The Bearded Trio

Director’s Note With the Army as his answer to a slew of college rejection letters, my older brother shipped off to the Middle East in 1991.  Our family huddled around the TV watching dust-clouded news feeds of U.S. forces as they drove Saddam out of Kuwait.  After a speedy victory, my brother came home with his arms and legs and sense of humor intact.  He told us war was boring and hotter than hell, but another story seemed to vibrate behind his pale eyes.  Ground combat lasted a mere 100 hours, but it had altered him.  Like my uncle who fought in Vietnam, and my grandfather who flew in WWII, my brother would never talk about it.  It became the unspoken space between us. In 2013, I was introduced to “Thank You for Your Service” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Finkel.  The book seemed to explore all that my brother had left unsaid.  It follows the Army’s 2 nd Battalion, 16 th Infantry Regiment, home from Iraq, back to Topeka, Ka...