Anthony Swofford has good timing. His book Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles has come out while the country braces for what appears to be an imminent war with Iraq. And, while we wonder what a war with Iraq might look like a second time, it’s helpful to read an account of the first time around. Jarhead also serves as a reminder that Desert Storm was a war in which many fought and died, even if the conflict as a whole is often times dismissed for its brevity.
For many people, personal contact with and knowledge of the Marines begins and ends with those who join up after high school, and seemingly disappear. Swofford is not the type of person you would expect to be a Marine: he reads Camus, Homer, and Shakespeare; he is against the action in which he is deployed; he sympathizes with the Iraqis. At the same time, he’s a brash and loud young man caught up in the promiscuity of the Marines, where it doesn’t matter who you fuck or fight, just as long as you’re doing one or the other, and preferably both.
Swofford skillfully lays out his story so that battle comes nearly two thirds into the book, when the reader has become, like the soldiers, anxious for something to happen. And while the actual combat of Desert Storm was relatively quick, Swofford reminds us that minimal fighting was not what was expected when it began. He reminds us of the thousands of body bags sent to the gulf, the promise of chemical warfare, and the supposed eternal devotion of Saddam’s soldiers. By putting the action late in the book, he shows the reader what the country is painfully aware of right now: it’s a bitch to wait; the uncertainty is maddening.
Swofford is a sympathetic narrator, even when he’s saying or doing things you may disagree with. By the end of the book, you’re unsure what’s more disheartening: to think of Marines as mindless grunts doing what they’re told without giving it a second thought, or thinking of them as more Anthony Swoffords. M.WILLIAM HELFRICH