How to Make a War Story
Chris Jones became nervous after the story published. He’d written about an unpopular war at a time when tensions were high. It was the spring of 2008, and President Obama had taken office a few months earlier after running a campaign based in part on ending the Iraq War.
Jones’ story for Esquire, “The Things That Carried Him,” chronicled a dead soldier’s journey in reverse: from his burial in Scottsburg, Indiana to the night he died in South Baghdad.
The story wasn’t political, but that didn’t matter. People would — and did — read their own bias into it. One reader wrote to him calling it a stirring anti-war piece. The story made another feel proud to be an American.
Jones also worried about the title, a nod to “The Things They Carried,” the Vietnam War story by Tim O’Brien that first appeared in Esquire in August 1986. “I thought people would think I was favorably comparing myself to Tim O’Brien,” said Jones. “I was really worried about that.”
Jones had wanted to title the story the 3,431st. The soldier at the center of the story, Sergeant Joe Montgomery, was the 3,431st U.S. casualty in the Iraq war. But it was Esquire’s 75th anniversary, and the editors insisted on it.
Esquire was finally going to press with a story that had taken Jones eight months and 101 interviews to construct. The first draft was 21,000 words, and Jones had cut it down to under 17,000 with the help of his editor, Peter Griffin.
“My measure of a sentence was it had to have a fact about the journey,” said Jones. The story became what Griffin called “a novel of facts.”
The facts were hard to come by, the people involved “scattered to the wind.” Jones talked to the family last, based on an agreement he had with his subject’s mother, Gail. She didn’t want Jones to bring up painful memories with the family only to find out later that the article couldn’t be written for one reason or another. Jones became close to Gail throughout the process for reasons both personal and journalistic. “You don’t get the material unless you’re willing to open yourself up as a human being,” said Jones. “Do I care about Gail? Yes. I love Gail.”
Gail and her son Micah shared moments that gave the story a devastating weight. Moments like when Micah had bent down to put his Mason ring on Joey’s right hand after noticing Joey’s own ring was missing. The glove crumpled, and Gail began to shake. The hand inside of the glove had been reconstructed out of gauze by a mortician.
Jones spoke to the mortician. He spoke to Specialist Robert Leatherbee, the bugler at the funeral — a “genuine bugler,” Jones wrote. “There is such a shortage of buglers now.”
Jones saw Montgomery as a representation of more than 4,000 U.S. soldiers who would go through a similar ritual after dying in Iraq. “I wanted people to know their loved ones were taken care of,” he said.
All dead soldiers pass through the Port Mortuary at Dover Air Field Base in Delaware. Jones called them up and was told that he needed Pentagon approval.
Jones called Lieutenant Colonel Melnick at the Pentagon. “He was like, ‘Okay. You’ve got Pentagon approval. Don’t fuck it up,’” Jones recalled. “It took about a minute.” So he called back the Port Mortuary and got started.
In the end, the only stage of the journey that Jones couldn’t get was the pilots for Evergreen Aviation, who flew a leg of Montgomery’s journey. “It still bothers me that they’re not in there,” Jones said.
Jones had reservations about calling upon strangers to recount a painful memory. He’d been trained for this, oddly enough, as a sports reporter for the National Post in Toronto. On September 11th, 2001, the sports writers were all pulled off of their assignments. “I was supposed to cold call victims families,” Jones said. His editor insisted that the families of victims would want to talk, to have their family members remembered.
That same year, he was in New York covering a baseball series between the Bluejays and the Mets. He took the opportunity to walk into Esquire’s humble New York headquarters with a box of donuts. He didn’t ask for a job. But he wanted the people at Esquire to know that he would be working for them some day.
Later, when Jones landed a staff job, he had a contract for six stories a year. He worked exclusively with Peter Griffin. As his editor, Griffin shot down most of Jones’ ideas. In an edit meeting for the 75th anniversary of Esquire, Editor-in-Chief David Granger asked for ideas. Jones had always “felt sheepish” about being a sportswriter. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking for a war story.” So when Granger turned to him, Jones threw out his idea about tracing a soldier’s journey after death. Granger and Griffin stared at one another in silence for a while.
“Granger says, ‘Yep.’ Peter said, ‘Write it backwards,’” Jones said.
Jones found Montgomery through a news story. Montgomery’s body had been physically carried from the field by his fellow soldiers, and Jones wanted to end the story with that image.
He called the office of mayor Bill Graham, who was Sergeant Montgomery’s uncle and Gail’s brother. Graham gave Jones his sister’s number. Jones called in the middle of the day with the hope of leaving a message. “She could call me back if she wanted,” Jones said.
But it was the work number. Gail answered. Jones introduced himself. He was a writer for Esquire. He wanted to do a story about a soldier. That story could be about her son Joey.
“I remember everything about that conversation. It was long. It was tearful,” he said.
After about 90 minutes, Gail agreed. Her only condition: He would talk to the family last, after Thanksgiving.
