Read in February 2004
Submitted by slipkid71 on Tue, 02/10/2004 - 13:31
Tags:
- Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles, by Anthony Swofford : Anthony Swofford's memoir about his years as a Marine sniper who eventually gets shipped out to Saudi Arabia in preparation for Operation Desert Storm is a brutally unflinching, eye-opening account of the madness surrounding war, and a howling indictment of the Marine Corps itself. The Marine Corps represent a milleu of ideals; honor, loyalty, bravery. What Swofford tells you is that the Marine Corps recruiters don't ever mention the thousands of ex-Marines desperately trying to reacclimate themselves back into society once their time in the Corps is over. Swofford should know because he's one of them. Using an uncanny knack for storytelling, Swofford skims through the usual and ubiquitous details of boot camp (complete with psycho drill sergeant), and focuses on the bitter humdrum of everyday life as a Marine, once he's been designated as a sniper, stationed overseas with little to look forward to except heavy drinking and getting laid with the local prostitutes. We meet a motley assortment of other young men pursuing a half-baked dream of becoming and being a Marine, most of whom have little or no prospects of life outside the Corps. Swofford makes no apologies for his part of the dream; the son of an Air Force captain, Swofford fell in love with the color and pagentry of the Marine Corps. It becomes painfully evident that, despite his desire, Swofford is too smart and too sensitive to subjugate himself fully into the grueling, punishing scheme of Marine Corps life; he's usually never seen without a book, some of the titles being The Iliad, The Stranger, and Rememberances of Things Past, which make him the object of ridicule. Pretty soon Swofford and his regiment are shipped out to Saudi Arabia for the inevitable conflict against the Iraqi Army. The buildup to war is a painful study of absolute boredom compounded with the all-too-real notion that a soldier's life may inevitably lead to death, despite all their training and bravado. It is Swofford's images of the mayhem and carnage of a very short war (and a war nonetheless, Swofford will have you know) that serves as the indictment against war, against recruiting and training horribly impressionable men to kill and sending them off to battle to fend for themselves, and then expect them to become average citizens once the war is over.
