Pumpkinflowers

Written by Matti Friedman

Narrated by Eric Michael Summerer

Using humor, pop culture, and even musical references, Matti Friedman recreates the wartime experience in a narrative that is part memoir, part journalism, part military history. The years in question were pivotal ones, seeing the perfection of a type of warfare that would eventually be exported to Afghanistan and Iraq and has come to seem like the only kind of warfare in existence - wars in which there is never any clear victory, but not quite enough lives are lost to rally the country against it. It was one small hilltop in a small, unnamed war in the late 1990s, but it would send out ripples still felt worldwide today. The hill, in Lebanon, was called the Pumpkin; ldquo;Flowersrdquo;#160;was the military code word for ldquo;casualties.rdquo; Award-winning writer Friedman re-creates the harrowing experience of a band of young soldiers-the author among them-charged with holding this remote outpost, a task that changed them forever and foreshadowed the unwinnable conflicts the United States would soon confront in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. #160;

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: May 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781622319930

Reviews for Pumpkinflowers

[19vatermit64 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book. This book became the basis for many conversations with one of my partners who emigrated from Israel. Friedman has written an excellent first person account of the conflict between Israel and its neighbors. I enjoyed his writing style and wold recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning about the politics in the Middle East.

[yesvirginia_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mercifully, neither I nor many of my close family have served in combat. While I am grateful to have been spared, I feel the guilt of not knowing -in any real detail- just what such experience is like. I want to understand better the few men I know who have experienced war up close and personal. This book did that for me. There's boredom, terror, loyalty, and the futility of trying to disguise terrible loss. Pumpkin Flowers even covers the reality of War's affect on the mothers of soldiers. Their role in changing some Israeli policy was surprising and encouraging.

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Subtitle: A Soldier's Story of a Forgotten War"Sometimes you took over one of the guard posts, checked your watch an hour later, and found that five minutes had passed."Pumpkin is the code name for a forward Israeli base in southern Lebanon at which the author served during his time in the Israeli military after he left high school in the 1990's. It is his story, and also the story of the other young soldiers with whom he served. In Part I, we follow a series of events that happened at Pumpkin before Matti's time there, through the eyes of Avi, a young soldier serving there in 1994. Part 2 focuses on the Israeli mothers who helped bring about the unraveling of the military's strategy to occupy southern Lebanon. In Part 3, we follow Matti's experiences as a soldier at Pumpkin during the outpost's last days. And in Part 4, Matti, using his dual Canadian citizenship, returns to Lebanon many years later, including to the area around Pumpkin, to try to make sense of what happened.This book is part history, part memoir. The Israeli army's strategy was to set up "security" zones in southern Lebanon to protect Israel. In reality, the security zones seemed to be killing more people than they were saving. A group of Israeli mothers believing they were sending their sons to die in Lebanon for no reason began a movement which led to the Four Mothers' Petition, ultimately leading to Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon.Matti writes, "The army gave the outposts pretty names like Basil, Crocus, Cypress and Red Pepper. This reflects a floral preoccupation in our military which in naming things generally avoids names like Hellfire or Apache...." Other euphemisms the army used in its communications were words like "flower," meaning wounded, or "oleander," meaning dead. Hence the book's title, Pumpkinflowers.

[larryerick · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ostensibly this is a memoir of a Jewish man born in Canada and now living in Israel, who served in the Israeli-occupied portion of Lebanon in the last few years of the 20th century. Early in the narrative, without being blatant about it, the author displays a great deal of the ineptitude of conducting any war. Heller's Catch-22 comes to mind at times, but for real, not in some fictional satirical way. Eventually, the narrative switches from his reporting about other Israeli soldiers stationed in Southern Lebanon to his own deployments in the same area. The military absurdities become less the focus and turn more to the mindsets of the soldiers under fire, which I would compare to Sebastian Junger's War in Afghanistan. Up to this point, he had me impressed with his insights, which were definitely not all in the mainstream media (or biased political) information flow. However, he ends the book with a rather surreptitious reentry to the very same area of previously occupied Lebanon, but now as a "Canadian tourist" in a very anti-Israeli area -- the very same area in which he had served as an Israeli soldier. This does provide a few previously unanswered questions about "them" for an Israeli "us" soldier, but it is too brief, too emotion-laden (especially for the rather laid-back writer,) and too unnecessary in my view because it is too superficial. This book promised more than it ultimately delivered. And for those looking beyond, as much as this writer tries for and probably wants some real peace between Israeli Jews and the surrounding Arab Muslim populations, this book gives no hint of that ever happening. I would say that's because nobody wants to or is capable of putting the right kind of effort into having it become true, and I strongly suspect the author agrees with me.

[bespen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Storyby Matti FriedmanAlgonquin Books of Chapel Hill (2016)$25.95 paperback; 243 pagesISBN 978-1616204587This is a book in three parts. First, we have the account of an ordinary soldier who doesn't really want to be there."A. reached basic training young, healthy, and innocent". This is Avi, writing of himself in the third person.When the sergeant said to do things on time he did, and when the commander ordered everyone to give him 50 pushups A. was the one who set the pace.But the danger of innocence is that it gets cracked easily by stupidity and cruelty. And so not much time had passed before A. started thinking that perhaps it was not right that he was the only one who was not late, or that he was the only one who cared when the sergeant threw him a good word. His concern grew when he heard the other members of the platoon saying that the regular punishments of running back and forth were not even punishments for something they had done wrong! They were, instead, a plot by the sergeants—that is, the system—directed against them! A. began thinking about this until he could no longer sleep during the short nights allotted to them. He thought so much that he began to move slowly in the morning himself, and to run slowly when they were punished. Because all of his faculties were devoted to the problem, he did not notice anything else, and quickly became the slowest and deafest of soldiers. Because one of the commanders would speak to him on occasion and interrupt his thoughts, A. suddenly understood that what they wanted to do was prevent him from thinking. He understood that they were his real enemies! They were the enemies of thought and creativity who wanted to enslave him and turn him into a creature incapable of thought, and willing to obey them.This thought scared him so badly that he began resisting in any way he could. He started to think and do things his own way. If they gave him a mission, like setting the tables in the dining hall, he would put the cutlery backwards! Or miss on purpose at the firing range!! Now he was a rebel!!! And thus A. fought the system, and to the best of our knowledge he might still be doing so today, somewhere in the time and space of the army..."Avi Ofner was definitely a square peg in a round hole in the Israeli infantry. Since Israel has compulsory military service, personnel officers still need to find somewhere to put men like Avi. It seems that someone had an idea of what his personality was, because his platoon seemed to be made up of similarly bookish young men:"When his tent mate, Amos, brought a book of philosophical meditations called In the Footsteps of Thoughts he and Matan actually read it and then talked about it for weeks, lying sore on the ground after days of exhaustion, breathing in the smell of their own unwashed bodies, of earth, and of dusty canvas....Today, Matan is a physicist. Amos is a psychiatrist and lives in Paris."For all of his adolescent rebellion, Avi also refused to take a desk job when a physical turned up a spinal cord defect a couple of years into his enlistment. He preferred serving at the Pumpkin, a hilltop fort in southern Lebanon near Beaufort Castle. Avi and his mates in the Pioneer Fighting Youth were stationed in a series of such forts in the South Lebanon Security Zone.That stubborn devotion got Avi killed in an unfortunate helicopter accident in 1997, when he was being flown back to his post in Lebanon in a desperate attempt to avoid bombs on the roads. After that, the soldiers went back to the roads, in a desperate attempt to avoid more helicopter crashes. I think Friedman is right that this crash was the beginning of the end for Israel's long-running low-grade war in Southern Lebanon, which had been going on for almost twenty years at this point.My second part is Friedman's firsthand recollections of his time at the Pumpkin. Friedman's parents had emigrated from Canada, and now Friedman's compulsory service was due shortly after the crash that killed Avi. This would make Friedman a couple of years older than me, if he was 19 in 1997. Were I Jewish, and had my family immigrated to Israel, I easily could have found myself in the exact same place that he did.That place turned out to be the Pumpkin, with that unusual combination of boredom and terror that garrison duty provides. Friedman's prose changes in this section, becoming simpler and more direct. The first part of the book was based on Avi's writing and interviews with people who knew him, whereas the second part is largely Friedman's direct recollection.Interleaved with Friedman's account is a short history of the Four Mothers movement, which arose in response to the helicopter crash that killed Avi. The crash killed 73 soldiers, which to put into perspective for me, would be the equivalent of 3400 dead Americans, based on the relative population sizes of our two countries at the time. That is almost as many American soldiers who died in the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq. Except all at once.Thus it isn't surprising that the Four Mothers movement successfully campaigned to get Israel to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000. From Avi's and Friedman's accounts, the whole hilltop fortress thing never seemed to have been terribly well thought out. Rather, it was blundered into, and since militaries tend to be extremely conservative, the Israeli army just kept on doing what they had been doing, until something shocking happened and allowed everyone to reassess.The final part of the book is Friedman's post-Pumpkin civilian life, and his bold quest to go see the Pumpkin again. I was struck by the way in which Friedman described the process by which shared suffering can forge lasting bonds among soldiers, and by extension the rest of your nation. Given how small Israel really is, this process is much more intense than it possibly could be in a larger nation like the United States.Using his Canadian passport, Friedman traveled into Lebanon. He saw the country, posing as a tourist to deflect suspicion that he might have once served as an Israeli soldier. Since it hadn't really been that long, Friedman couldn't meet his former enemies openly, the way Hal Moore met Nguyen Huu An.Nonetheless, Friedman still manages to humanize his former [or maybe current] enemies. Which is not to say that he uncritically accepts what they might say about him or his adopted country, but rather he just presents them as they are, which is what he tried to do for himself and Israel. I think he does a reasonably good job.I would have liked more maps though.

[gregdehler · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a very enjoyable, fun, quick, and informative read. Although non-fiction, it has the layout and suspense of a well-told story. If you want an insight into the politics of the Middle East, military history, terrorism or just want to read a well-written book, Matti Friedman’s Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Story of a Forgotten War, a memoir of the author's experiences in Lebanon in late 1990s, is for you. The first thing one might wonder is what does a pumpkin have to do with the solder's walking on the cover? Pumpkin was a fortified outpost in the Israeli northern security perimeter inside southern Lebanon. As part of a string of bases with horticultural names – Pepper is an adjacent outpost – their purpose was to protect settlements in northern Israel from attacks launched from across the border. Instead of attacking civilians, the logic of the security zone went, Hezbollah would be forced attack fortified, trained, and armed Israeli soldiers who could kill the terrorists. Flower was the code word for combat fatalities.Friedman divides Pumpkinflowers into four sections. In the first, he recounts the story of Avi, a soldier who arrived at the pumpkin in 1994 and served there prior to Friedman. Avi and his comrades were young men, with an average age of twenty, and trained for a traditional war, like the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli Wars, with mass formations of armor and infantry. They were totally untrained and psychologically unprepared for the asymmetrical guerilla insurgency that faced them in almost daily Hezbollah attacks on the Pumpkin.Nineteen ninety-seven was a turning point in the history of the Israeli presence in Lebanon. This is the subject of the second section of the book. Driven by an unusually high number of casualties, and several controversial events, a group of Israeli mothers questioned the purpose of the northern security zone. Why, they asked their government, are we still there? Coming in the wake of the mothers protest movement, the author arrived at the pumpkin in 1998 for his military term of service. Friedman's personal experiences from his arrival through to the abandonment of the security zone in 2000 comprise part three. Like Avi, Friedman and his comrades arrived young and green at the Pumpkin. He tells their stories, sharing a full range of experiences from the humorous to the tragic. Like all soldiers they were driven not to let each other down and bound together by a shared, unique experience that only they understood. While the soldiers at the Pumpkin believed that they were doing the best thing for the nation, their countrymen seemed no longer to appreciate it. By-and-large Israelis believed that if they placated Hezbollah and withdrew from the fortified positions in Lebanon, that they would satisfy the enemy and bring peace and stability to the region. They dismissed Hezbollah's outrageous calls to eliminate Israel from the map as nothing more than a hyperbolic negotiating ploy. They were wrong. In the fourth section, Friedman describes the post-Pumpkin world, both in terms of his personal life and as a turning point in the Middle East. Just as Americans were feeling the shock of 9/11, suicide bombings rocked Israel. Activated as a reservist for stints in 2001 and 2002, Freidman returned briefly to Lebanon. This was a new Middle East, but not the one that wishful Israelis had hoped for when the security zone was abandoned. Instead, widespread insurgency, religious war, and terrorism against "soft" civilian target ushered in the twenty-first century. The Pumpkin in this last section of the book haunts Friedman. It is not just his personal transition from front line combat to civilian life; it is how the destruction of the Pumpkin served as a powerful metaphor for the destruction of the very idea that there would ever be peace in the Middle East. He made the dangerous decision to return to Lebanon as a tourist to see the Pumpkin and the war he fought from the vantage point of his adversaries. Travelling on a Canadian passport, Friedman made a10,000 mile journey, to see the ruins of the Pumpkin. To me, this was the most interesting part of the book.

[dallenbaugh_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This memoir was at first told simply as one man's story of his time in the Israeli army as a defender of a small hill in Lebanon called the "pumpkin". Slowly the narrator reveals the true significance of this small piece of land behind enemy lines to himself and his comrades who were under continuous fire, but also to Israel and finally as the beginning of a new kind of war in the Middle East. This is a war where there are no winners or losers but only continuing local skirmishes (IED's, etc) with each side firmly entrenched in their hatred of the "others" and each separate attack leading to more hatred and more revenge. It brought to mind the American"Hatfield and McCoy" feud but in the amplified arena of the Middle East. The writer skillfully weaves the different story lines into a compelling story of hatred and suffering but also of goodness and compassion which occurs on both sides of the conflict.

[hermit_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This author’s memoir shares his experiences while a soldier in the IDF during the Israeli-Lebanon conflict. He focuses on his time on the Lebanon border on a base called ‘The Pumpkin Outpost.” We learn about the men in the author’s unit who were all mainly teenagers of whom some did not survive this tour of duty. The author once he finished his military service went undercover into Hezbollah controlled territory. With his experience he writes his insights into the Israeli perspective on Lebanon and its political ramifications.

[thewanderingjew_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is the story of an unknown part of the Israeli/Lebanese conflict. Young men were sent to a remote place called Pumpkin Hill, in order to protect the border between Lebanon and Israel; the conflict cost many lives on both sides over several decades. It also possibly changed the course of history in the Middle East. The book is written in such a way, with an almost casual relating of events, as a reporter would relate them, so that the import of the message is sometimes lost in the fog of the war, but the dedication, loyalty and the sacrifices of the Israeli soldiers is not. In Israel, the injured soldiers are called flowers and the dead are referred to as oleander. The twelve outposts overlooking and securing the Israeli/Lebanese border also had colorful names. The hill was used as a media tool by Hezbollah. In 1994, they staged a surprise attack on this tiny outpost and filmed it in such a way that Hezbollah could use it for propaganda purposes to recruit soldiers into their ranks. Although the Israelis were afraid, so too were the attackers, who were not filmed running away. The media was complicit in creating their story. It turns out that the media may be the best weapon anyone can use. The Lebanese conflict may have spawned the suicide bombers and rise of Hezbollah. The Israeli show of force and presence on the border may have inspired further rebellion. The reader will have to judge for themselves exactly what the catalysts are for the expanding Middle East conflict. For sure, the events on that hill inspired the Four Mother’s Movement which finally brought the occupation to an end. With the election of President Barak, Israel pulled out of Lebanon, in 2000.What happened on Pumpkin Hill, beginning in 1994 and continuing until 2000, is not recorded for public consumption, but the circumstances surrounding the holding of the hill made the Israelis rethink the efficacy of the Lebanese military operation. Matti Friedman participated in the protection of that hill. These are his thoughts and memories coupled with the testimony of others who were witnesses and willing /or unwilling participants. The hill remained with him, even after the outposts were destroyed. In 2002, he made a trip into Lebanon, concealing his Israeli identity, and revisited the places there that were visible from his watch post on Pumpkin Hill, the places they joked about someday visiting as tourists when peace would come. Now, a decade and a half later, peace has not come as hoped, but he has recorded the story of Pumpkin Hill and its effect on the soldiers who held it, on the Israelis and the Lebanese, the Christians and the Muslims, in essence, on all involved. He has recorded his impression of his clandestine trip back to Lebanon. Was the effort to hold that hill and that border worthwhile? Is it indeed necessary for Israel to take all of the defensive actions it has taken and will continue to take, perhaps, in order to survive?When the Israelis evacuated their outposts, the South Lebanese Army faded into the background or joined forces with their former enemies; they had no other choice. The world watched the rise of Hezbollah and the suicide attacks on Israel. Will this simply be the way of life in Israel forever? Will they be able to simply go about their daily lives as if the attacks are just a normal part of their lives, as if life is simply portable, one day here, one day not here. If they do, it will not be apathy, but rather it will be a determination to survive, an indication of their strength and fortitude in the face of constant turmoil, living in a place that wants only to reject them and erase their country from the pages of history in much the same way Pumpkin Hill has been wiped from the pages of Israeli history. I had mixed feelings reading the book. At first I was horrified, thinking that perhaps Israel had instigated the Middle Eastern conflict by their reactions, criticized in all quarters at all times. After all, both sides suffered the loss of life. One side treasured and tried to protect them, though, while the other side sacrificed them in their cause. As I read, I thought, no, this conflict continues because the enemies of Israel refuse to accept its existence as a Jewish state, to accept its historic place there, to acknowledge its holy sites. Whatever the reason for the conflict initially, its perpetuation lies in those facts. Israel usually retaliates to protect itself; the survival of the country is and has always been the prime mover and motive of its leaders. As a Jew, I hope it continues to be. Long live Israel. I pray for a short lived existence of the sponsors of its enemies. I am not too hopeful, but, I too, am determined that it remain a viable democracy in the cradle of civilization. It is up to history to judge the events in the Middle East. Hindsight seems to always be the clearest perception of events.At the end, the first words of the song “What’s It All About Alfie?” kept playing in my head. “What’s it all about Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live?I gave the book five stars because it is an honest appraisal of both sides of the issue, the loss of future men and women and the pain left behind by their absence. It humanizes the soldiers, their families and the country, and grounds them all in reality. They were, after all, just boys being told what to do, but they were expected to act like men! They were the country’s human treasure. They persist and prevail still.

[wickabod · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Whenever a fine new piece of war writing arrives — whether fiction, history, or memoir — there are the inevitable comparisons to Tim O’Brien, Michael Herr, Robert Stone, and so on. That’s fine, and sometimes the comparisons are even appropriate.But Matti Friedman’s striking memoir PUMPKINFLOWERS defies comparisons to other great war stories. The subtitle of his book (named for a small Israeli outpost in southern Lebanon) is “A Soldier’s Story of a Forgotten War.” And that subtitle says a lot. Little has been written about the Israeli combat experience in Lebanon, but that’s not the only thing that makes Friedman’s book unique. There’s something about his offbeat storytelling style and his wry, unflinching tone. He has a voice and a story that are truly his alone.“Jonah’s crew would head out of the outpost most nights on an enterprise known as an Artichoke ambush, so named because you were supposed to use the tank’s night sight, the Artichoke, to spot guerrillas and then kill them with the cannon from afar. It was hard to imagine bad things happening during an activity named for an artichoke, but they did with some regularity, sometimes to our enemies and sometimes to us.”This is a special book — authentic and honest. It is by turns harrowing and funny; reflective and irreverent; intensely personal and eerily disconnected. We see Friedman’s war in all its absurdity, loneliness, and terror. And we also see the unique bonds that men in combat form with each other.Friedman had me in the palm of his hand from the very first page, and his unrelenting story never let up.This is an essential book. More than a memoir of his own combat experience, it’s also a history of Israel’s involvement in Lebanon. Through the divisiveness of that conflict, we see reflections of Israeli society more broadly, with all its tensions. And maybe most importantly, this story of a small, forgotten war has much to tell us about events in the Middle East for the past two decades, including America’s ill-fated entanglements in that region.Strongly recommended.(Thank you to Algonquin for a complimentary copy in exchange for an impartial review.)

[jake.lang58 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book! It shows all the turmoil and war in the middle east from a perspective that many in America haven't considered. It's well written and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys war stories and learning about motivations behind conflicts.

[romonko · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book has made the 2016 RBC Taylor Prize shortlist. The Charles Taylor prize honours Canadian literary non-fiction authors. The full title of this book is called "Pumpkinflowers: a Soldier's Story of a Forgotten War". Matti Friedman writes of his personal experience of the often forgotten Israeli-Lebanese War. From the late 70’s until the end of the 20 century, Israel occupied Lebanon. This book tells about Matti Friedman’s first-hand experience of this occupation and his part in defending a small hill in Lebanon called The Pumpkin. Matti Friedman is an Israeli-Canadian journalist who was born in Canada, and then made aliyah (the immigration of Jews from other countries to the Land of Israel). As part of this pilgrimage he was conscripted to serve in the Israeli army when he was a young man of 20. This book is about Matti’s experiences in this war on this hill. Matti delves into the history of the defence of this hill in his story as well. In a way it is a coming-of-age story about a young man who was forced to grow up on this hill in Lebanon called The Pumpkin. You may ask, “Where does the title come from if it is about a war in Lebanon?” Well, on The Pumpkin, casualties were referred to as “flowers” . This is a story of war and its everlasting effects on the people who fight in them. And is a story of the birth of a new era in the Middle East. The world has seen a totally different war in the 21 century. It is a war that is not confined to a field, or a hill or on the sea. It is a war that is fought on the streets and in the schools, churches and government buildings of countries all over the world. In this book we see the rise of the Hezbollah and what that group and others like it have done to change the Middle East. Friedman’s prose is stark and unrelenting. His story about himself and his fellow soldiers on The Pumpkin is one that will not be forgotten by anyone who reads his book.

[emed0s · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This one is a nice, really nice, welcome change of pace from all the Iraq and Afghanistan books that have come out in the last 10/15 years in regards to ... well, to pretty much everything. It is also very different from the big picture stuff that studies the 6 days and Yom Kippur wars.So what is that you can find in this book and not in the aforementioned ones. Well, for starters this is a book narrating events from the 90s, and the author excels at giving plenty of pop culture references to that decade, be ready to revisit, or discover, some Backstreet Boys and The Cranberries songs. The book also explores and reflects on the dynamics of a conscripted army, which to boot has a really young officer corps. So there's plenty of what are the motivations of a conscript, a conscript of a "besieged" country, a conscript that may have been born in Israel or far away, a conscript that may or may not be a Jew.Also this is not memoir, it would be more apt to describe this book as "the tale of a COP" or stretching it as "the tale of the last days of the security zone" (that being the security zone inside Lebanon that the Israeli armed forces used to police). And to tell that tale the author includes his own experiences in the zone as a chapter, but also he has interviewed plenty of other veterans and civilians involved in the story which made up the other chapters.The book scores extra points for being written in a way in which each death comes as, not a surprise but, a shock. There's plenty of war books out there that when recounting the events make pretty clear what is coming and who is going to die, not this one, in this one even when you know that someone is going to die the final moment comes a shock.If you were born in the late 70s or early 80s the constant reflections of the author about how much time has passed since the events narrated will probably resonate with you. Finally, my only complaint is with the English used by the writer as it shows that he is more used to express himself in Hebrew ... but it more than makes up for it with his sense of humor ... "After rotating out of the line and boarding a civilian bus home a girl soldier would sometimes slip in next to me—a clerk or instructor coming from one of the safe bases inside Israel where such olive-drab unicorns roamed free,..."

[lpmejia · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Despite its constant presence in the news media, much of the conflict in the Middle East remains confusing and misunderstood by many Americans. Matti Friedman's Pumpkinflowers sheds light on one of those stories, that of the conflict between Lebanese Hezbollah forces and Israel. Centering around an Israeli outpost built on a hill called "The Pumpkin," Friedman's book chronicles not only his own experiences, but those of another soldier, Avi, who's diary recounts his own time on the hill. As with the best military memoirs, Friedman strikes a good balance between memoir and analysis, between conflict and the efforts to end that conflict. A good read for anyone interested in current Middle Eastern politics or combat stories.

[ryven-7 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

THE SUBJECT:"Readiness with Dawn." "Let's Get Through This." These are but some of the quotes that frame Friedman's four-part account of the Israeli-Lebanese Conflict. Act One relates the story of Avi, a soldier serving at a remote Israeli outpost christened the Pumpkin. The second act narrates the efforts of the mothers of war and their fight to bring the bloody conflict to an end, with Acts Three and Four culminating in the personal memories of the author and his friends during and after their time at the Pumpkin.THE SCRIBE:Author of the award-winning The Aleppo Codex, Matti Friedman is a correspondent for the Associated press, whose writings have appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. In his former life Friedman served in the Israeli Army, and this is his story--the story of the modern soldier.THE STYLE:Friedman infuses his story with the learned and earned truths he found at the Pumpkin and marries this knowledge to the truths soldiers everywhere have learned from war: "During the last weeks of training the members of Avi's platoon discovered a common language and each found his own place in their tiny social world. This sometimes happens in a small unit, if you're lucky. Friendship in a platoon is created under great pressure and is difficult to explain to those who have not experienced it themselves; armies plan it this way, knowing the strength of this bond is what will keep men together and functioning in the lawless netherworld of war and, when the time comes, cause them to commit the unreasonable act of following each other not away from enemy fire but into it.THE SUBSTANCE:Pumpkinflowers is showered with an abundance of vignettes that personalize this story better than most memoirs: "If something happened on the hill, he would use the single phone line at the outpost to call home. He would say only, 'Everything's okay.' That would mean that everything is not okay but [he] was, and the family would know he was alive by the time anything was reported on the radio a few hours later. In those years the radio announcers in Israel would report 'heavy exchanges of fire' in Lebanon, and that was a code--it meant soldiers were dead but this couldn't be reported yet because their families hadn't been informed. Everyone understood, and if you had a son in Lebanon you had a few difficult hours before things became clear, after which either things went back to normal or life as you knew it ended."THE SPECIFICS:"When I went back to the Pumpkin in the fall of 2002 I thought it was a conclusion--an end to that war, and to the disquiet it left me and the others it touched. But I sensed then, and know now, that I was wrong. It wasn't a conclusion. On the hill we had been at the start of something: of a new era in which conflict surges, shifts, or fades but doesn't end, in which the most you can hope for is not peace, or the arrival of a better age, but only to remain safe as long as possible."THE SCOOP:This first-hand account relates the stories and memories of soldiers and society in a modern military conflict by an expert hand. Friedman, with pithy statements and poignant strokes, elegantly captures the changing yet changeless experiences of war.

[ozzer_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Today, war is not limited to the battlefield. Non-combatants are fair game. There are no clear winners or losers. Conflicts have unclear origins and seem unending. Public opinion plays a major role while military superiority offers few tactical advantages. How did all of this evolve? Obviously the answer to this question is complex. Using a small hilltop bunker in southern Lebanon during a “forgotten” period between two more conventional conflicts, Matti Friedman gives us a glimpse of how the new warfare first appeared in Israel and foreshadowed what has become more commonplace worldwide.Israel’s tactic of establishing security zones in Lebanon designed to protect the homeland from attacks lead instead to less security and a loss of public confidence. Friedman gives voice to this common skepticism. “When they [Hezbollah] wanted to strike Israel they simply fired rockets from deeper in Lebanon, outside the [security] zone…. Were we just protecting ourselves?” Young men were dying, no end was in sight and Hezbollah was becoming more effective with guerilla tactics. At home, most Israelis were becoming “allergic to ideology, thinkers of small practical thoughts, livers of life between bombardments.” The Pumpkin was just one hilltop six miles inside Lebanon manned by young men who were becoming deeply skeptical of their mission. Yet, because they were patriots, they served with courage, often becoming casualties or “flowers” to use the military’s euphemistic code word. Freidman captures the soldier’s experience in his remarkable four-part memoir. He begins before his time on the Pumpkin in the latter part of the 90’s. He uses the diary of Avi Ofner, a young recruit who dies in a tragic helicopter accident to capture the feeling. Avi was intelligent and rebellious, a combination that the military considered to be dangerous to the mission—think Yosarian in Joseph Heller’s “Catch 22” or the doctors in the MASH film and TV series. The second part follows the civilian backlash against the security zones that followed the deadly helicopter crash. In part three, Freidman tells of his own experiences on the Pumpkin in 1998. This is the most effective section of the book because it is a first-hand account of the conditions, which were not unlike those that existed in the trenches during WWI. The final section is rare in military memoirs because Freidman recounts his journey to southern Lebanon as a Canadian tourist following the abandonment of the hilltop bunkers by the Israeli army. He learns to appreciate the humanity of his former enemies, but becomes pessimistic about the prospects for peace because of their admiration for Hezbollah and virulent anti-Semitism. One should not be surprised, however, that the abandoned and destroyed Pumpkin had lost its significance. “Atop the western embankment a Hezbollah flag flew at last, but it was just a ragged scrap of fabric that had once been yellow. For a time this hill was worth our lives, but even the enemy seemed to know that now it was worth nothing at all.”

[ltietz-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It’s difficult to read about war; hard to imagine the fear and uncertainty. Matti Friedman’s account of the late 1990s conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story is heartbreaking as well as compelling. The author is thoughtful, brave, and insightful, and raises complex and poignant questions that the reader will want to ponder for quite some time. I recommend this book for anyone interested in Middle East geopolitics or an unflinching look at the nature and reality of war.

[nmarti-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a challenge for me, what with the graphic descriptions of the toll that war and conflict take on people and communities. It is indeed an "unflinching look at" war. But, this history and memoir is a beautifully written account by an Israeli soldier stationed in Lebanon a few miles from the border of Israel during a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in the late 1990s. The reader is taken into the outpost and experiences sheer terror, compassion, loyalty to country and cause along with the young soldiers. The writer takes us through the questioning of the purpose of this conflict and describes a movement of mothers of soldiers protesting and demanding an end to the conflict, a scenario that is played over and again across time. The writer's look-back in the form of a visit to the site years later offers insight and commentary with a journalist's eye. I will read more by the journalist and author.

[catscritch · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Reading how these young men faced their fears while dealing with often deadly calm interludes was breathtaking. Friedman jots out short chapters that could be letters to home. It’s unimaginable to consider what tedium and terror they encountered, but hearing it from someone that was there makes it all the more heartbreaking. His tranquil demeanor belies the severity of a man who “believed peace was the default and conflict the anomaly.” He takes you step-by-fearful step into this forgotten moment in time with absolutely no self-pity, anger or ptsd. If he can do that, how many others are living and never getting beyond the reach of absolute dread and joy of survival? What a talent!An advanced copy of this book was provided for an honest review.

[exploreacademy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was a bit unexpected. I did not know what I was going to be getting into. The main character outlines what happens at a military fort and how it changes his life and those of others but still is seemingly insignificant upon his return as a tourist. I would recommend to those interested in the military, but it was a little too confusing to me.

[pranamama5 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Raw and at times difficult to process due to it's graphic nature. The truth Friedman brings forth, while illuminating, lays bare the reality and futility of war creating images that do not fade.

[elliot1822 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Matti Friedman went from Canada to Israel and his journey in life took him into the military of Israel. Later his path took him and other young men to a hilltop in a very small, unnamed war in the late 1990s. Israel as well as the United States Militaries had lost their ways in defeating their enemies. The hill, in Lebanon, was called the Pumpkin; flowers was the military code word for “casualties.” Author Matti Friedman vividly brings to the reader the frustrating and nerve racking experience of a band of young soldiersas well as our authorwho were charged with holding this remote outpost. This task that changed these and other young men forever and showed the world the conflicts the United States would soon confront in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other hot spots in our world.This powerful story brings to the reader today’s chaotic Middle East and the rise of a newer type of war in which there is never a clear victor especially with older static types of fighting them. Up in your face and mind and wonderfully written Pumpkinflowers will take its place among classic war stories. It is an straightf and in your face look at the way we conduct war today.

[cammykitty · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I finished reading Pumpkin Flowers about warfare between Isreal and Palestine in the 80s and 90s. The first section follows a soldier before the author's time, sort of a troop biography. Then it switches to history, the Four Mothers Movement that lead to... not peace... but a ceasing of activity in the de-militarized zone. Then it turns to a memoir about the author's time in the action - hard to call it a war but it certainly wasn't peace. Not a cold war, but a room temperature war? Then he sneaks into Palestine to see warfare from the other perspective, using his Canadian birth as a alter identity. This section is what makes this book stand out among war memoirs. Ultimately, the book leaves you with a muddled, hopeless and incredibly sad feeling.

[gpaisley_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Matti Friedman is a veteran of the Israeli army in the late 1990s who spent part of his service time at an outpost in southern Lebanon code-named “pumpkin.” In his book he describes some of the events that he experienced in his time there as well as his return to the abandoned outpost after the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

While the book contains several interesting stories, none of them on their own are particularly compelling or insightful. Along the course of the book he underscores how Israel’s decision to be in Lebanon was illogical and how the increasing costs of the semi-occupation finally outweighed any argument or justification for being there.

The most compelling part of the story was his return to the destroyed remains of the outpost several years after the withdrawal. In this portion, he describes well the slightly surreal experience of approaching the site from the Lebanese side (using his Canadian passport). This was the unique perspective that really brought the story together—to look at a place of war, now abandoned, its legacy and history still up for debate.

Perhaps it is this net ambivalence and lack of a clear victory or loss that ultimately raises the question best—was the cost worth it?

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book with the expectation I would provide an honest review.

[jsim160 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When I selected this book from the early review list, the title through me off and was not sure what to expect, now it all makes sense. The subject matter intrigued me as I was interested to hear about this conflict from the point of view of an actual participant. Although the history lesson was unexpected I did find it informative and it flowed well with the story. One cannot help but relate the perspective of individuals at the front and those of a nation as a whole and how they seem to resonate with those of recent armed conflicts from Vietnam to Afghanistan.

[vicki_weisfeld · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

During the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon in the late 1980s and 1990s, the army gave its outposts botanical names, which led to an otherwise undistinguished hill’s being called “Pumpkin.” In military radio traffic, a dead soldier was an “oleander” and an injured soldier merely a “flower,” species undefined. Pumpkinflowers, then, refers not to a bucolic late-summer farm field, but rather to the soldiers physically and sometimes mentally wounded by service in a hostile land, where their presence became increasingly indefensible. Matti Friedman tells the stories of these young men and their challenges feelingly and at close hand, as he was one of them.Friedman is a journalist born in Canada, who lamented the lack of writing about that occupation and its impact on the young Israeli men who served there, most of them fresh out of high school. So he set about telling their story himself, believing today’s Middle East situation had some of its seeds in this unnamed and largely ignored security zone conflict.Initially, as so often happens in military history, the generals were fighting the last war. They thought the enemy comprised somewhat ragtag Palestinian guerrillas, but before long, the occupiers faced local Shiites, who called themselves the Party of God, Hezbollah. This group was generously funded by Iran and Syria and able to call on a seemingly endless supply of would-be suicide bombers. Hezbollah also soon seized the lead in the propaganda war. That the TV images were the real weapons, that the Hezbollah fighters and Israeli soldiers had been turned into actors in an attack staged for the camera—these weren’t things anyone understood yet. . . . Within a few years elements of the security zone war would, in turn, appear elsewhere and become familiar . . . : Muslim guerrillas operating in a failed and chaotic state; small clashes in which the key actor is not the general but the lieutenant or private; the use of a democracy’s sensitivities, public opinion, and free press as weapons against it. Hezbollah was not interested in a negotiated withdrawal of Israeli troops or achievement of some limited goal: “It is a vision and an approach, not only a military reaction,” one of its leaders has written. Subsequent actions continue to demonstrate this larger view, which suggests limits on a strictly military response. Through discussion of the Four Mothers movement, which supported withdrawal from Lebanon, Friedman explores the political conflict between the leftists of the dwindling kibbutz movement who in the 1990s believed in compromise and thought peace was possible and the rightists who believed peace was a dangerous illusion and who currently dominate Israeli politics. The last section of the book describes Friedman’s return to Lebanon (using his Canadian passport) and his rediscovery of the remains of the Pumpkin, a place as tangible to him today, in its continued importance, as it ever was when he served there.Not a long book at 225 pages, it’s insightful and well written, condensing both human interest and political analysis into the story of a single lost outpost. Author Lucette Lagnado says Friedman’s prose “manages to be lyrical, graceful, and deeply evocative even when tackling the harshest subjects imaginable,” and I certainly found it so.

[tripichick · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

For a war memoir, this was excellent. One felt for the young man. However, I don't like reading about war, so I didn't find it engrossing.(I received this book from the publisher as a LibraryThing Early Reviewer.

[tnilsson_24 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Matti Friedman’s book, “Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story”, deserves to join the ranks of the best war memoirs. But though it deserves to join those ranks, I think it will still stand apart, for several reasons.First, and foremost, Mr. Friedman’s book will stand apart because it deals with Israel’s Lebanon War. No, that’s not quite right. The first Lebanon War was in 1982; the second was in 2006. Mr. Friedman’s book deals with the period between those wars when the Israel Defense Forces and Lebanese Christian militias fought Hezbollah and other Lebanese Muslim guerrillas within a security zone established by Israel in South Lebanon. Though that period, which lacks a name and wasn’t technically a war, spanned 15 years, Mr. Friedman’s book covers two periods in the 1990s, one concerning the experiences of a soldier named Avi, and one concerning Mr. Friedman’s own, later, experiences in the same conflict.This period of the conflict was odd in many senses, not the least of which is the fact that there weren’t many real battles as our world thinks of them. The conflict seems to have consisted solely of small skirmishes, with soldiers in sight of their bases, and regular missile attacks on them while at their bases. Which doesn’t mean that the people involved didn’t risk their lives, show bravery, and die for their country; they did, on both sides. A fair number of them, in fact. But it means it was a quieter war than what is considered “normal” for wars. With far fewer deaths, but also with far less certainty as to the purpose and meaning behind those deaths. It was, in many ways, a precursor to the wars that have happened ever since in the Middle East, training for both the good guys and the bad guys in a new modern style of war to which we have all become too quickly accustomed.Mr. Friedman’s book will also stand apart because of his voice. He has a calm and restrained voice, not dispassionate and not uncaring, but unusually thoughtful, even-tempered, and fair. Though he and his friends suffered through the war while in their late teens, he doesn’t seem to hate his war’s enemy. And he realizes that the decision as to who lived and who died on his side often depended as much on what task or which base to which someone was assigned, which truck or helicopter they chose to board, or how they moved, as it did on the actions of the enemy. And he realized that who died on the other side could very easily be a matter of mistaken identity.Mr. Friedman periodically references and quotes the poets of the First World War, and his voice is similar in many ways. If I had to pick one word to summarize Mr. Friedman’s book, I think I’d be hard pressed to decide between “insightful” and “poignant.” It is overall a quiet book, with insightful reflection, and only moments of terror and action. But that seems to be how war is, most of the time: a great deal of time to think, punctuated by terror. It didn’t take me long to read Mr. Friedman’s book, but I suspect it will stay with me a long time.

[lpg3d · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Story of a Forgotten War tells the story of a now forgotten outpost on a now forgotten hill during a now forgotten war through the lives, battles, and deaths of the men who fought to protect a small outpost in southern Lebanon. This is a very thought-provoking book on the nature of wars, and in particular, those wars that go unnoticed by the outside world while soldiers fight and die for reasons that are not always clear to them, or to their countrymen. Matti Friedman writes incredibly well about his experiences, and the experiences of soldiers before him. He is deft at describing the introspection that many young soldiers go through wondering why they are there, and what purpose they ultimately serve. He also does a great job of explaining the conflict to those of us unfamiliar with the reasons why Israel created a "security zone" in southern Lebanon. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Middle East, as it does provide a perspective that I think most Americans (in particular) are unfamiliar with.(I received this book from the publisher as a LibraryThing Early Reviewer.)

[hotwolfie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm thrilled that I won this as an Early Review Copy through LibraryThings. I loved the narrative of this so much. It was really well written. I liked reading about what his life was like in the service, and then when he returned to Lebanon. The title of this book was also interesting. You'll find out what I'm talking when you read it yourself. Overall, I thought this was a great read, and I actually recommended it to several people.