Frisco soldier's blog reflects how Iraq changed him

FRISCO – Three years ago, Alex Horton joined the Army knowing he would go to war and hoping he'd find adventure. He did. The high-school kid from Frisco who quoted dialogue from Patton verbatim learned quickly that it was nothing like the movies.

During his 15 months in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade, Spc. Horton, 21, faced sniper attacks, improvised explosive devices, moments of horror and the age-old tedium and Catch-22 absurdities of military life. He chronicled what he saw in his blog, Army of Dude, a Web-based journal that, in simple, eloquent prose, depicts the war as seen from a front-row seat.
The blog also is a road map of a young man's transformation in the crucible of war. He learned that soldiers fight for each other, not for policy or politics. That life changes in a flash. That friends die. And he came to believe that war, this war, is a waste of time, money and blood.

"I am not a spokesman for my generation or all soldiers or anyone else. I volunteered and I knew what I was getting into," he said in an interview at his parents' home while on leave. "But when I got to Iraq, I saw that our efforts were contrary to why we were told we went there and what we hoped to accomplish. I am not anti-war; I'm anti-Iraq-war."

Such glimpses into wartime experiences are no longer the territory of letters home or personal diaries. Troops in combat and those recently returned now fill the Web with their observations. Wired magazine estimates that there are 1,200 active military blogs.

Spc. Horton said his superiors never tried to censor his efforts, although the Army this spring imposed tougher restrictions on military blogs.

Phillip Carter, an Iraq war veteran whose blog, Intel Dump, explores a variety of military and political issues, sees the growth of military blogs, called "milblogs," as something far more expressive than the long tradition of griping in the military.

"Disillusionment is in evidence in any war. But now, soldiers coming back home find their disillusionment mirrors the American public's ambivalence with the war," he said. "These soldiers want to add to the public discourse. They want their stories told. They were there. They experienced it. Who better to tell the tale?"


Reflecting darker days

Spc. Horton started his blog before his deployment, ridiculing the ironies of Army life, the hurry-up-and-wait attitudes and the occasional goofiness of the military.

After his brigade deployed to Kuwait, then crossed the line into Iraq in June 2006, his writing rapidly became less funny. "When we saw what we were doing applied in terms of life and death in Iraq, that's when the blog changed," he said.

"At the beginning, you feel like you're invincible and if anything bad happens, it's going to happen to some other guy. Then when people start to get hurt and killed, you think to yourself, I better look out or I'll be next," he wrote in his blog. "The final stage comes after the second one wears on you after a while. Your thought is, I'm going to die next unless I make it out of here as soon as possible."

Some of the worst days occurred when friends were killed in a fierce firefight in Baqouba. Or in the long moments of terror while he was pinned down by machine-gun fire. Or in the sense that time and American life had simply passed them by.

When the brigade's 12-month tour was extended by three months in July, Spc. Horton and his buddies felt as though no one was ever going home. "We had people who had never seen the babies who were born after we deployed. A month after the extension, I remember squatting in the dust with a guy who said, " 'Well, I could be in college right now.' "


Army watching trend

The military has long danced around how best to balance the Web's instant communication between deployed soldiers and the folks back home and its potential threats to operational security for those in harm's way.

On April 19, the Army tightened operations security regulations to require soldiers to clear all blog entries and e-mails with a superior officer, the strongest restriction of military Internet use since the Iraq war began.

But the Army's own review of military blogs found more problems with official military Web sites than with milblogs, according to Wired magazine.

Mr. Carter said most commanders have no problem with soldier blogs as long as they don't reveal sensitive combat plans or divulge secret material.

"The thoughtful officers and senior enlisted are all for it," he said. "They trust their soldiers to tell the truth, as unpleasant as it may be. In these times, the unvarnished truth is best."

Spc. Horton stressed that his commanders and sergeants never complained about his blog or warned him to tone things down. "Officers and NCOs alike told me they read it and liked it," he said. "Even the angry parts. The guys in my platoon told me that I wrote what they'd been thinking."

Spc. Josh Martell, who served with Spc. Horton in the 3rd Styker Brigade, agreed. "Speaking on behalf of the platoon, we love his writing and are behind him 100%," he wrote in an e-mail.

The Army is listening. Maj. Elizabeth L. Robbins of the Army's Combined Arms Center recently proposed that the Army encourage more use of blogs to open communications between the military and the public.

"The Army position should be that while we seek to protect operational security and individual privacy, we have nothing to hide, much to communicate and we are comprised of over a million uniformed individuals with over a million perspectives," she said.


Back home

At the end of November, Spc. Horton will become civilian Alex again.

He plans to go to school in Texas, maybe study English or journalism, and get on with his life. His time as an infantryman was not all negative, he said.

"On a good note, I take things less for granted and I'm a little more understanding, maybe a little more serious," he said. "I'm still not comfortable in crowds, like a mall or a bar, and noisy places are a problem. But ... I can tell the difference between here and Iraq. It's not hard at all."

He never saw the blog as therapy. "I just felt it was better to write it and have people understand exactly what we saw there, what we were doing. People in the States don't have a clue what's going on."

His parents, Jeff and Robin Horton of Frisco, are his most rabid fans. Army of Dude kept them connected to a son in a faraway, dangerous place. They could send love and ease fears in the comments section.

"Outwardly, he's not much changed, but in five minutes after he got home, I could tell how much he had grown up," Mr. Horton said. "His experiences tapped deep wells of strength. He learned to love and cherish his fellow soldiers and learned to grieve."

If nothing else, Spc. Horton hopes his blog helps educate the larger public that so much of the war's burden has fallen on the soldiers' backs.

In his last entry, he wrote about the joy and confusion of being home. And the sense that civilians didn't know or care about what young soldiers had seen and done.

"Now we're a military at war, with less than 1% of the population in uniform. Unless you have a friend or family member in the military, it's a separate reality," he wrote.

"In airports and in living rooms, you can see for yourself the effect in the eyes of a soldier at war for fifteen months at a time, hidden behind a smile that conceals a secret: you'll never quite understand what we did there. Like Atlas, we carry the immense burden of the country on our shoulders, waiting for the day seemingly long into the future when the American people say, that will do."
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