Customer Reviews

Jarhead : A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles

5 star:		(121)
4 star:		(93)
3 star:		(44)
2 star:		(52)
1 star:		(117)

 

 

I served in the other Scout/Sniper platoon that was part of Task Force Grizzly, STA 3/7. Later I joined STA 2/7 for a brief time and got to know Cpl. Swofford as much as anyone could whose sole purpose at that point was liberty on the beaches of southern California.

I bought this book as soon as I heard about it and finished the last page seven hours later. It brought back so many feelings and memories that I couldn't have written it any better. Swofford captured the paradox of war as well as any book I'd ever read. Not many Marines talk about their love/hate relationship with the Corps outside of our circle and he related this sentiment remarkably well. His analysis of the difference between combat marines and the rest of the Corps sounded like recent phone calls between me and my buddies.

If you want to know what war is REALLY about, the day to day uncertainty, fear, boredom, glee, hate, love, and insanity, the BS of politics, incompitant brass leadership, then this book is for you. This isn't some rah rah book written by some REMF pogue either. Patriotism may get you to the front but your buddies will keep you alive so you can make it back home.
W.Scott Albertson

Wow, surprised at all the emotion here. I didn't think this many people read books like this.

Couple of bullet points after reading the book and the reviews.

1. Swofford really downplays the honor of being a marine sniper. I was a line company machinegunner in 2/5 and all of the snipers I knew were a cut above. Not only that but if someone was deemed immature they would be dropped back to their line company platoon, no matter how well they did in sniper school.

2. I agree that the book is rife with innacuracies, exaggerations and downright lies. Then again, it is a memoir, not a history book.

3. The story about the guy watching a videotape from home that shows his wife having sex with another guy is the biggest urban legend in the Corps. Second-place going to the oft-repeated Mr. Rogers was a sniper story.

4. I am not wanting to sound like a tough guy but I don't know once person who pissed their pants in combat or talked about being afraid. By the time you've gone through boot camp, SOI a work-up for deployment and a trip to Oki, you're going to be ready to eat nails, if for no other reason than that all of the hard and miserable training has made you mean.

Pissing your pants in boot camp is very common because of all the forced hydration and few chances to use the bathroom.

5. His whining is actually pretty common, especially in the grunts. I know I'm guilty of it. What is uncommon is his lack of sense of humor. The funniest people I met were in the Marines. if you don't have a sense of humor, you won't be able to laugh off all of the bad things that happen to you.

6. Raunchy tales of whoring and drinking are 100% accurate.

7. His story about pulling a rifle on another Marine is probably false. Marines like to screw around and bend the rules but he went way past the line. No one I knew would have put up with that and not reported it.

8. His lack of aggressiveness is pretty shocking. When he talks about his buddies moaning that they are going to die before any mission is hard to beleive. The Marines I fought beside were all raring to go. If you've spent three years training to do something, you want to do it no matter how dangerous it was.

9. The infidelity of Marine wives and girlfriends is sadly true. then again, I can count on one hand the guys I knew who stayed faithful when we went to Oki.

10. The love/hate of the Marine Corps is a very tense subject for all Marines. When he talked about being embarrassed by other Marines while out in town, I was right there with him. I avoided Marines like the plague whenever I was on libbo. I started counting the days until I got out when I still had a year left, but I am more proud of being a Marine than anything else. It's a very strange life, being a Marine.

I was in the Seventh Marines like the author. I was in Kilo Company, 3/7 (3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment for those not in the know), some five years before the events experienced by Mr. Swofford. I also knew some of the guys in our own Battalion's STA platoon. While I don't know anything of their indoctrination, their training regiment or what else, it seemed to me like they spent a lot of time on working parties or just plain skating their way through their enlistments.

Gulf War memoirs are beginning to pour forth from publishers. I wonder about the timing sometimes, but it wouldn't surprise me that Swofford's slim volume is the best of the lot. Like James Webb's classic "Fields of Fire" Swofford catches the lingo of Marines perfectly, but he also discusses the ups and the many downs of being one of the Few and the Proud (sometimes I felt like pride had little to anything to do with my own enlistment). I don't necessarily agree with whomever wrote the dust jacket in comparing this book to Caputo's "A Rumor of War" or "The Things They Carried," by Tim O'Brien. "A Rumor of War" is still probably the best Vietnam memoir out there, and Caputo's experiences are as far from Mr. Swofford's as they get. Tim O'Brien's book is a work of fiction, something "Jarhead" is not. If they tried to compare it to say, "If I Die in a Combat Zone," I feel that would have been more appropriate.

Swofford's book entails his peacetime experience as well as the Gulf War. He shows how his fellow Marines wage war on each other long before the Iraqis intrude. The deployment ("Desert Shield") is a long and monotonous one, and despite some brief but terrifying moments, 2/7 STA platoon's war is frustratingly short. These men have spent years readying themselves for this moment and the war ends before they really experience it. The end feeling is one of curiosity and frustration. Swofford is wonderful in describing the almost Dantesque Kuwaiti landscape that is littered with shattered Iraqi Army vehicles, and dead Iraqi soldiers.

I found myself seeing my own experience in reading Swofford's chronicle. It's well written, humorous (the deepest most black sense of humor pervades this narrative) and moves briskly. In the tradition of other Marine memoirists like William Manchester and Lewis B. Puller Jr., Swofford seems to be highly ambivalent about his service. No doubt he, like the others previously mentioned (as well as myself) could tear the Corps a new one up and down, for their pettiness, for their abuses, for their ridiculous obssession with small details, but to hear an outsider try to do the same thing only invites annoyance and scorn.

Jarhead is a good read. I hope Mr. Swofford's novel will deliver more on the excellent promise his memoir affords us.

Semper Fi, Mr. Swofford...

Anthony Swoffords's memoir, Jarhead, is a no holds barred, unblemished, and unvarnished picture of what the Marine Corps is really like. If you're looking for a made for TV or Hollywood version of the Marines or the Persian Gulf War, don't read this book. Swofford's story is up front and accurate. After reading Jarhead you may understand the Marines a little better. Behind the spit shined shoes, polished brass, and crisp uniforms is an organization that is demanding and unyielding....an organization that is difficult to undertand by many insiders. The brutality the Marines face everyday among their own is part of the experience. And Mr. Swofford captures it perfectly.

Even with some of the Corps blemishes exposed, I wouldn't take anything for my experience with the Marines. At 54 I recognize that they gave me the tools to carve out a successful life. And I'm not the only one that would make that comment.

Anthony Swoffords descriptions of life in and around a battlefield is some of the best descriptive prose I've read. The hellish descriptions of burning oil wells, tanks, personnel carriers will make you feel gritty........If you're a former Marine or a combat veteran you'll want to read this book. You'll recognize the truth of it.

Semper Fi

So there seems to be a trend among the reviews here to slam Anthony Swofford's book because he didn't actually do much in the war (at least by the standards of most combat veterans). Much of this criticism comes from former Marines who may very well have a legitimate claim to say that Swofford's story is not "typical" of their experiences.

But the thing that makes me feel this book is worth the read (even if you disagree with Swofford's assessments) is the fact that Swofford doesn't hide behind the bravura and "ooh rah" of most combat veterans. In truth, he is very much in the same league as Sam Watkins of "Co. Aytch" fame (whose book I am reading as well), he is honest about what he saw and felt and experienced (or failed to experience).

Swofford's story is more about the buildup to the war rather than the war itself (which, if you recall the history, was limited compared to the prolonged conflicts in Vietnam and the Second World War). He is one of the first to be sent overseas, and in the long delay between deployment and combat action he and his squadmates experience boredom, anger, frustration, fear, and inner conflict. That they do so without the permission from on high to speak about it (as Swofford recounts towards the beginning, when some reporters come by to get the "official" story).

Swofford's actual war record is thin. He doesn't kill any enemy conbatents. And that is the crux of his story (something that a lot of the negative reviews miss entirely): all that buildup, and his frustrating lack of actual combat kills comes back to haunt him at first. But at the end, he sees that the order to kill would've changed him forever, changed him into someone that he's not sure he would have wanted to be.

"Jarhead" is, at best, one man's recounting of his life up to and including a war that changed him forever, but left little impact on the world at large. Well, scratch that; as I write this, American troops are trapped in a political war overseas that many of them would not have to be if the first time around had seen an end to Saddam (and an end to the plannings of the chicken-hawks in the current administration who put them there). The lessons of the Gulf War (as short as it was) have been lost on the new generation of soldiers and civilians. That is part of Swofford's book, the feeling that the world was not a better place for their sacrifices, and that it's worth remembering what they did to put the current situation in its proper context.

I have no doubt that, after my review goes up, a million more negative reviews will crop up, arguing that Swofford was a "whiner" and that he never actually did anything in the war, has disgraced the Corps, etc. And there may be something to that, if the negative reviewers are former military. But those who slam this book simply because it doesn't fall in line with their views, those that slam it without having served or known someone who did, those who argue against it even as they admit that they never read it, those are the reviews that will continue to flood this site and drive down the ratings for the book. But those of us who actually did read the book, we will come away with a better understanding of the ways one man remembers how he served.

Towards the end of the book, Swofford says that most of his comrades returned home with no desire to relieve their experiences, content to live on as if their world was not profoundly affected. The unexamined life is not one worth living, and at the very least Swofford will leave behind what he saw and what he did in the war. And he will do so honestly, without an ounce of the BS that passes for combat memoirs. And that is more than most of his critics will ever do.

So steer clear of the negative reviews and just read it for yourself. That's all any author can ask for.

What a timely read! Anthony Swofford revisits his days as a sniper in the Marine Corps, and takes us along with him from boot camp to Operation Desert Storm. The language he uses, and stories he tells may shock a naive reader, but to anyone looking for an up-close-and-personal from one who was there, this tale is awesome. If you want more of an in-depth interview than Ted Koppel interviewing some career army colonel who is all spit and polish, check out the message that Marine Lance Corporal Swofford sends home.

Swofford pulls no punches. He describes the physical brutality of boot camp, and the hardening of eager, young, lovelorn souls into battle-ready killers. Before being deployed to Saudi, his troop enjoys its final days Stateside watching Hollywood war movies meant to shock liberal, peace-loving Americans on two coasts. Instead, the young jarheads (haircuts high and tight!) eat it up, whooping and hollering to Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter and the sort. They "watch the same films and are excited by them, because the magic brutality of the film celebrates the terrible and despicable beauty of their fighting skills. Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man."

Once in the desert, one feels it. Swofford describes in detail what it is to live with sand in every crevice of one's body, to sweat all day in a useless chemical suit, to be assigned the task of disposing of the latrines. The importance of constant drilling, of staying sharp, of cleaning a gun countless times each day pay dividends...later they learn how poorly the Iraqi regulars maintained their weapons. But for the long stay of many months before battle the drudgery seems endless. The psychological impacts are many. The pain of separation from family and friends; of the desertion of girlfriends, wives and cheating lovers; of fear and uncertainty mounts exponentially. Swofford makes it abundantly clear how dangerous it is to take very impressionable young men, to hype them up into killing warriors, to deprive them of basic humanities, and isolate them in god-forsaken parts of the world for months on end. It's quite a recipe.

I laughed out loud at his story of the "Any Marine" letter writing. Swofford has a natural ability to drop the reader into a panoramic and colorful scene. You'll feel you're in his foxhole, endlessly shoveling the collapsing sand alongside him. The dialogue is rough and tough. And real. He isn't just any jarhead, he's the company "scribe". He's the guy reading Nietzsche and Homer. This is his Iliad. I recommend you read it now. It's a terrific companion reader to the talking heads cluttering your TV today.

It's not often that I read a book straight through but Anthony Swofford's "Jarhead" is riveting. Vulgar, disturbing and brutally honest, the book rings true on every page. It seems that Swofford held nothing back, describing how he wet his trousers while under artillery fire and contemplating suicide at one point. As a former Marine who served when America was fresh out of Vietnam and still licking its wounds, I can attest to the authenticity of the very rough culture that the author describes. I now know, however, how it was to suffer for seven months in the Desert, protecting an unappreciative host, the suspicion that their lives were on the line for "fat cats" and their oil (any names come to mind?) and the frustration of gearing up for a major offensive only to stand down after the ground war ended so quickly.

The author has given America a look into the lives of the lower caste grunts who have always, and probably always will, do the fighting and dying for our country, the people who don't have college, grad school and hefty salary offers as an option. We're treated to a raw and true-to-life glimpse of the lives of the boys who are on the cutting edge of our war machine...the under educated blokes from dead end towns and the inner city, the macho world of testosterone, youth and a good dose of USMC ingrained bravado.

Certain images Swofford describes are hard to forget...the desecration and photographing of burned Iraqi bodies, the first sergeant lecturing against the evidently common practice; the severe pummeling of a dead friend's belligerent peers, on the night of his funeral in his old hangout; the trysts of unfaithful wives, sneaking lovers (insult of all insults...Boots right out of training) into base housing at night while their men are stuck in the Desert, desperate to know what she's up to; the pitiful grasping for a relationship with any female back home, no matter how tenuous or imagined; the heart breaking, overly exalted status assigned to the first few letters addressed to "Any Marine" in the Desert; the loneliness and alientation experienced as an almost anonymous grunt in the Fleet Marine Force...epitomized when a Hawaiian friend he lifts weights with tells Swofford to stop being so friendly and smiling all the time. This is life in the real Marine Corps!

At times Swofford comes across as somewhat condescending in terms of his opinions of his fellow Marines. That's to be expected from an intelligent, observant and sensitve writer. He clearly was destined for better things and "Jarhead" attests to that. The images he evokes and the atmosphere he paints are lucid, gritty and eye opening. This isn't the dress blues of the recruiting posters but the sweat, hardship and sand-in-every-orifice life of the men on the front lines, chomping at the bit to get into action. "Leatherneck" magazine publishes articles on how it wants the world to view the Marines. "Jarhead" is how it really is out there in "the Fleet." I wouldn't recommend that mothers of prospective Marines read this book. Boys in high school, contemplating a trip to the recruiter, however, will learn much. If they're still willing after Swofford's story, the Corps may have a higher retention rate! How many guys do we know like Swofford's friend, telling war story lies in college, bragging about heroics that never happened?

Swofford's work has been compared to the Vietnam-era, anti-war work, "Dispatches" and James Webb's "Fields of Fire." I think it's more appropriate to elevate it to the same exalted staus that Eugene Sledge's classic, "With the Old Breed," holds...a must read for anyone interested in the true story of one who was there. Authentic and, as I said, brutally honest. Semper fi, Marine.

I've read something like 100 bad reviews on this book from active/former Marines. Most of these guys are picking on Swofford's details. All of them basically call him a 10%'er or outright liar. Too bad. I was not a 10%'er by any stretch of the imagination, or a liar. I served with both 3/7 and 2/7. I deployed to the same places, and humped the same gear as everyone else there. I even pissed my pants in Boot Camp, but under vastly different circumstances. I found that Swofford's book contains more truth than many of these former Marines will admit.

Swofford misses on some details, but then he freely admits that he had to reconstruct some of the technical aspects of his experience, so I can forgive most of that. He also bends the truth in some places, which can also be excused. I don't think anyone's biography is a glittering example of the truth put to print, and to read Jarhead with this expectation is a mistake. The cussing, foul, drunken undisciplined madness is certainly a large part of the USMC infantry. Go ahead and lie to yourself, but it's the truth. Particularly in the rear, and even worse on deployment.

Many of the Marines who gave bad reviews said, "never in my 'Corps!". Well, every honest Marine I served with would certainly tell you that the Marine Corps has changed over the years--and not always for the better. The Marines of today are not the same kinds of people that they were in the '40's, '50's or 60's, or any other decade. But the essence of the 'Corps has never changed. Infantry Marines have always, and always will be the toughest, best trained fighters there are. But they are also the greatest collection of misfits and oddballs you've ever seen or heard of. I saw and heard many of the things Swofford talks about. Some of that's not 'urban legend', but behaviors that repeated themselves throughout the 7th Marines.

The basic problem with Swofford's book is that it will not make you feel good to read it. The reason these other Marines hate this book is because it is trying to deal with a question that Marines have been struggling with forever and ever. How can you love something so much, and equally hate it at the same time?

No one's trying to take the 'Corps away from Marines that fought at Iwo Jima, or Chosin, or any one of the hundreds of other places soaked with jarhead blood. Swofford is not taking a crap on your honor or your diginity. I suspect he loved the 'corps every bit as much as anyone. He also, quite honestly, hated it.

I would recommend this book for one reason, and one reason only. It is about 85% honest, with about 20% BS to make it readable. That is about 100% more honesty than you'll get anywhere else. If Swofford was 100% honest, then no one would want to read it but him and maybe the handful of buddies he had in STA 2/7.

"Swofford's Tale of Woe", as it became known amongst the members and snipers of my Battalion's STA team, "Jarhead" is a story of a troubled young man thrust into a world for which he is ill-equipped with, more so than a chronicle of modern war. Problems arise with the multiple credibility issues that Swofford attempts to dance around with "what follows is neither true nor false but what I know". Admittedly, Swofford's use of language and context is remarkable with vivid scenes from a good storyteller. And there are observations that he makes to which I can relate as a former Marine myself. Which is why he has many experts of literature(including "BlackHawk Down's author, Mark Bowden, in his New York Times review) duped. And if you are attempting to understand the experience of combat and war, unfortunately, Swofford has you duped too.
Many parts of the book are suspect. Firstly, with the credibility of some of the stories and scenes he describes. Secondly, Swofford's experience is , as any Marine can tell, of the "bottom 10%". Unfortunately that leaves the reader shortchanged as to the authenticity of so many stories told.
Credibility. The author's reflection from an encounter with an officer "I considered masturbating on the Captain's desk, but instead I called him a faggot addict cumsucker bitchmaster..." is hardly believable. Trust me on this one. Ironically, he later states in his book, "I rarely disobey orders." Then, the author relates a story in his unit about a Marine's wife who sent him a video that turns out to be her having sex with other men. I entered the Marine Corps before Swofford's tale, and remember this very same story ...it is widely known as Marine folklore. Swofford later claims that enemy artillery rounds "land within fifteen feet of (our) fighting hole..." Again, I've seen incoming. Even if it were fifteen METERS, he'd be dead.
Bottom 10%. In every unit, there are always the ones who truly can't cope. On two occasions, to include boot camp, Swofford admits to pissing his pants. "I closed my eyes and pissed my pants as Drill Instructor Burke screamed in my ear...." Additionally he writes, "I would do my duty....honor my contractual obligation" only to say in the next paragraph that he "spent (his) first few days at Camp Pendleton...faking a stomach flu..." He also admits to stealing and that he "knew the ex-marine who ran the army/navy store would give me $300 for..." He then tells of placing a loaded M-16 to the head of another Marine and, on another occasion, on himself. While this MIGHT be true, it would be highly disturbing behavior rarely found in the Corps(says my own experience and of my enlisted Marines). Out of over 1,000 Marines in our Battalion, we had perhaps 2 that I can think of that would equal his inability to conduct himself in a mature and honorable manner, based upon the author's own admissions.
Lastly, although Swofford did experience war, barely one can say he experienced COMBAT. The closest thing he saw to a firefight was friendly rounds impacting near his vehicle and once with enemy incoming artillery. That is, if you believe those stories are true. Not once did he have a exchange of gunfire where he was directly fired upon, returned fire, then saw the bodies of the dead. He also didn't have the truly unfortunate experience of seeing dead civilians. We were fired upon and returned fire. We saw some Iraqis we killed. We saw dead civilians. We saw gory images of the dead and destroyed that will last in our memories. We saw combat. That death and destruction of combat brings great sadness to anyone with a soul, that war and combat is brutal and horrid...is hardly a new concept. So for Mr. Swofford to claim he can relate his experience as a classic memoir, not counting his credibility issues, is far from fair.

So the question begs.....Does it accurately portray, as universal themes that can be understood and related to by most readers, what it was like to experience the Corps, the Gulf War and combat in general? Truly Swofford's account of his experiences miss the mark. There is amazing prose and dramatic story-telling, but again this is hardly a classic memoir.

If you want to understand what it was like to be in combat, I highly recommend a powerful memoir, the classic "With the Old Breed" by E.B. Sledge. For a glimpse into the modern Marine Corps, wait for better books that are sure to emerge in the coming years.

I served as a combat medic in the Gulf War. What Swofford has written is exactly what I loved - and hated - about the Marine Corps and the Gulf War. He doesn't pull any punches. Much of the book revolves around becoming a Marine (not so much about boot camp, but the experiences that change a "boot" to a "salt") and the long (long ...) wait before the ground war began. This works well. It gives the reader a sense of what the "real" Marine Corps is like, and the concerns, troubles and issues many of the young men and women face everyday in the military. The profanity, pranks and hard living are all accurate, as are the worries, tears and sense of esprit de corps between platoon members. Neither a recruiting tool nor anti-war propoganda, Swofford simply and eloquently tells it like it is (and was in 1990 - 1991.)

His recollections of the ground war are similarly right on the mark. Since the actual assult to liberate Kuwait lasted only a few days, it makes sense that it should play a similarly minor role in the book. This, however, does not detract from the power of Swofford's words. In my opinion, it is among the best memoirs of war, and certainly the best account of the Gulf War I have read. I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to understand what the Gulf or the Marine Corps was like.