Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 28, No. 17, Ed. 1 Friday, September 9, 2011 Page: 25 of 48
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books
How 'bout DADT?
Memoir about being gay in the Army resonates with timeliness, vivid prose
the last deployment
HOV A GAY. HAMMER-SV1NGING
THENT¥$0METHING SURVIVE!)
A YEAR IN IRAQ
'W
They've become
familiar sights: Au-
ditoriums filled
with uniformed,
spine-straight sol-
diers on their way
to deployment, or
smiling men and
women, arms full
of family, on their
way home. No
matter what audi-
torium they're in,
no matter which
small town or big city, you can bet that the first
group is wondering what the second group has
seen.
They may never know, though, because much
is buried and more is classified. But military se-
crets aren't the only secrets kept in times of war.
In The Last Deployment, you'll learn one of
them.
Bronson Lemer was "probably the last person
anyone expected to join the military," he writes.
But as the oldest of six children, he wanted to get
q homo sag what? production
away from North Dakota, and the Army "hap-
pened to be at the right place at the right time;"
Lemer was still in high school when he joined
the National Guard; five years later, on Jan. 20,
2003, his cell phone rang. Though he was
months away from getting out of his Guard obli-
gation and was "tired" of service:, Lemer learned
that he was being deployed. What he calls his
"horrible decision" to join the National Guard
was turning into something he never thought
he'd have to worry about: Lemer was a gay sol-
dier under the "don't ask, don't tell" policy
In going to Iraq, he knew he had to learn to
rely on his fellow soldiers, and vice versa. He
tried to relax as he traveled with them to Col-
orado and, later that spring, to Kosovo, then to
Iraq. Lemer went along with the jokes, the girl-
friend talk and the adolescent behavior. He par-
ticipated in anything that banished the boredom
of guard duty, cleaning duty, outhouse duty. He
emailed a former love and longed for home.
As a few months' tour of duty stretched into a
year, Lemer began to notice something: Deploy-
ment was taking its toll on everybody. The men
and women who left the States were not the
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same people who came home from Iraq. And
neither was Lemer,
Over the past decade, you've
undoubtedly seen lots of TV and
read many words about the war
in Iraq. But just wait until you get
your hands on The Last Deploy-
ment. Lemer's memoir of being a
gay man in the military is half-
sassy, half sad with a few heart-
pounding moments though no
blood and guts. His story moves between idyllic
memories of his growing-up and warm feelings
for his bunkmates and co-soldiers, while readers
THE LAST DEPLOYMENT: HOW A
GAY, HAMMER-SWINGING
TWENTYSOMETHING SURVIVED
A YEAR IN IRAQ, by Bronson
Lemer. University of Wisconsin
. Press (2011). $25.223 pp. .
are also placed in the center of the boredom of
waiting, the frustration of not knowing and the
dismay of hiding in order to be ac-
cepted. Lemer's is a wonderfully
descriptive, wryly humorous,
heart-crushing sitory, and I could-
n't put it down.
With the repeal of DADT effec-
tive this month, this is timely and
definitely worth a read. If you
love a soldier, your country, or
both, The Last Deployment is a book you'll want to
tell everybody about. ■
— Terri Schlicheiimeyer
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dallasvoice 25
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Nash, Tammye. Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 28, No. 17, Ed. 1 Friday, September 9, 2011, newspaper, September 9, 2011; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth239184/m1/25/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.