The War Tapes, directed by Deborah Scranton ’84; showing in many U.S. cities; see www.thewartapes.com/screenings for locations.

From the Trojan War to the war in Vietnam, the experience of combat has somehow made its way back to the home front, whether in the form of an epic poem by Homer or the gritty video on the nightly news. For her extraordinary new documentary, The War Tapes, filmmaker Deborah Scranton had a better idea. Or, at least, a unique one. Offered the chance to embed herself with New Hampshire National Guardsmen during their year in Iraq, she instead gave her cameras to several soldiers and asked them to film their own experiences. The result is an intimate, gripping, helmet’s-eye view of the war.

Specialist Mike Moriarty, a thirty-five-year-old mechanic with a wife and family, is a die-hard Bush supporter who says 9/11 struck him hard. Describing himself as “substantially patriotic,” he insists to his National Guard recruiters, “You shoot me into a unit—if they go to Iraq.” But he’s no simplistic, war-mongering caricature. The horrific and needless death of a young Iraqi woman, accidentally run over by his military convoy, devastates him. Further, like many other U.S. soldiers in Iraq, he believes that twenty years from now the country of Iraq will be a better place because he was there.

Sergeant Steve Pink—the name is straight out of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs—is significantly less gung-ho. Something of a writer, the twenty-four-year-old is Over There to help pay for college. He brings an acerbic wit to what he calls his home movies, wryly noting in his journal such milestones as “Today was the first time I shook a man’s hand that wasn’t attached to his arm.”

Pink is bluntly pragmatic about the war. He wishes the United States would get the oil and money it came for—“Dick Cheney’s crack,” he calls it—and get out of Iraq. Yet beneath the cynicism is a sensitivity. “This is happening,” he says, in disbelief that he’s halfway around the world shooting at people. “And it will have a lasting effect on the rest of my life.”

Sergeant Zack Bazzi, also twenty-four, is the true warrior of the three. He’s already served in Bosnia and Kosovo and intends to re-up for Iraq after his year is over. “The only bad thing about the army is, you can’t pick your wars,” Bazzi admits. His mother took him out of Lebanon when he was a child so he wouldn’t end up dodging explosions in some Mideast desert. As much as Bazzi loves the military, he can’t understand why it doesn’t try harder to understand the culture of the people it’s supposed to be saving. For example, he points out, the palm-out American hand signal for “halt” means “hello” in Iraq.