The Book

I’ve spent a lot of time reading books about the civilian side of life from wars and conflicts over the ages.  Never had I ventured into the military side of it until this past week.  I decided it was high time to get past my issues and try reading something from a new perspective.  I picked up (well, ordered) the book Generation Kill by Evan Wright, an embedded Rolling Stone reporter during the northern Marine lead invasion of Iraq at the very beginning of the war.  The book is just under 400 pages in the edition I bought and has maps of the Marine’s route and pictures of the men in the story.  I picked this book because it has great reviews (4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon), its own mini-series on HBO (which has done some great series on wars) and because while it’s from the soldier’s side, it’s still from a civilian’s point of view.

The book starts out at Camp Matilda in Kuwait right before the invasion and stays with the soldiers until they reach Baghdad.   While the writer is with a battalion of Marines, the story focuses mostly on the four soldiers of the Humvee that Wright rides with and how war affects each of them, both as a team and as an individual.  The media has done their job in reporting how the lack of supplies, miscommunication, unclear orders and mental tolls have impacted the ongoing war, but Wright has an ability to show how these issues impacted the lives and abilities of the military forces.  He edits nothing out from his time in Iraq, and it’s a compelling read to see how these men will fare by the time he parts from them.  While it would be inconceivable to ever say that I might know how any soldier felt, there are many points in the book that we can relate to, albeit at a different level (the lack of direction and communication down the chain of command, for example). I’ve already started reading it again because I want to catch all the details I’m sure I missed the first time and spend more time reflecting upon what is offered up to the reader.  There’s so much I want to say about this book but fear I don’t have the words to properly express my thoughts. As a caution, if you’re easily offended by harsh language or politically incorrectness this is not something you probably want to read.  Overall, I’ll agree with the reviewers at Amazon and give it a .  As an end note, I watched the mini-series after finishing the book but I think the book offers so much more.