Ghosts of War

Ghosts of War (2009), a young adult memoir by U.S. Army Reservist Ryan Smithson, recounts Smithson’s experience of deployment in Iraq, beginning with his decision to enlist, which he took when he was just seventeen.

As the memoir opens, Ryan is a junior in high school, in Albany, New York. It’s September 11, 2001. In an American History class, Ryan and his classmates watch the towers of the World Trade Center fall on live television. Their teacher tells them they are witnessing history.

Ryan continues to be haunted by the events of 9/11 as he resumes his ordinary life: his weekend job at Denny’s, his studies, and wrestling. His girlfriend, Heather, is haunted, too, by dreams of terrorist attacks in Albany.



In senior year, Ryan struggles to decide what he wants to do with his life. Under this new pressure, he remembers that his first response to the 9/11 attacks was a desire to join the military. He talks to a recruiter, who recommends the Army Reserves. His worried parents, too, push him to join the Reserves rather than the regular forces.

When a knee injury puts an end to his school wrestling career, Ryan feels that real accomplishment is beyond him. He decides to enlist in the Reserves as a construction engineer. With Heather, he visits New York City for the first time and sees Ground Zero. Witnessing the tributes paid to the dead, Ryan feels sure he has made the right choice.

Ryan undergoes basic training in Missouri. His drill sergeant is fierce. He and his comrades are routinely humiliated and belittled. Ryan finds the experience harrowing but ultimately life-affirming: “Only after we have been completely destroyed can we begin to find ourselves.” He begins to feel a strong bond with his fellow soldiers. The rest of the book is interspersed with flashbacks to Ryan’s experiences in basic training.



When Ryan returns from training, he moves in with Heather, who is in her last year of college. They discuss what they will do if Ryan is deployed, but Ryan is confident that he won’t be deployed any time in the near future. The very next day, he learns that he is shortly to be deployed. He proposes to Heather, and they get married in a local park. Ryan experiences the ceremony as “an elaborate good-bye.”

Ryan joins his platoon in North Carolina. For the first time, he experiences doubt about his decision, but he overcomes it. With his platoon, he flies first to Kuwait and then to Iraq. Immediately, he is assigned to drive a dump truck. He has his first encounter with the local population: some starving children begging for food at the roadside. Ryan gives them some food. Later, his lieutenant tells him that this is against the rules.

On patrol in the Samara marketplace, Ryan’s platoon is ambushed, and Ryan fears for his life. On his return, he is moved by a care package he has received from a young boy in North Carolina.



The bulk of Ryan’s work involves driving heavy equipment to fill in bomb craters. During the course of this work he has further brushes with death: mortar bombs fly overhead while he is stationed at Abu Ghraib, and he has to accelerate past an IED which turns out to be a dummy. Ryan is awarded a two-week leave; he has just enough time to see Heather and his family before he must fly back to Iraq.

Ryan has more encounters with the local population. He gives Gatorade to local children, and in return, he receives a gift, a “bazoona,” an item “like a rabbit’s foot but slightly modified." He builds a shelf for an Iraqi man who works as a cleaner on the military base. Ryan is moved by the poverty he witnesses in Iraq, and the apparent gratitude of the local population to the U.S. forces. He reflects that Americans are spoiled.

When his platoon is sent to a new camp, Ryan learns that a man he knew from his previous camp, Jim Conklin, has been killed during a routine operation. Ryan attends Conklin’s funeral. He is deeply moved, but he feels that he is not entitled to cry because he didn’t know Conklin especially well. In the end, he cries anyway.



As Ryan and his platoon travel back to the U.S., they share funny stories about their time in Iraq. Upon his return, Ryan begins to exhibit symptoms of PTSD. He cannot sleep, fearing that someone is in the house. At first, he gets out of bed, looking for a weapon, until he begins to fear that he will kill Heather by mistake. One night, he wakes to find that there really is someone in the room, a woman. Ryan is unable to move. The woman slowly approaches him. When she touches him, he feels calm and healed, and he is able to sleep.

In college, Ryan is given a creative writing assignment and produces a story about the ambush at Samara marketplace. He finds the process of writing healing, and his classmates compliment him on the quality of his work. Working with school-aged children as part of a college program, Ryan visits a museum in Albany. An exhibit about 9/11 makes him tearful, and one of the schoolchildren asks him why he is upset. He tries to explain, but he cannot make her understand. The memoir closes with Ryan’s reflections on the role fate has played in his life.

Ghosts of War offers an account of a less-often-described side of military life behind the front lines. Kirkus Reviews hailed Smithson’s memoir as a “remarkable, deeply penetrating read that will compel teens to reflect on their own thoughts about duty, patriotism, and sacrifice.”