HOW TO NOT TELL A WAR STORY is a collection of short stories about veterans who went to war but left without a war story to tell. Forty years after their experience, these veterans begin asking if there is something more to say about their military service. Among other things, they come to appreciate the lovers, friends, and family who helped them shape a new post-war identity.

" . . . when the courage of NFL star Tillman was referred to, or Jessica Lynch was rescued, they all found themselves thinking back to their long-ago tours. Did they have stories? Maybe memory had played tricks on them, obscuring what would come to light at last. Back then, they hadn't studied forms for the narration of danger, but now, more aware, could they reshape their experience for the new era? What, after all, about their friend, Butterball?"

Explore with Michael Lund the lives of these veterans who discover being in the service is not something to be edited out of a personal history, but an experience that stays in memory, not an ending but the beginning of a measure of peace, no matter how short the stint, or inglorious.