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This excerpt was written by Dr. Jin Brown, retired Professor of Communication at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Dr. Brown used the piece to teach narrative, social construction of identity, and human science writing to students not typically drawn to fiction.

The following are quotes from Dr, Brown explaining how and why he used this piece as one of his teaching tools:

"What was important to me was to show my students how a piece that looks so un-academic at first blush can function as human science. I have them read some really moving material (Ellis and Bochner's short piece about their decision to have an abortion; Carol Ronai's piece about stripping to put herself through graduate school, and the like). These are pieces that have, for lack of a better descriptor, "impact." Emotional impact is how human beings learn and if one has no access to a broad range of human emotion, there is no education that can move them toward human science. I was not only a teacher, but my students got the full course of human science evangelism! We typically had 10 to 12 grad students in a cohort and even most of the hard science students ended up doing qualitative research after having had my classes. While I got some ribbing about the intellectual evangelism, I was pleased to turn out so many graduates with an understanding of the full range of science...that is, not only could read and understand it, but could do it as easily as crunch numbers. Try telling fresh undergraduates, especially out of BAs and BSs in Natural Sciences or Physical Sciences, that any qualitative science is as or more useful than number crunching and see how deep, thick, and reticent they can be. Then two years later they write 100 - 200 pages of beautiful, well written, human science that makes any reader feel the human experience. You can really get into the difference you can make in them individually and in the world they will go touch."

"Anyone who reads literature knows that we learn about the human condition by reading poetry, stories, etc. And in the case here (Leeches), how do you explain war to twenty-somethings, men and women, who have no concept. If there is value in teaching them, then how do you do it? This is where literature and science blur. There needs to be no story (storyline/plot), only the understanding of the experience. Where social science is specifically intended to have a goal of explanation (erklaren), human science is intended to have the goal of understanding (verstehen). What I did with Leeches was to subtract from the original the impact of each action line. The story, understood from the point of view I gave it, IS the senselessness, no plot, everyday, mundane, quotidian, death for no reason, hellishness of the experience. Not the PTSD as result, but the PTSD in the making. The piece "works" for the purpose I had in pulling it out of "The Second Tour." Most people think that there is some capital "T" truth that fiction is not. But human beings become their stories. There are no Truths, only truths. Indians win = massacre/ cowboys win = battle. Same fight. The important matter is to understand that "facts" even in hard science are social constructions. Look at how the "LAWS" of physics have changed over the centuries. What is different is better means of observation. When you accept that, you can see that REALLY observing human experience is much more likely to produce something useful than careful experiments in a lab in carefully controlled conditions. That something useful is understanding. Explanation is seldom useful, but understanding can change lives. The leeches only give a vaguely tangible coherence to the senselessness. Human beings grab whatever they can so life can be somehow manageable under those (or even most) conditions. Being able to understand that in human terms (in three pages) is a very valuable thing (If getting thousands of our children killed for no apparent reason is worth understanding at the experiential level). And the association of leeches and the Corps (senseless blood) is a fact in the very first paragraph rather than a conclusion because it is not intended as an indictment. Just an aspect of facticity to the experience."

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