![]() The Weekend Press: A Soldier’s Letters Home Plus: The geeks outsourcing their life to AI gathered in New York City this week. Kat Rosenfield on a must-watch Iranian vampire movie. Two glasses of red with a titan of Jewish literature. And more!
There are tens of thousands of American servicepeople in the Middle East right now, and retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling knows exactly how they feel. (Animation by The Free Press)
Welcome back to The Weekend Press! Today, Evan Gardner reports from the front lines of the AI revolution. Kat Rosenfield reflects on an eerily prescient Iranian vampire movie. Howard Jacobson explains why he yelled at his audience during Jewish Book Week. And more! But first, there are tens of thousands of American servicepeople in the Middle East right now, and retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling knows exactly how they feel. . . . As all-out war explodes out from the Middle East, uncertainty reigns. All week, we’ve been wondering: Is this how World War III begins? What’s next for Iran? What’s President Donald Trump’s plan? But war is never just about nations and politics. It is also about human beings, including the people asked to fight, and the families waiting for them back home. At time of writing, six American service members have already been killed in this war. “There will likely be more before it ends,” Trump said after the first casualties were announced. Each one leaves behind an entire life—a clapboard house, a beloved spouse, a couple of kids maybe, a dog, a lot of plans that will never be fulfilled. No one understands that more clearly than retired U.S. Army lieutenant general Mark Hertling. Over nearly four decades in uniform, Hertling completed multiple combat tours in Iraq and commanded soldiers at every level of the Army. But throughout those years, he couldn’t shake the very rawest form of fear: that he might not make it home. So he began writing a journal that, he thought, his two young sons would read in the event that their father never returned from the Gulf. But he did. And in his new book, If I Don’t Return: A Father’s Wartime Journal—which will be released next week—Hertling shares those journal entries, as well as the wisdom he’s gained during the long life he once wasn’t sure he would have. “I’d like to say that all my training and preparation helped me face going to war. But the truth is: I was very frightened,” he writes, in the exclusive excerpt we’re publishing today. “I wasn’t ready to die. I’m still not.” Yet there’s a reason parents risk their lives to defend their countries. “For years, men have been going to war in the hopes that their children wouldn’t have to,” writes Hertling. “That is part of what love is all about.” |