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Desert Storm soldier shares firsthand anguish of war

Sunday, March 23, 2003

By Bob Hoover, Post-Gazette Book Editor

Without our current interest in Iraq, this memoir of an infantry marine who saw action in Operation Desert Storm in 1991 might have passed by quickly on its way to the crowded shelves of war reminiscences.

	"Jarhead" By Anthony Swofford Scribner ($24)

The way things are now, Anthony Swofford is the soldier of the hour, bringing us a message that, though centuries old, needs to stay fresh in our minds as American soldiers face combat:

"The warrior becomes the hero and the society celebrates the death and destruction of war, two things the warrior never celebrates. The warrior celebrates the fact of having survived. ...That large and complex emotional mess called national victory holds no sway for the warrior. It is necessary to remind civilians of this fact, to make them hear the voice of the warrior."

Equally important to note is Swofford's compassion for his vanquished foe, the hapless Iraqi fighters who died in untold numbers.

Coming upon a truck convoy destroyed by U.S. bombs, Swofford stares at the charred corpses:

"I want to ask the dead men their names and identification numbers and tell them this will soon end. They must have questions for me. But the distance between the living and dead is too immense to breach. I could bend at the waist, close my eyes and try to join these men in their tight dead circle, but I am not yet one of them. I must not close my eyes."

These are not original insights, but with our short American memory and the thin press coverage of the last Gulf war, Swofford's writing seems vital, almost original.

The problem with his first book, grabbed by one of those literary agents who circle around the Iowa Writers Workshop that Swofford attended, is that it's not original enough.

Swofford tells the timeless stories of a son competing with his father and of young men in groups, the sweaty, testosterone-fueled head-butting of guys.

With echoes of Pat Conroy and Tobias Wolff, he recounts his rebellion against his disciplinarian father, an Air Force veteran who boozed and cheated on his wife. Swofford fled his disintegrating family for the Marines when he was old enough to join without his parents' consent. Despite his anger, which included the classic physical confrontation, his father drove him to the induction center as a way of saying goodbye and maybe expressing his love.

Marine training, with its drill instructors, psychological and physical punishment, bouts of drinking, fighting and whoring, is given its full due here and, after a while, becomes predictable.

Swofford's compatriots are the usual suspects of wackos, illiterates, bullies and frauds. In fact, lying seems to be a full-time occupation for many soldiers, including the author's brother, an Army veteran.

Women are naturally another preoccupation for the troops, who view them with equal parts of loathing and lust.

The author's own relationship with an impressive stream of willing young things seems largely physical and fleeting. His most intimate emotional moments come with his fellow Jarheads, another typical phenomenon of soldiering.

All of this goes with the territory, Swofford seems to conclude, but it's not enough to rationalize his unhappy life with the cliche that "war is hell." There's got to be more there.

The best memoirs are journeys of self-discovery, but he is far from his destination. With flashes of strong narrative writing and believable dialogue, he's off to a good start, though, and he leaves us with this thought:

"Some wars are unavoidable and need well to be fought, but this doesn't erase warfare's waste. Sorry, we must say to the mothers whose sons will die horribly, This will never end. Sorry."