Get Some!
"Generation Kill" by Evan Wright
By Page W. H. Brousseau IV
TIMES STAFF WRITER
The Battle of Medina Ridge in late February 1991 was the largest tank battle experienced by US forces up to that time. A force of 166 US Abrams tanks and 6 Apaches took out 186 Iraqi tanks and 127 armored vehicles over the course of two hours. Americans suffered a solitary KIA. Because of stringent rules set by the Pentagon to control the source of information during the Persian Gulf War, the world missed this battle, and remains largely unaware of it. Twelve years later, the Pentagon was determine not to let that happen again and threw open nearly every military unit to any news organization that wished to venture over the Kuwaiti berm.
Evan Wright's 2004 "Generation Kill" is a harrowing look into the next generation of men shaped by war. The result is both a patriotic and macabre portrait, most readers will recoil that our society forces young men to do such things, and at the same time be thankful there are young men to do such.
The Rolling Stone reporter writes in a first person real-time style accounting the invasion and conquest of Iraq in spring 2003. From his joining the tight Marine unit, Wright's transformation from a "liberal journalist" to a member of the team is just one of the subplots the moves this book along with the speed of an incoming SCUD rocket.
Wright's experiences never obscure the experiences of the Marines; he is merely the lens by which we view the war. He cheers the air strikes and out going artillery, not so much for damage they wrought, but because he sees them as increasing his chances of survival. Which may have been the plan of the Pentagon all along. It is hard to be objectionable when the other side is shooting at you.
Few studies into the psyche of Generation Y are as riveting as this piece. Young men just months removed from high school are forced to make life and death decisions flying through a hailstorm of bullets in the back of a Humvee, at night.
During one lull in the action, Wright watches with a mix of distress and admiration as Marines walk the roadside collecting and burying trash discarded by advancing American troops. Then, just hours later, the same Marines cheer and celebrate the virtual destruction of a city block by their own hand.
The battle experienced senior enlisted men, and eager, hard-charging junior officers coral the young enlisted men into a fierce killing machine. That machine faces psychotic-disastrous commanding officers on one side and a fanatical unseen enemy on the other.
Glance on any page and the stark reality of war drags you in. Just one passage: "It takes five to ten minutes for the platoon to extricate itself from the kill zone, leaving most of the would-be ambushers either dead or in flight. Doc Bryan counts nine bodies scattered on both sides of the road. Corporal Teren Holsey, a twenty-year-old on Team Three, gets in the platoon's final kill. He rides hanging off the back of the last Humvee to leave the zone. After his vehicle makes it about fifty meters away from the pipe in the road, he looks back to see if anyone is following. He observes a man limping by the road and cuts him down with a burst from his M-4."
And so it goes…even today, 32 months later.
© The Michigan Times 2005
