Soldiers' Songs

In 2005, Army Sgt. First Class John Freeman III's platoon was drawn into a firefight with local insurgents in Iraq's Al-Anbar province, killing twenty-three Iraqis and suffering one casualty. Afterward, Freeman was approached by the platoon's chaplain, who encouraged him to attend church services. "I explained to him that it's kind of hard for me to go to church," says Freeman, 37. "It's hard to forgive myself when, tomorrow, I'm going to go out and do the exact same thing." Instead, Freeman sat down and wrote a song, "Don't Try and Save Me": "It's going to take more than time to wash away the pain," he sings over reverb-heavy electric guitars. "The bloodstains on my soul could never, ever come clean."