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The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq

by Joshua Key with Lawrence Hill

Orwell wrote, “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.” Joshua Key and Michael Ross, in their memoirs chronicling the global war against terror from the perspectives of a soldier in Iraq and a spy with the Mossad, respectively, do not shy away from their defeats.

The Deserter’s Tale, told by Joshua Key to Canadian novelist and journalist Lawrence Hill, shows Key, like many young men and women, joining the U.S. military to escape the poverty of his youth and get a decent-paying, secure job, perhaps even an education, to support his growing family. In many ways, Key was an ideal recruit: he had a childhood fascination with guns, he was a bit of a fighter but still followed orders, and he was good with his hands. He even enjoyed boot camp.

Little more than a year into his stint, the U.S. invaded Iraq, and Key was shipped overseas to fight. In Iraq, Key is privy to, and often complicit in, acts of cruel and vindictive violence that, disgracefully, seem institutionalized in the U.S. military and everywhere in the theatre of Iraq. His squad’s nightly tasks become a routine of violence and the abuse of power: raiding civilian homes, brutalizing the inhabitants, and taking the men away, never to be seen again. To this day, Key does not know where these men, who were not arrested for any crime, were sent: perhaps to Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay.

Key (who is his own worst critic in this book) ultimately decides to defect from the army. He goes AWOL with his wife and children and eventually ends up in Canada. On its own, it is a story worth telling: how a good man became lost in an immoral system, and in the process lost his livelihood, his nation, and part of himself. In the U.S. the book will likely cause controversy for its portrayal of a lawless, brutal war, the brunt of which is borne by Iraqi civilians. In Canada, the story takes on additional significance: Key is one of the first U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq to request sanctuary from the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. (His application was denied and is pending appeal.)

While thousands of men and women must have stories like Key’s, The Volunteer tells a story equally imbued with defeat, but far more peculiar. Michael Ross was born to an Anglican family, but converted to Judaism. He grew up in Canada, but married an Israeli. He served in the Canadian forces, and was later conscripted into the Israel Defence Force. Eventually, Ross became part of the Israeli secret intelligence service, known as the Mossad.

He was a spy, basically, and most of the book deals with his life as a spy – travelling widely, meeting other spies, gathering “intelligence.” But just as Key’s struggle is no Heart of Darkness, Ross is no James Bond. A few expensive suits, the odd gadget, and a single brilliant scene of Ross speeding along the autobahn in a Mercedes coupe are the only moments of glamour in his sobering insider’s take on global politics and the terrorist threat.

While Key is relieved he never killed anyone outright, Ross doesn’t shy away from his involvement in killing, or his desire, for instance, to beat a suspected Iranian terrorist to death. While both men are relieved to be out of action (memoirs of active spies, or soldiers for that matter, are understandably rare), they have learned different lessons from the war on terror. (“One senses that the jihadists will have to hit each Western nation individually before they wake up to the threat,” Ross writes, “and stop trying to blame democratic nations such as Israel and the United States for bringing the violence on themselves.”) But both men have paid a price – and endured their share of disgrace – for their role in a war that grows increasingly longer, harder, and bleaker with each new account from the front lines.

 

Reviewer: Andrew Kett

Publisher: House of Anansi Press, House of Anansi Press

DETAILS

Price: $29.95

Page Count: 256 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 978-0-88784-208-5

Released: Feb.

Issue Date: 2007-3

Categories: Children and YA Non-fiction, Memoir & Biography