Truth and Fiction: News Events and Fictional Stories
As I shuttle back and forth between reading about the potential breach of classified documents due to the scandal associated with now-former CIA director Gen. Petraeus along with watching the Nov. 11th episode of Showtime’s HOMELAND and the Nov. 13th episodes of CBS’s NCIS and USA Network’s COVERT AFFAIRS, I am experiencing a blurring of the lines between truth and fiction.
In my mrslieutenant.blogspot.com post “Update on PTSD Help for Veterans” I described the real-life project OPERATION PROPER EXIT, a program of TroopsFirstFoundation.org. In the Nov. 13th episode of COVERT AFFAIRS, Christopher Gorham’s character Auggie Anderson goes back to Iraq as a battle buddy for OPERATION PROPER EXIT.
The PSA in the video above is shown partway through the episode. It is an excellent example of how fiction can help in real life.
On another although related subject, I am immersed in reading the Kindle format of WAITING WIVES: THE STORY OF SCHILLING MANOR, HOME FRONT TO THE VIETNAM WAR by Donna Moreau. It is a fascinating memoir of a decommissioned Air Force base used to provided housing for families of men fighting in Vietnam.
Thus while reading the news and watching the TV shows of modern-day military and espionage concerns, my head is also back in the period May 1970 to May 1972 when my husband served as a military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army.
Thus how appropriate that it should be this week that I learned of the efforts of Circe Olson Woessner to start the Museum of the American Military Family. (Click here to visit the museum’s Facebook Page.)
In turn, Circe introduced me to Karin Pohl in Germany who is involved with a museum exhibit of the U.S. Army presence in Munich during the Cold War. Dr. Pohl has been kind enough to send me information about the exhibit. (But even when I studied German while living in Munich, my German would not have been up to the level to translate the documents, so I do not yet know what the material says.)
And a few weeks ago I read two stand-alone novels by Dorothy Gilman (of the Mrs. Pollifax series’ fame), both of which mentioned Gypsies murdered by the Nazis. To this day I have a searing memory of staring at three Gypsies — a woman with a man on either side of her — standing in a gateway at Dachau concentration camp.
In conclusion, you may begin to see why the lines between fiction and fact are blurring for me. (My romantic suspense spy story CIA FALL GUY is fiction based on a real event in Germany during the Cold War.)
I hope that this coming together of fact and fiction will motivate me to complete a memoir of my time as part of the U.S. occupation forces in Germany. I have all my original documents from that time and look forward to helping to preserve the truth — regardless of how fiction may make use of it.
P.S. Big thanks to authors Bonnie B. Latino and Kathleen M. Rodgers following the successful Veterans Day event for our triad of military spouse novels. Click here for more info about these three award-winning military fiction novels.
© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a former military spouse as well as the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including the military fiction MRS. LIEUTENANT: A Sharon Gold Novel and the cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE with a subplot of non-combat trauma PTSD.
Click here to visit her Amazon fiction author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller
So glad you are enjoying Waiting Wives, Phyllis. Really brings back the times, doesn’t it? And a unique perspective coming from the daughter of a U.S.Army officer.
And thanks to you, Mary, for gifting me with the Kindle ebook. I had meant to read it — and now I am. In fact, I’m almost done and will write a review on Amazon.
Big bonus: I found the reference of, after Vietnam, military families getting to stay on post during a family member’s deployment. Now I know why that is the portrayal in Lifetime’s show ARMY WIVES but was not the procedure when I was an army wife.
It was a pleasure to gift you with Waiting Wives, Phyllis. Interesting what we find out, isn’t it? Things change so much in military life. The military of today is so different from the military of the Vietnam era.
This is a fascinating post and I certainly appreciated the links. I also have an interest in both WWII and the Vietnamese conflict, and exploring them in fiction. I completely agree that the lines between fact and fiction are very blurred these days, but I think the important part that fiction plays is to get information across in a way that captures people’s imagination and attention. Depressing news stories are simply not sufficient these days to keep people informed.
A.K. — Thank you so much for this insightful comment. I particularly like how you said that the role fiction has “is to get information across in a way that captures people’s imagination and attention.” Exactly! That’s why fiction can be so powerful.