I have to give Colby Buzzell's "My War: Killing Time in Iraq" just the highest amount of praise. This book beats "Jarhead" on many levels - while the perspective of a junior enlisted grunt in the Gulf is the same, the story is much better told and with an equally gripping, real-life and nonpartisan point of view. If the movie industry hasn't offered Colby multiple offers to make his experience into a movie, then they are missing out. It already comes with the soundtrack (Colby's iPod selections are mentioned in the book, in addition to the book (and his blog) being named after a Black Flag song).
Any milblogger will recognize CBFTW as one of the more prominent Iraq war blogs being posted by deployed soldiers (CB being his initials, FTW being - well, it's not "Fight the War" as he told his platoon leader). He started the blog in June 2004. While he remained anonymous for a short while, the media eventually noticed, and that led to his chain of command finding out that he was blogging about his patrols and experiences in Iraq. Things came to a head in September, when he was told to cease and desist because he emailed Jello Biafra and posted the response, but he was on his way out anyway. This book fills in the "before and after" narrative to his story.
Buzzell was a 26 year old man in San Francisco trying to figure out how he was going to get by in life when he decides to join the Marines. He didn't join because of 9/11 or because he was poor, he wanted to break the dull routine of an ordinary civilian data entry job. Problem was, the Marine recruiter had met his monthly quota and wasn't interested. The Army recruiter was, and "helped" him to sign on a two-year enlistment as an infantryman. He wanted to be a machine gunner and go to Iraq, but the Army sent him to Fort Benning for training and then Fort Lewis to a Stryker brigade first. His unit deployed to Iraq in November 2003 and the fun ensues. I won't go into detail about all his patrols and experiences, but I will say that he writes very well, you can visualize the action easily. He uses a good deal of military jargon but it should be nothing the average civilian can't follow. Buzzell gives you a story that shows a perspective of a guy who wants to do good things in Iraq, who likes working with his buddies and his battalion leadership, but at the same time, it is the Army. He captures this mood with this statement:
But in the Army, there is no quitting. If you don't get along with somebody, or your personality clashes with anybody in your chain of command, like a team leader or a squad leader, you just bend over and take it in the ass. After a while though, it doesn't hurt as much, and sooner or later you don't even feel it anymore.
And that, my friend, is when you truly know that you're in the Army. When you no longer feel it.
This is the fascinating thing about this book - everyone is bound to find something they like in it. The military guys will all knod their heads and say, yep, he nailed it, the whole Iraq experience. The anti-war crowd will read it and say, yep, the military has no clue what they're doing over there. And those supporting the Bush administration will say, see, our troops, doing their thing to make Iraq better. While the book is a hair over 350 pages, the pages turn quickly and it's hard to put the book down once you've started.
Buzzell isn't interested in re-enlisting, but at the same time he mentions that if his old battalion commander called up and said he needed an M240 machine gunner, he'd be there. At the end of the book, he's wondering what to do next - go back to data entry, get a FedEx job, go to school on a GI Bill. I don't think he's got a thing to worry about - after the sales from this book (ranked around number 7,400 on Amazon) and the inevitable Hollywood movie offer, he'll figure it out.
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