Jarhead by Anthony Swofford

I hardly know what to say about this book. It's real, but it shows a surreal version of reality. It's the kind of real "I was a grunt on the ground" kind of writing that militarists usually love, but also a very poetic and poignant look at what being a Marine is. Swofford is obviously not your typical jarhead. I've known a few, and they tend not to be the most intellectual of men. Not that they're not smart. But being smart and being invested in knowledge and learning are two different things, and it fundamentally colors the way people view the world. Swofford was evidently too intellectual for his own good. I can understand why he joined the military, because many of us do for much worse reasons than he did, but still, it seems like it was the wrong place for him. And yet that is a fortunate mistake for all us readers of the book (and later watchers of the movie), because it meant there was someone there who could write the story in a very personal way. A lot of memoirs come out of wars, but it's usually figures like Colin Powell and Norman Schwartzkopf who write them. You rarely get a grunts-eye view of the world.

On the one hand, this is a man's personal experience of being a Marine, but on the other hand it's the chronicle of the last traditional war America fought, our glorious triumph in the desert that erased some of the stigma of Vietnam. But like I said, it's a surreal reality. From a rain of oil in the desert to a game of football in 115 degree heat played in full NBC uniforms, you get to see firsthand the ridiculousness and the seriousness of the military. Swofford pulls no punches in his depiction of Marines and Marine life. For example, it is rather striking when he discusses getting r&r in the barracks the Saudis built to house foreign armies fighting on their soil. And when he's sitting in a circle of charred corpses, imagining what they might have said shortly before they died, it's difficult to glorify war. Justify it maybe, but glorify it not a bit. And yet his point was not that the soldiers are wrong or bad in some way, but that they are human. They were fine soldiers. STA was his unit, a semi-elite group of sniper-scouts. These were damn good soldiers and he talks about some of the training they ran through. Unlike the movie shows, they did go through some action, but they never did really fight.

You do get to hear quite a bit about the other soldiers in the book that you don't in the movie. They tend to be interesting people, although the guy who was portrayed as a jerk in the movie really was an idiot. But still worth hearing about. It made it all the more real.

I like the way Anthony Swofford writes. It's both easy to understand and artistic. The book isn't full of military jargon, and when he does use technical terms, he explains them first. I think any casual reader would understand what he's talking about just fine since it doesn't especially rely on prior knowledge of the military. Naturally having more knowledge of the first Gulf War will provide you with a deeper understanding of the events in the book, but it's not necessary just to comprehend what's going on.

Unlike the movie, the book follows Swofford after he leaves the Marines and before he publishes his book. I don't know if he was trying to make any kind of point at all, but it just seems like most of those men (teenagers, in some cases) were only in the Marines because they didn't know where else to go. And when they got out, they still didn't know. The question of identity is really the most basic issue raised by Swofford, but he has no answers. He almost sounds pessimistic about ever moving beyond that time in the desert, but it's more like resignation. Perhaps for him, writing the book was an effort to move past it, but he was also showing that it might not be possible. He discusses his father, a Vietnam war veteran, and it's pretty clear that some part of him was always stuck there. For Swofford it may be the same, and for all those other Marines who were there in that unreal reality.

If you don't like military books but you want to learn about soldiers and what they're like, this one might be for you. It's very well written and won't lose the average civilian. If you do like military books and you only want to hear about troop movements, deployments, weapon systems and the usual subjects of militaria, this one might not be for you. It's rather more focused on the human aspects of war. But I say that's what makes it a good book, so I recommend it.