SHADE IT BLACK: Death and After in Iraq [Hardcover]

Jessica Goodell (Author), John Hearn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2011

In 2008, CBS' Chief Foreign Correspondent, Lara Logan, candidly speculated about the human side of the war in Iraq: "Tell me the last time you saw the body of a dead American soldier. What does that look like? Who in America knows what that looks like? Because I know what that looks like, and I feel responsible for the fact that no one else does..." Logan's query raised some important yet ignored questions: How did the remains of American service men and women get from the dusty roads of Fallujah to the flag-covered coffins at Dover Air Force Base? And what does the gathering of those remains tell us about the nature of modern warfare and about ourselves? These questions are the focus of Jess Goodell's story, Shade it Black: Death and After in Iraq.

Jess enlisted in the Marines immediately after graduating from high school in 2001, and in 2004 she volunteered to serve in the Marine Corps' first officially declared Mortuary Affairs unit in Iraq. Her platoon was tasked with recovering and processing the remains of fallen soldiers.

With sensitivity and insight, Jess describes her job retrieving and examining the remains of fellow soldiers lost in combat in Iraq, and the psychological intricacy of coping with their fates, as well as her own. Death assumed many forms during the war, and the challenge of maintaining one's own humanity could be difficult. Responsible for diagramming the outlines of the fallen, if a part was missing she was instructed to "shade it black." This insightful memoir also describes the difficulties faced by these Marines when they transition from a life characterized by self-sacrifice to a civilian existence marked very often by self-absorption. In sharing with us the story of her own journey, Goodell also helps us to better understand how PTSD affects female veterans. With the assistance of John Hearn, she has written one of the most unique accounts of America's current wars overseas yet seen.

REVIEWS

"Shade It Black is a powerful, direct and honest account of one Marine's experiences in Iraq. It is a story of trauma and struggle, but also of integrity and ultimately growth. For me, the twin themes of trauma and posttraumatic growth in this book recalled Somerset Maugham's classic, The Razor's Edge."-- W. Keith Campbell, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of Georgia

"In this absorbing memoir, Iraq veteran Goodell recounts her service, the brutal, sexist culture of the Marine Corps, and her struggle to adapt to the world upon her return from Iraq. . . . Her memoir is a courageous settling of accounts, and a very good read." Publishers Weekly

"A searingly honest account of what it's like to be a female Marine at war working the grim job of collecting the remains of the dead. Jess Goodell, the Marine, and John Hearn, her co-writer, have written this book with beauty, strength and courage. Above all, the book makes us face the truth of how war destroys us, inside and out."-- Helen Benedict, author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq

"...Goodell's verbal images are visceral, as keen as you will find in contemporary combat non fiction. As a student of co author Hearn's in 2006, Goodell never said a word about Iraq or Mortuary Affairs. Fortunately reader, she is talking and writing." Military Times, August 1, 2011

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Casemate (May 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1612000010
• ISBN-13: 978-1612000015
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 0.9 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #347,584 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Last Full Measure of Devotion June 3, 2011

By R. N. Cable

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

In 2004, a year after "mission accomplished" in Iraq, 20 U.S. Marines volunteered for "the Corp's first officially declared Mortuary Affairs unit" at Camp Al-Taqaddum (formerly FOB Ridgeway), about 50 miles west of Baghdad. Their mission was to find, collect, document and prepare for return to their families back home, the dead bodies of fallen Marines and also dead Iraqis. "Our platoon was to the Marines what the Marines are to much of America," writes Lance Corporal Jessica Goodell. "We did things that had to be done but that no one wanted to know about." The mottoes of her MA unit, "No One Left Behind" and "Honor, Respect, Reverence," were spelled out with green sandbags on the roof of their sand-covered bunker; and those words, she convincingly writes, were "what we believed and what we lived."

The book's title comes from one of the duties of her MA platoon: to document any missing body parts of a dead Marine and to "Shade it black" on an outline form of the human body (shown on page 10). It suggests, as well, the psychological wounds of war for the author and fellow servicemen and women who return from war: post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), depression, rage, hypervigilance, social phobia, nightmares, sleeplessness, joblessness, homelessness, drug addiction, suicide.

The structure of the book makes it easy to read. Most of the 30 short chapters are prefaced with a photograph from Iraq and an apt quotation from then current news reports about the war, followed by a few pages that enlighten a particular aspect of the writer's experience: her home in Iraq at Camp TQ where she slept with "35 females in a tent designed for eight"; the severe hazing of overweight or underperforming Marines; second-class status and harassment, even rape, of female Marines (6% of the force) and how she protected herself from it; relations with Iraqis who worked at the base (under guard), who offered to share their food with Marines, or who came to claim remains of family members; the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) made from abandoned Iraqi artillery shells which cause "sixty percent of our injuries and up to eight percent of our deaths"; the bodies, body parts and "mounds of shapeless flessh that we scooped up with our hands"; the insufficient and incorrect war reporting to "a misinformed public, ill-advised political leaders"; lack of debriefing for warriors upon leaving Iraq; inadequate counseling for them upon return to the States; "a series of situations I did not want to be in" after return to civilian life in America. The author describes all of these briefly, bravely, believably in a readable and illuminating memoir.

Inspired perhaps by familiar words, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man should lay down his life for his friends," or Lincoln's tribute to "the last full measure of devotion," the author enlisted in the Marines in 2001 upon graduation from high school in western NY state. She sought and found and cherished that ideal through boot camp in California, diesel mechanic training in Missouri, jungle warfare training in Okinawa and real war in Iraq. She passed every test of body and mind, especially eight months of dangerous, gruesome, grueling, essential but stigmatized duty in her Mortuary Affairs Platoon in Iraq. It was stigmatized because "The smell of death permeated our clothes, hair, skin and fingers, and the remains permanently stained our uniforms."

That experience alone merits a book. But, discharged from the Marines and home again in 2005, the writer met a new set of problems. She began a cross-country odyssey from New York to Arizona to St. Louis to Seatle to Tucson to Jamestown NY to Boston to Buffalo, "trying to make sense of the chaos that my life had become." Chapters 20-30 describe her "slipping further away from the person I once was and the woman I thought I would become," but always fighting to cope and to heal by re-feminizing herself, re-connecting with people, traveling, working, drinking, medicating, counseling, reading, completing college degrees at Jamestown (NY) Community College and the University of Buffalo, meeting with Veterans for Peace of the Smedley D. Butler Brigade in Boston, finally entering a Ph.D. program in Counseling Psychology at U. Buffalo. "I messed up my own life, she declares, "And now I would straighten it out."

It takes exceptional strength and courage to endure the double traumas of war in Iraq and troubled recovery in the USA, then to re-live them both to write a book for the public's sake. It calls for reciprocal courage from us to read and accept this Marine's message about war--"No one should ever support the activities in which I had participated. No one should ever support the people who do such things."--and about America today--"The solidarity that makes life bearable, and the sacrifice that makes love true, no longer find fertile soil in the American culture--except within the Marine Corps, and then maybe only in time of war." But from her experience of "Death and After in Iraq" and her ordeal of post-war healing in America, Goodell finally concludes, "The close bonds and deep meaning that characterizes a Marine platoon can be created in the wider social world, even if not so easily in our own."

Woman warrior, care-giver, writer and counselor, Marine Lance Corporal Jessica Goodell has a five-star character and a five-star message. Read her story. "No One Left Behind." "Honor, Respect, Reverence." "Semper Fi." In peace, not war. Amen.

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A tough book to read June 7, 2011

By Robert A. Hall

Format:Hardcover

A friend sent me an autographed copy of "Shade it Black," which I read in a day. As a Marine Vietnam Veteran (of no particular distinction), I have to say that Jess Goodell is a better Marine than I am, because she bravely performed a duty I don't believe I could have done, working in Mortuary Affairs and dealing every day with the horrific dead of modern combat. That duty wounded her as deeply as any veteran who lost a limb, but it was a wound unseen and largely unacknowledged. I would not recommend this book to someone of fragile sensibilities.

PTSD is very real and very painful. Unfortunately, because it is not a visible wound, it is also possible to fake it, as detailed in the great book about phony Vietnam vets, "Stolen Valor," which I highly recommend. And agencies or providers in the money flow have no incentive to expose the fakes, which means they suck up resources needed by veterans like Goodell. Cash flow is probably why the CDC and the VA have such a different estimate of real PTSD among Vietnam veterans, and why so many groups raising money put out inflated phony claims of the suicide rate among Vietnam vets.

Having in the past sent several hundred dollars to a woman Marine I knew to escape from an abusive marriage (she paid back every penny), I was disappointed to read that Goodell's comrades offered her so little support after she left the Corps.

This book may also make you rethink the politically-correct idea that women can be injected into the macho male environment of combat without adverse conditions.

Thank you, Jess, for your service to our Corps, to your fellow Marines and to our Republic.

Semper Fidelis,

Robert A. Hall
Author: The Coming Collapse of the American Republic

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping! June 21, 2011

By Robert Byrd VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

I will not attempt to describe this book since other reviewers have done it quite effectively. I want to suggest that anyone interested in more direct contact with the author go to the npr "Fresh Air with Terri Gross" link at [...]. You will find an absolutely riveting interview of Jess Goodell, author of SHADE IT BLACK: DEATH AND AFTER IN IRAQ. While listening to the interview, I couldn't help but think this woman lost a part of her soul sorting through the remains and belongings of dead soldiers in Iraq. There was a flatness in her voice, a sadness in her demeanor, a terseness in her responses to Terri Gross' questions that made me worry about the state of her mental health. Sometimes writing a book as she did can be a cathartic experience - other times it can drive one's demons deeper into the soul. I hope she's healthier than she sounds. Listen to the interview and decide for yourself.