Swofford - Jarhead: a Marines Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles

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Copyright 2003 by Anthony Swofford

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Swofford, Anthony.

Jarhead: a Marines chronicle of the Gulf War and other battles/Anthony Swofford.

p. cm.

1. Persian Gulf War, 1991Personal narratives, American. 2. United States. Marine Corps. Marines, 7th. Battalion, 2nd. Surveillance and Target Acquisition Platoon. 3. Swofford, Anthony. I. Title.

DS79.74 .S96 2003

956.7044245dc21

2002030866

ISBN-10: 0-7432-5428-7

ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-5428-1

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This book is for

the U.S. Marines of Surveillance and Target Acquisition Platoon,

Second Battalion, Seventh Marines,

August 1990April 1991

and

in memory of my brother.

But if you want to go on fighting
go take some young chap, flaccid & a half-wit
to give him a bit of courage and some brains

EZRA POUND, Canto LXXII

I go to the basement and open my ruck. The basement is in Iowa, after a long, harsh winter, and deep in the ruck where I reach for my cammies, I still feel the cold of February. We were supposed to turn in our desert cammies, but I kept mine. Theyre ratty and bleached by sand and sun and blemished with the petroleum rain that fell from the oil-well fires in Kuwait. The cammies dont fit. While in the Marines, I exercised thirty hours a week. Since Ive been out, Ive exercised about thirty hours a year. The waist stops at my thighs. The blouse buttons, but barely. I pull out maps of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Patrol books. Pictures. Letters. My journal with its sparse entries. Coalition propaganda pamphlets. Brass bore punch for the M40A1 sniper rifle. A handful of .50-caliber projectiles. I think of what I must look like to the late-night walker peering through the basement windows: the movie clich, the mad old warrior going through his memorabilia, juicing up before he runs off and kills a few with precision fire. But, no, I am not mad. I am not well, but I am not mad. Im after something. Memory, yes. A reel. More than just time. Years pass. But more than just time. Ive been working toward thisIve opened the ruck and now I must open myself.

It wouldve been easy to sell my gear to a surplus store. After the war, when I spent most of my monthly pay in the bars in Palm Springs and Newport Beach, Las Vegas and Santa Monica, Id steal a case or two of MREs (meals ready to eat) from Supply each week, and on my way out of town for the weekend Id sell the meals for $80 per case in an army/navy store in San Bernardino. And occasionally Id steal more than meals. Or I wouldnt necessarily steal. Sometimes Id happen along a Sergeant Smiths ruck, and hed be nowhere near, and Id remember the saying Gear left adrift, must be a gift, and I knew that the ex-marine who ran the army/navy store would give me $300 for the sergeants misfortune.

So my ruck didnt have to be here, in my basement, six or seven moves and eight and a half years after my discharge. I couldve sold it for one outrageous bar tab or given it to Goodwill or thrown it awayor set it afire, as some jarheads did.

I open a map of southern Kuwait. Sand falls from between the folds.

As a lance corporal in a U.S. Marine Corps scout/sniper platoon, I saw more of the Gulf War than the average grunt. Still, my vision was blurredby wind and sand and distance, by false signals, poor communication, and bad coordinates, by stupidity and fear and ignorance, by valor and false pride. By the mirage.

Thus what follows is neither true nor false but what I know. I have forgotten most of the statistics and must look them up. I remember the weapons, though not their capabilities, so I must look those up as well. For the place names I refer to maps. For unit deployments and order of battle, I must consult published charts. I search through congressional reports and presidential statements at the Federal Depository Library. I remember most of the names and faces of my platoon mates. I remember the names and faces of some of their girlfriends and wives. I think I know who cheated and who stayed faithful. I remember who wrote letters and who drove their men mad with silence. I remember some of the lies and most of the questions. I remember the dreams and the naive wishes, the pathetic pleas and the trouser-pissing horror.

I remember some of the sand, but there was so much of it, I should be forgiven.

I remember about myself a loneliness and poverty of spirit; mental collapse; brief jovial moments after weeks of exhaustion; discomfiting bodily pain; constant ringing in my ears; sleeplessness and drunkenness and desperation; fits of rage and despondency; mutiny of the self; lovers to whom I lied; lovers who lied to me. I remember going in one end and coming out the other. I remember being told I must remember and then for many years forgetting.

On August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops drive east to Kuwait City and start killing soldiers and civilians and capturing gold-heavy palaces and expensive German sedansthough it is likely that the Iraqi atrocities are being exaggerated by Kuwaitis and Saudis and certain elements of the U.S. government, so as to gather more coalition support from the UN, the American people, and the international community generally.

Also on August 2, my platoonSTA (pronounced stay ), the Surveillance and Target Acquisition Platoon, scout/snipers, of the Second Battalion, Seventh Marinesis put on standby. Were currently stationed at Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base, in Californias Mojave Desert.

After hearing the news of imminent war in the Middle East, we march in a platoon formation to the base barber and get fresh high-and-tight haircuts. And no wonder we call ourselves jarheadsour heads look just like jars.

Then we send a few guys downtown to rent all of the war movies they can get their hands on. They also buy a hell of a lot of beer. For three days we sit in our rec room and drink all of the beer and watch all of those damn movies, and we yell Semper fi and we head-butt and beat the crap out of each other and we get off on the various visions of carnage and violence and deceit, the raping and killing and pillaging. We concentrate on the Vietnam films because its the most recent war, and the successes and failures of that war helped write our training manuals. We rewind and review famous scenes, such as Robert Duvall and his helicopter gunships during Apocalypse Now, and in the same film Martin Sheen floating up the fake Vietnamese Congo; we watch Willem Dafoe get shot by a friendly and left on the battlefield in Platoon; and we listen closely as Matthew Modine talks trash to a streetwalker in Full Metal Jacket. We watch again the ragged, tired, burnt-out fighters walking through the villes and the pretty native women smiling because if they dont smile, the fighters might kill their pigs or burn their cache of rice. We rewind the rape scenes when American soldiers return from the bush after killing many VC to sip cool beers in a thatch bar while whores sit on their laps for a song or two (a song from the fifties when America was still sweet) before they retire to rooms and fuck the whores sweetly. The American boys, brutal, young farm boys or tough city boys, sweetly fuck the whores. Yes, somehow the films convince us that these boys are sweet, even though we know we are much like these boys and that we are no longer sweet.