War Dispatches To 'Doonesbury'

Garry Trudeau Draws Soldiers to Blog

First Sgt. Troy Steward becomes fascinated with Garry Trudeau's pen. It writes so richly, it rolls so well! For this mission, the New York Army National Guardsman feels not as well-armed as the creator of "Doonesbury."

"If you want to know about killing people, I can tell you that," Steward says. "When it comes to signing books . . ."

Trudeau holds his pen aloft and offers a tribute. "This is called the Uni-ball Vision Elite," he says. "And it's mightier than anything you got!"

Everyone at the lunch table in the Department of Veterans Affairs cracks up. Yes, indeed, Steward and the big guy at his elbow, Sgt. Owen Powell, probably do have more recent experience with assault rifles than with pens. But they also happen to know their way around a laptop, and they can make the English language sing almost as sharply and sweetly as one of cartoon warrior B.D.'s thought balloons.

Which is how the paths of all three have crossed behind a big pile of books in the canteen of VA headquarters downtown, where yesterday about 100 employees lined up to get their $14.95 copies signed, discounted from the regular retail price of $16.95. The work is called "The Sandbox," a new collection of blog entries that men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan posted to the milblog of the same name that Trudeau created at the comic strip's Web site.

Steward makes do with his balky marker. On his right wrist, his signing hand, is a band with the name of one of his soldiers killed in action. Powell wears a band in memory of three. Trudeau is the self-effacing celebrity whom many of the book buyers have come to see, but it is the soldiers they thank.

The project began last fall with one of the more bizarre solicitations in publishing history -- an invitation from a cartoon character. Trudeau penned the words, "It was a dark and messed-up night," in a "Doonesbury" Sunday strip, imagining a soldier blogging. In the next panel, B.D.'s cartoon comrade Ray Hightower announced the debut of "our command-wide milblog," where troops could vent and rhapsodize, and folks on the home front could learn what is going on from their point of view.

Steward, 38, who recently returned from Afghanistan, and Powell, 40, who just got back from Iraq, are two of nearly 40 contributors published in the book. In all, nearly 100 have posted about 300 entries to the milblog.

Trudeau had been reading military blogs for years, for inspiration. Some of them were really good, he found, but they were being read by a limited audience. "Man, this is not right that only friends and family get to see this stuff," he remembers thinking. "We came up with the idea that the Global War on Terror needed its own literary magazine."

Despite Trudeau's merciless cartoon satirizing of the Bush administration, the U.S. military has a soft spot for the cartoonist. At least he seems to dig the troops. This morning he was scheduled to sign books with Steward and Powell at the Pentagon. He visited both the VA and the Pentagon last year with new cartoon collections featuring B.D.'s wounding in Iraq and his recovery. He is a discreet regular at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and at outpatient gatherings of wounded troops. Royalties from "The Sandbox" will go to support the Fisher House Foundation, the Rockville-based charity that provides lodging for the families of patients receiving medical care at VA facilities.

The Sandbox milblog is called the "GWOT-lit's forward position." As in so many virtual communities, most of the participants have never met. Trudeau, Steward and Powell first laid eyes on each other when they got to Washington Monday night. "We've all been an abstraction to one another," Trudeau says.

But the cartoonist has taken pains to immerse himself in the experiences of this generation of warriors. It was the only way to convey believable cartoon scenes from the front, and to portray B.D.'s trying experience in Iraq and back home. Trudeau interacts easily with soldiers, speaking their language without apparent calculation.