Military

DATE=3/17/03

TYPE=English Feature

NUMBER=7-37285

TITLE=Jarhead: A Marine Sniper's Story (Part 2 of 2)

BYLINE=Adam Phillips

TELEPHONE=212-264-2148

DATELINE=New York

EDITOR=Faith Lapidus

CONTENT=

(ATTN: AMERICANA)

INTRO: In diplomatic and political circles throughout the world, there is anxious debate about whether to wage war against Iraq, and exactly when an American-led invasion might begin. But one thing is certain. The soldiers who are preparing to fight that war will have their own hard won perspective on the confrontation.

Anthony Swofford [swAH ford] views the situation from a first-hand perspective. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August of 1991, Mr. Swofford was fresh out of Marine boot camp and sniper school. Soon, along with his twenty four platoon mates and tens of thousands of American military personnel, he was sent to the Saudi Arabian desert to train for the ground war that would begin the following February.

Mr. Swofford has just a published an intimate memoir of this experience. It's called "Jarhead: a Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles." "Jarhead" refers to the distinctive look of the Marine Corps haircut, which is shaved at the sides and fuller on top.

Anthony Swofford told VOA's Adam Phillips what someone would have found under the lid of his "jar" if it could have been unscrewed on the eve of Operation Desert Storm (the 1991 Gulf War).

AS: Fear, elation, confusion, isolation. Also a great amount of camaraderie and spirit. The intelligence said we were going to fight and it was going to be a big fight. I accepted that I was probably going to die. And I was hoping that I would die rather than say lose a leg or lose an arm or something like that.

AP: What kind of interaction or atmosphere follows from a shared awareness of your possible death together?

AS: There was a kind of quiet that descended on us when there was that group realization that we were going to go off and maybe die. I'm talking about the hours before we were going to go across the border. Whereas generally there was no quiet. There was rowdiness and talking trash and just having fun like young guys. You know, playing cards and fights and wrestling and calling each other names and insulting each other's mother and sister. And that's part of the cohesiveness of the unit is that kind of, from the outside view, that dysfunction.

If someone were to view my platoon for a week, they would have thought 'oh, these guys are all crazy, they hate each other.' But no. We loved each other. That was just how we expressed our love. We were young, we were twenty years old, we were in a new community, something we had never known before, and that is how we forced ourselves together.

AP: I was interested by how kind of on their sleeves [overt] Marines' emotions can be.

AS: At least in my platoon they were. Marines are young vulnerable men, in the end. The picture that Marines Corps puts out to the public is really fighting brawling guys. But I think when you come down to the unit, men share their fears and fantasies and dreams with each other. Because they have to, to be human. That's an attempt to be human within a fairly dehumanizing world.

AP: What was your experience actually seeing the carnage of the war?

AS: The carnage was especially troubling. We had to march about twenty miles because the trucks of course didn't arrive, Because when you're a 'grunt,' the trucks never arrive! At some point we stopped for chow and I walked over a rise to take a piss and I came upon what had been an encampment of Iraqis that had been bombed and there were some personnel carriers and jeeps and there were corpses everywhere in various stages of decay.

And I had just mixed up some cocoa and pears for my MRE ["Meals Ready to Eat"]. That was in my mouth and as I gained the rise and got a whiff of the corpses, I retched into my mouth. Then I went down and sat down in this circle of dead men. I wanted to communicate with them. I knew, as I say in the book, that the distance between the living and the dead was too immense to breach but I wanted to know how they died.

AP: You wrote that if the jarheads -- or 'grunts' as you call them [that is] people a bit lower to the ground than the politicians were running the war, it would be a different war. Is that bluster, or do you really believe it would be a better war?

AS: I don't know if there would be better wars. As I say, men are animals and men are smart and they want to live and not die. So if they were simply fighting, the men on either side who must fight deciding whether or not to fight, they would probably put their arms down. Because the desire to live is much much more powerful than the desire to kill and that would rule [prevail].

AP: . Because you sort of hear a lot how people want to put their own life on the line in order to achieve some sort of national objective or honor or that kind of thing. Or is that not really true in your experience?

AS: No, it's not true. That's propaganda. That's hot air. And the interviews we see with these young people who are deployed and they say that I am putting my life on the line for my country and they want to, they really believe that. But they've been kind of forced to believe that in a way. They've been kind of put in a box. That box is history, military history, pride, dissociation between military and the civilians. And also control.

The guys they put on ABC news are at the top of the company. They are not the loose cannons. They are not the guys who are troubled, who are emotionally working the nuanced spaces in the gray between 'let's go fight' and 'let's not.'

[OPT]

AP: The second Gulf war is either imminent or happening. What would you actually say to a Marine now in your position?

AS: I would tell them not to worry and not to listen to the bluster or rhetoric and just train as hard as he can and just focus on what is now unfortunately your mission. And you will care about the Marines that you are with and be careful. [END OPT]

HOST: Anthony Swofford is the author "Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles," which recounts his experience as a Marine infantry sniper and scout during the Gulf War of 1991 and 1992. He was interviewed at his hotel in New York by Adam Phillips.