Sharing final letters from fallen troops

There’s not much to say, really, watching the heart-wrenching documentary “Last Letters Home: Voices of American Troops From the Battlefields of Iraq,” airing tonight at 9 on HBO.

The film, written and produced by Bill Couturie, is a series of postcards from the heartland of America. The film is as basic as this: The family members of 10 U.S. troops killed in Iraq read the final letters or e-mails received from their sons and daughters from the war front. In this way, “Last Letters Home” is as sobering as the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington.

“In case you’re wondering, I stink,” writes Army Spc. Robert Allen Wise, 21, of Tallahassee, Fla., speaking of the fact that he hasn’t showered in 20 days. Wise was killed when a bomb exploded while he was on patrol in Baghdad. His letter is read by his mother, who breaks down at the line: “We’re going to Olive Garden and DQ when I get back.”

“Everyone knows, however, that each one of us have a story and a home and a mother and for that reason we share an unspoken kinship that carries us together through each day,” writes Army 2nd Lt. Leonard Cowherd, 22, of Culpeper, Va., speaking of the members of his platoon in a Mother’s Day card sent home.

The letters are read by mothers and wives and fathers who often can’t continue for their grief. With the TV full of the battle for Fallouja this week, what strikes you is how little we learn -- and perhaps how we conspire not to know -- about the troops actually doing the dirty work.

To personalize them, after all, is to bring the war closer to home. Last spring, as the presidential election was heating up, “Nightline” touched off a media controversy when the ABC late-night news show devoted an entire program to a roll call of troop casualties in Iraq.

Was such a program news or propaganda? “Last Letters Home,” airing the week after President Bush won reelection, is built to override that discussion. It’s just a thump to the heart.

Even the basics fill out the story. Marine Pfc. Francisco Martinez-Flores, 21, of Duarte. Drowned when his tank went into the Euphrates River. He had written home asking his mother to send ChapStick, disposable cameras, razors and boxers.

Several of the relatives describe how they felt when the notification of death arrived. “I thought that as long as I didn’t let him in, he couldn’t tell me, and then none of this would’ve happened,” says Paula Zasadny, mother of Holly McGeogh, an Army private first class killed when her vehicle was hit by an explosive device in Kirkuk.

The letters don’t discuss feelings about the war or its outcome. Similarly, these military families betray no anger or resentment toward the powers-that-be who sent their son or daughter or husband to fight.

What they have, ostensibly, is unbearable grief. In this way, “Last Letters Home” plays like an hourlong funeral, the letters like eulogies. Pierre Piche, 29, of Starksboro, Vt., writes of being made fun of for drinking maple syrup straight from the bottle. The Army captain was killed when his helicopter collided with another in Mosul.

“I am proud to be defending my country,” he writes, “but I don’t want to be defending it constantly for the next 10 or 15 years.”

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‘Last Letters Home: Voices of American Troops From the Battlefields of Iraq’

Where: HBO

When: 9-10 tonight.

Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).

Executive producers, Jane Bornemeier, John John Hoffman, Sheila Nevins. Producer and director, Bill Couturie.