce Gunner (who never reveals his name) gives detailed descriptions of the new Iraqi army he patrols with around Kirkuk. Despite their flimsy body armor, mismatched uniforms and the yellow-papered Gauloises cigarettes constantly dangling from their lips, their resourcefulness and enthusiasm give him hope. --By Brian Bennett