Military News, News From Iraq & Afghanistan - Military Times

Army tells soldier to end blog from Iraq

RENO, Nev. — The month before his Iraq deployment, Matt Gallagher started a blog.

Called “Kaboom: A Soldier’s War Blog,” his postings ranged from mission details to immortality and what would be included on a war soundtrack. To protect his identity and location, he went by the pseudonym “LT G” (for lieutenant), dubbed his platoon the Gravediggers and served in a place he called “Anu al-Verona.”

Gallagher, a Reno native, announced June 27 that he had been ordered to stop posting to “Kaboom” because of his May 28 post: “The Only Difference Between Suicide and Martyrdom is Press Coverage.”

The post, which detailed Gallagher turning down a promotion so he could stay with his platoon, wasn’t approved by his commander before he published it on the blog.

“It’s totally on me, as it was too much unfiltered truth,” he wrote in his final post. “I’m a soldier first, and orders are orders. So it is.”

He asked his readers, which numbered in the hundreds, to think of and pray for his men.

“Thank you for caring. Agree or disagree with the war, if you’re reading this, you are engaged and aware. As long as that is still occurring in a free society, there is something worth the fighting for.”

Since then, Annie Boisselle, Gallagher’s fiancée known as “City Girl,” has registered Kaboom in her name and begun posting to it to keep readers up-to-date on what’s going on with the Gravediggers. Gallagher has been promoted to captain.

Boisselle said she knows Gallagher, who has eight months left in his deployment, still feels honored to be serving.

“He wants people to know that this is the choice he’s made,” said Boisselle, 22. “I hear it in his voice. Despite what he’s said about the Army, he’s proud of his men and his decision to join.”

His family remembers what led him to do what he said “someone else’s sons and daughters” do.

“But don’t tell me ‘I’m sorry,’ or gasp an ‘oh dear!’ when you see me home on leave visiting my family, and you hear that I’m now in the Army,” Gallagher wrote in his first entry. “Save your condescending prattle for yourselves. I chose not to indulge. I escaped for a reason.

“This is my world now.”

When Gallagher was 4, his family moved into a southwest Reno house. He attended the Brookfield School, where his teachers had an influence on his passion for learning and writing, said Deborah Gallagher, Matt’s mother identified as “Momma G” in his blog.

Gallagher and his younger brother, Luke, attended Manogue High School, where he participated in track and field and cross country and became editor of the school newspaper.

After graduation in 2001, Deborah Gallagher said, Matt Gallagher found it too expensive to go away to college.

“Leave it to Matt, though,” she said with a smile. “He went out and researched scholarships for the schools he was interested in. Soon enough, he found the Army ROTC scholarship to Wake Forest University.”

He majored in history, joined Theta Chi fraternity and worked for the student newspaper as sports editor.

He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army the day before he graduated in 2005.

The new lieutenant underwent basic officer training in Kentucky, then was stationed in Hawaii, where he spent 18 months living with five other lieutenants in a house near Waikiki Beach in Honolulu.

While in Hawaii, Gallagher received orders for deployment to Iraq in December 2007. That’s when he decided to start the blog.

“From the air, and under a blanket of midnight darkness masking the various destructions of war, the countryside of Iraq offered an odd sense of tranquility,” he wrote in an entry about his first impressions of Iraq. “With the scattered lights of various townships all dotting a high desert landscape, I couldn’t help but think of rural Nevada. The steady crooning of the chopper’s blades quickly snapped me back to reality, though. Eighty pounds worth of Army equipment on my back ensured I stayed there.”

Gallagher’s father, Dennis, said the blog was his way to communicate with his son.

“I could get inside his head, share his experiences with him,” Dennis Gallagher said. “Some of his postings were more humorous and some were more serious. I always felt nervous when I would read his blog, but it was something that I felt I could share with him.”

Deborah Gallagher agreed.

“He’s like any other young man, you know,” she said. “He doesn’t call or write nearly as often as he should, so this lets me keep up with him.”

Dennis Gallagher said he missed the blog when it was closed. He still checks it every day out of habit.

“I know he’s still writing even if he’s not posting,” he said. “For Matt, the blog was his therapy. He could process his thoughts by writing them down.”

Gallagher is scheduled to leave Iraq in March and be discharged from the Army in May. He said he would go to New York City, where Boisselle lives.

Boisselle said Gallagher plans to become a writer. While his first few pieces of work will center on the military, she said he has ideas with a focus on fiction.

“He wants to be like Ernest Hemingway,” she said.

His blog readers hope for as much.

“Praying for you and your men,” one person wrote on Gallagher’s last post. “God bless and Godspeed. You’re a talented writer, LT. Do more of it when you can.”