In 2004 the National Endowment of the Arts developed Operation Homecoming, an initiative to help U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan write their firsthand accounts of war. Through a variety of cinematic techniques, this film re-imagines 11 selections from the anthology. Animation, recreation, and montage accompany dramatic readings of the accounts and are interspersed by further interviews with several of the authors and other writers from U.S. wars. As the individual narratives, letters, poetry, and memoirs unfold, all moving and highly literary accomplishments, the film reveals complicated layers of the human costs of war.  ST