Sergeant's tale not usual newspaper fare

There was an unusual exhibition of journalism in last week's papers that stirred some readers, troubled others and puzzled a few.

The four-part series "The Promise" focused on the struggles of a National Guard sergeant trying to cope with the ghosts of a traumatic tour in Iraq that included the death of a 20-year-old enlisted man under his command. Written in a narrative style, the stories affected readers deeply.

"This is the most heartfelt and heart-wrenching story I have ever read," wrote a reader on The N&O's Web site. "Until we have walked a mile in their shoes, we have no idea what this war is doing, both physically and mentally."

Others weren't so pleased. "Some of these stories, offered by writers with little or no experience of matters they're writing about, end up being a sob story and they're accepted as gospel based on the word of the interviewees," said Elvin Strowd of Chapel Hill, a World War II vet. "I thought it was laid on a little bit too heavily. I do give her credit for being a good writer."

I thought the back story behind "The Promise" would be interesting to readers. Reporter Barb Barrett, based in Washington, worked on the project off and on for a year, repeatedly visiting Sgt. 1st Class Chad Stephens at his home in Ahoskie, following him and his platoon to training camp at Fort Bragg, attending a memorial weekend for their fallen comrade in Jacksonville, seeing the mother of the dead soldier at her home. She interviewed mental health experts, psychiatrists, National Guard officials and soldiers in Stephens' platoon. She also plowed through reams of government documents and mental health reports.

Her goal, she said, was to make readers more aware of the sacrifices endured by the limited number of Americans touched by the war. "If you don't have close friends or family in the military, I don't think people understand the sacrifices," Barrett said. "It's not just about people who have died or people coming back to Walter Reed with missing limbs."

Barrett came across Stephens when he was awarded the Silver Star, the Army's third-highest medal for valor. She went to Ahoskie and found not a storybook hero but a man tortured by his war memories, receiving minimal mental health care from the military. She and her editors decided to tell the story of returning warriors' mental health issues -- and the military's inadequate treatment services -- through Stephens' eyes.

"Rather than attempt to tell it from a macro point of view, if we have someone who really demonstrates exactly what we're looking at, better to tell the story through him and let him carry the weight of this broader, hard-to-understand issue," said Steve Riley, deputy managing editor.

Some readers were confused by the narrative format. The series read like a short novel told from the viewpoint of the sergeant, his family, the parents of the dead soldier and the platoon members he left behind. It included 2004 battle scenes re-created from memories of the troops who were there (and from a military battle report) and reconstructed dialogue of past conversations. (A sidebar each day made clear that the information was verified from multiple sources.)

"I loved the story on the front page of Sunday's paper," wrote Tara Alt of Cary. "However, it was really hard to read because some of the dialogue in the story was not quoted."

She's right, it was different. The main piece each day was a dramatic narrative that did use dialogue without quotes, not attributed in the usual way, as well as the internal thoughts of the main characters. The stories were accompanied by sidebars that employed a traditional journalism format to discuss the policy issues -- mental health services in the military, inadequate funding, services for families -- dramatized in the main narrative.