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Product Description
Mark Bowden, author of BLACK HAWK DOWN
MARTIN AMIS
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Customer Reviews
It is full of the black opinionated humour that to an outsider portrays the foot soldier cannon fodder as people who are simple disfunctional, sexist delinquents! They are not, they just don't live in a regular nine to five environment and have their own idea of what humour is and where it can be found - that's anywhere!
Swofford has allowed the reader a look at the grim world that appears to be full of extremes but between the lines lies the comradarie, where out world politics are nothing to the buddies who you know are prepared to lay down their lives for you - and you them.
I was co-located with the Marines and heard the story of the infidelity video and what happened to some of the camels, and Marines who went crazy from heat and boredom. Friendly fire (Blue on Blue in soldier talk) happened to everyone, only civilians get really upset. Swofford reminds me of Nerve & Biological tablets taken (or not), the sound of artillery and bombs, and the alerts to incoming threats. Also the loneliness and the waiting.
Reading Jarhead should bring some understanding to the view that nothing is ever clear until the dust settles. This book is a must for anyone who would like a serious view of what makes the modern US war veteran tick.
Swofford was a 19 year old sniper when he went to the Gulf. He spent months training and fighting ennui and boredom before the war started. He relays this with a precise eye, as any sniper would I suppose, and is both annoyed by and deeply affectionate towards his colleagues, many of whom come across as slightly deranged. There is much anxiety about relationships, both familial and amourous. He explains how his fathers military service made him feel compelled to join the military himself, to as he puts it" Prove both my manhood and the masculinity of the line".
Swofford has had a difficult family life. His brother died young, his sister was institutionalised after numerous suicide attempts, his father returned from Vietnam a harsh disciplinarian and eventually his parents divorced. There is a lot of pain in this book but no self pity.
The account of the actual fighting is surprisingly short but then so was the war. In fact it was hardly a war at all but a protracted massacre. Swoffords account of a friendly fire incident proves that despite their training and colossal military might you can't beat the Americans for A grade cock ups.
Swofford didn't actually kill anyone during the Gulf war and for that he is glad. He makes the occasional scathing comment about the politics behind the war but mostly he is just concerned with the effect it had on those around him, the enemy and of course himself. If this book is anything to go by he came out of it very well for this is a riveting and at times poetic memoir of the madness that was Desert Storm.
However, if the reader does manage to see past the "broad shoulders and big mouths" impression that the general theme of the book suggests, the reader will be rewarded with some very compassionate, moving and expansive writing.
Refreshingly, Swofford wasn't born to kill; he joined the Marine Corps to take his place in his dysfunctional family's military history, by his intense need for acceptance into the family clan of manhood, but he feels that he doesn't fit in.
Unlike the war in Vietnam, the first Gulf war was fought at a distance, with Anthony Swofford not firing a shot in anger from his sniping rifle, although he wishes he had "as a true Marine must kill". The long American air attack put pay to that - when Swofford and his fellow ground troops advanced across the sand dunes they came across Iraqi soldiers either dead or surrendering.
Some failures of the American war machine are highlighted to; inadequate and uncamoflagued NBC suits, a particularly harrowing friendly fire incident and troops being given 3 times more anti nerve agent pills to take than they actually needed.
The overriding lasting impression of this book for me is that within the most inhumane and hostile and testosterone filled environment that is both modern war and US Marine Corps, Anthony Swofford has shed a light of humanity.
I like this book and I like this writer.
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