When Humor Hits Home
Perhaps no political cartoonist has captured the war experience better than Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau. His character B.D. went to Iraq as a national guardsman, lost a leg in combat, and developed post-traumatic stress disorder. B.D.'s struggle with PTSD has been gathered into a new book, The War Within: One More Step at a Time. All proceeds go to Fisher House, an organization that houses families of service members receiving medical treatment. U.S. News Senior Writer Betsy Streisand talked to Trudeau, via E-mail, about B.D.:
Why did you choose B.D. to go to war?
I wanted to heighten the stakes, and using a character whom longtime readers had been following for 35 years seemed a good way to accomplish that.
Why have him lose a leg?
To dramatize the sacrifices our troops were making in our names. I briefly considered killing B.D. off. Instead, I gave him a serious wound and committed myself to following that story through his recovery.
Were you looking for a way to get his helmet off, which he has worn since the cartoon began in 1970?
No, I did that on impulse. But once I did it, I realized that it greatly enhanced the pathos of the reveal. Yes, he was missing his leg, but what was nearly as shocking to readers was that he was missing a signature part of his persona-the headgear. I was trying to convey the sense that nothing would ever again be the same.
You spent a lot of time at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. What struck you most about the amputees?
The soldiers are almost all hellbent on putting their lives back together. There's not a culture of complaint. So many of them want nothing more than to get back to their units. That's an unreasonable goal for most, but that aspiration is front and center and it's very moving.
Do you think the country understands how affected many soldiers are by war?
I don't think most people fully understand the price to society of reabsorbing large numbers of veterans who are dealing with serious pain and dysfunction. It was ignored after Vietnam; it won't be this time.
B.D.'s journey is very emotional. Is this a departure for you?
I think so. We're seeing the emotional side of a very buttoned-up character, but it was necessary in order to describe the mayhem that PTSD brings on.
Was it more difficult to pull off than other story lines?
Difficult in one very particular sense: B.D.'s story is not told at the veteran's expense; it's told in his honor. That's an unusual ambition for satire, which generally plays offense.
Many soldiers think that supporting the troops and not the war is a contradiction. What about you?
I opposed the war from the beginning, and yet I also feel we have a deep responsibility to these young men and women. The country's living in a state of low-grade schizophrenia, and that worries me. It could very easily allow its frustration with the war to bleed over to the warrior, and vets will once again pay a terrible price.
This story appears in the October 9, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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