Local author Curt Swarm to appear at Burlington Farmers Market for book signing
Is Curt Swarm, a Navy veteran who never saw combat in Vietnam, qualified to write about the war in Iraq and its effects upon the soldiers who served there?
He sure is, as witnessed by former armed forces personnel who have given a thumbs-up to his his book, "Task Force IED" about the Iowa National Guard's deployment to Iraq.
Swarm is familiar in the tri-state area as the author of the newspaper column, "Empty Nest," which runs in some 50 papers in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri.
Swarm will be at Burlington By The Book on Thursday to meet readers, answer questions and sign copies of “Task Force IED," his third book.
For “Task Force IED,” Swarm interviewed National Guard veterans to weave this fictionalized version of a true story centered on the military's fight against improvised explosive devices in Iraq. IEDs are responsible for an estimated 75% of the critical injuries experienced by Americans during the 30-year-span covering the U.S. presence in Iraq.
Two Iowa National Guard soldiers, because of their civilian backgrounds, are credited with developing a computer program that predicted, within 80% accuracy, where all the IEDs were located in Iraq, something the military wasn't able to do.
Swarm's fictitious 451 Battalion found and removed more than 800 IEDs, saving countless lives. But the 20% inaccuracy was real, equating to deaths and serious injuries.
The second part of Swarm's story focuses on the return home of the 451 after deployment. Iraq veterans are plagued with PTSD, alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, divorce, bankruptcy and general feelings of failure. Why, after all the success they had in Iraq?
Swarm attempts to answer this conundrum and offer a positive solution.
Although the characters in his book are fictional, things didn't start out that way; some veterans heard of Swarm's project and pitched him the idea of paying him to tell the story.
"One of the people who originally approached me about writing the book said it was a heck of a story and I was just the person to write it," Swarm told The Hawk Eye. "I told him, look, I've never been in combat. I don't know what it's like in Iraq, I don't know what the heat is like, the sand. I don't know what it smells like, tastes like. He said, 'I can introduce you to all those people who can tell you exactly what it was like.'"
Swarm had been praying that he'd become a successful author, and he realized the\ opportunity was being placed in his hands.
"Was I going to step up to the plate, or was I going to weenie out and curl up in a ball and cry?" he wondered.
Swarm agreed to do the book.
The three veterans commissioned Swarm and he started the interview-and-transcribe process. After blocking out the first half-dozen chapters, he sent the rough drafts to get the opinion of his sponsors.
"The guy who originally approached me got back and said, ‘Yeah, this is it; you got a barn-burner here,'" Swarm said. "But the other two got real offended, ‘No, no, no. You can't be talking about this stuff. We you need to be talking about the good things we did, the valor’ which wasn't the whole story. The whole story is that there was a lot of devastation to these veterans when they came back. Suicides and PTSD and divorces and alcoholism. Drug addiction. My gosh. So I just withdrew from it and said, ‘OK, I'm out. I don't need you guys. We're through.’"
Swarm forged ahead with a fictionalized version of the stories he'd gathered and self-published the book.
"It's about a two-year project, between all the interviews and transcribing," he said. "The book just wrote itself; it just flowed."
Where to find the book
In addition to buying a signed copy from Swarm at Burlington By The Book on Thursday from 4-7 p.m. — during Farmers Market — “Task Force IED” is availalbe on Amazon, where it is available in both soft and hard cover, on Kindle, and on the Barnes & Noble and Walmart websites.
People who have already purchased Swarm's books can bring them to Thursday's event for signing.
Visit Swarm's two websites for more information: empty-nest-words-photos-and-frames.com and outskirtspress.com/taskforceied.
This article originally appeared on The Hawk Eye: Local author to appear at Burlington Farmers Market
