thedrifter
11-20-05, 06:13 AM
November 20, 2005
'One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer,'
by Nathaniel Fick
Few and Proud
By DAMIEN CAVE
WHEN Capt. Nathaniel Fick and his platoon of 22 marines raced toward Baghdad during the early days of the war in Iraq, they shot their way through hostile towns in open Humvees even as American tanks idled nearby. Their often inept commanders guided them into ambushes, and laughed while snapping photos of dead foreign fighters. Once, the commanders nearly refused to treat two teenage Iraqi shepherds accidentally wounded by marines.
Fick, who joined the Marines in 1998 and left in June 2003, after the first phase of the war in Iraq, was haunted by it even after he was back home. He had majored in classics at Dartmouth and his bookish faith in the tradition of military honor clashed mightily with the grim realities of actual conflict.
But there is little bitterness in his no-nonsense account of life as a junior officer. In "One Bullet Away," Fick doesn't slop through the muck of Marines culture, as Anthony Swofford ably did in "Jarhead," his book about the first gulf war. Instead, he offers fast-paced tactical deconstruction, leavened with introspection. Fick thrived on military training and combat even as he faced the gut-wrenching inversion of values he held dear.
Much of the book covers Fick's first few years as a Marine, before he saw combat. Although his depiction of training, with its endless drills, is often repetitive, Fick emerges nonetheless as an overachiever who hates mistakes, a smart but humble go-getter who competed for command of an infantry unit because "it was elemental and dangerous."
After Sept. 11, Fick was ready to put his training into action. He felt grateful and honored to be sent to Afghanistan, but the war turned out to be a dud. Fick and his men spent much of their time on watch at a secure military air base. They were prepared to search the Tora Bora caves for Osama bin Laden, but the call never came. When Fick's mentor, a maverick captain with a taste for ancient war manuals, suggested he try out for reconnaissance, he jumped at the chance. "Every marine thinks he's the toughest guy in the room," Fick writes. "Most will agree, though, that the toughest unit in the corps is recon."
The training included a simulated plane crash behind enemy lines and captivity in a box "shorter than I was tall and narrower than I was wide." He left knowing how to read maps, sense danger and sneak behind enemy lines. He learned that for a recon marine, firing a weapon is a sign of failure, of getting caught.
Which is perhaps why the tactics the Marines deployed in Iraq often squeezed Fick like combat boots a size too small. He repeatedly had to execute orders he questioned, or fight his commanders to ensure that his men came back physically and psychologically intact. The two Iraqi boys shot by Fick's marines - after senior officers declared that every Iraqi in the area was a combatant - were airlifted to a hospital only after Fick placed them at the foot of a captain who had hesitated to awaken a sleeping colonel on their behalf.
In Evan Wright's more graphic look at the rush to Baghdad, "Generation Kill," some of the recon marines cursed their lot and wished death on at least one ham-handed senior officer. In Fick's account, however, their off-color voices are muted in favor of more intimate portraits of kindness. They never mention sex. They give their food to Iraqis even though they are allotted only one meal a day. After the war ends, they disobey orders to tag undetonated American explosives, and instead blow up a particularly volatile grenade to prevent children from being injured.
This PG-13 approach scrubs clean the usually rich flavor of grunt existence. But something else is gained. By focusing on his men's desire to be used for good, and his own drive to protect them from danger, Fick makes a compelling argument for an oft-overlooked military virtue: competence. Bravery, honor and integrity are still important, but for Fick, nothing saves lives like forethought and reason. As the war in Iraq drags on, it's a call clearly worth heeding.
Damien Cave is a reporter for The New York Times.
Ellie
'One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer,'
by Nathaniel Fick
Few and Proud
By DAMIEN CAVE
WHEN Capt. Nathaniel Fick and his platoon of 22 marines raced toward Baghdad during the early days of the war in Iraq, they shot their way through hostile towns in open Humvees even as American tanks idled nearby. Their often inept commanders guided them into ambushes, and laughed while snapping photos of dead foreign fighters. Once, the commanders nearly refused to treat two teenage Iraqi shepherds accidentally wounded by marines.
Fick, who joined the Marines in 1998 and left in June 2003, after the first phase of the war in Iraq, was haunted by it even after he was back home. He had majored in classics at Dartmouth and his bookish faith in the tradition of military honor clashed mightily with the grim realities of actual conflict.
But there is little bitterness in his no-nonsense account of life as a junior officer. In "One Bullet Away," Fick doesn't slop through the muck of Marines culture, as Anthony Swofford ably did in "Jarhead," his book about the first gulf war. Instead, he offers fast-paced tactical deconstruction, leavened with introspection. Fick thrived on military training and combat even as he faced the gut-wrenching inversion of values he held dear.
Much of the book covers Fick's first few years as a Marine, before he saw combat. Although his depiction of training, with its endless drills, is often repetitive, Fick emerges nonetheless as an overachiever who hates mistakes, a smart but humble go-getter who competed for command of an infantry unit because "it was elemental and dangerous."
After Sept. 11, Fick was ready to put his training into action. He felt grateful and honored to be sent to Afghanistan, but the war turned out to be a dud. Fick and his men spent much of their time on watch at a secure military air base. They were prepared to search the Tora Bora caves for Osama bin Laden, but the call never came. When Fick's mentor, a maverick captain with a taste for ancient war manuals, suggested he try out for reconnaissance, he jumped at the chance. "Every marine thinks he's the toughest guy in the room," Fick writes. "Most will agree, though, that the toughest unit in the corps is recon."
The training included a simulated plane crash behind enemy lines and captivity in a box "shorter than I was tall and narrower than I was wide." He left knowing how to read maps, sense danger and sneak behind enemy lines. He learned that for a recon marine, firing a weapon is a sign of failure, of getting caught.
Which is perhaps why the tactics the Marines deployed in Iraq often squeezed Fick like combat boots a size too small. He repeatedly had to execute orders he questioned, or fight his commanders to ensure that his men came back physically and psychologically intact. The two Iraqi boys shot by Fick's marines - after senior officers declared that every Iraqi in the area was a combatant - were airlifted to a hospital only after Fick placed them at the foot of a captain who had hesitated to awaken a sleeping colonel on their behalf.
In Evan Wright's more graphic look at the rush to Baghdad, "Generation Kill," some of the recon marines cursed their lot and wished death on at least one ham-handed senior officer. In Fick's account, however, their off-color voices are muted in favor of more intimate portraits of kindness. They never mention sex. They give their food to Iraqis even though they are allotted only one meal a day. After the war ends, they disobey orders to tag undetonated American explosives, and instead blow up a particularly volatile grenade to prevent children from being injured.
This PG-13 approach scrubs clean the usually rich flavor of grunt existence. But something else is gained. By focusing on his men's desire to be used for good, and his own drive to protect them from danger, Fick makes a compelling argument for an oft-overlooked military virtue: competence. Bravery, honor and integrity are still important, but for Fick, nothing saves lives like forethought and reason. As the war in Iraq drags on, it's a call clearly worth heeding.
Damien Cave is a reporter for The New York Times.
Ellie