Some things never change. Humankind has been going to war since before recorded history, and songwriters have been documenting the experience almost as long. For every “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag,” there are hundreds the likes of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” and “The Ballad of the Green Berets.”
Yet some things do change, to quote Bob Dylan, “there’s something going on and you don’t know what it is.” Women at War: Warrior Songs Volume 2 pairs songwriters with veterans to create 15 songs that take a different look at how the experience of war is refracted through the experiences of female veterans. It is estimated that 15% of our current military are female and along with everything their male counterparts deal with, they carry the additional trauma of rape and Military Sexual Trauma (MST). The experiences on these songs do not flinch.
These songs are meant to heal by bringing subjects into the light. The soldier who will never get to see her child walk down the aisle might be a universal theme, but not so much the enlisted woman who is date-raped by a member of her own unit. She wonders “what if the terrorist is you” and ends up screaming “Who fucked who?” Another song recounts the soldier whose bumper sticker gets a “thank you” to her husband or father for his service, when it was she who served.
This is not an easy listen, but it illuminates how “don’t ask/don’t tell” relationships adapt to survive as well as the cycle of vets returning to a society that leaves them homeless and untreated addicts. Yet these songs serve as the voice of advocates where one hears resilience, tenacity and hope.
