MILITARY AUTOBIOGRAPHIES: ENCOURAGE, DISCOURAGE OR IGNORE?

Of every 6,000 soldiers deployed, one publishes an autobiographical book about their experiences shortly after the war. Military memoirs are therefore an inescapable consequence of deployments. How should defence organizations react to these soldier-authors: should they be encouraged, discouraged, or ignored? A substantiated answer to that question is given in this article by providing a profile of all writers of military Afghanistan memoirs from seven countries (the US, the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands) and the kind of plots they write. A small majority write positive plots. The negative ones specifically deal with disillusionment about the care the defence organization or society at large provided, and experiences with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It is interesting that it proves to be possible to predict whether a writer will write a positive or a negative plot based on the type of work they do and whether they still work for the defence organization. Military organizations interested in getting positive books published are advised to particularly encourage writing by individually deployed personnel who work in combat support positions and are on active service.