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thedrifter
11-08-06, 06:44 AM
'What Was Asked of Us': Troops' words tell Iraq war from ground level

By: CHRISTOPHER SULLIVAN - Associated Press

"What Was Asked of Us: An Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who Fought It" (Little, Brown and Co., 307 pages, $25.99) -- Trish Wood: This war will be with us long after it's over.

That's a logical conclusion if one listens closely to U.S. troops who have been to Iraq. Lost buddies will haunt them, of course, and there's the stress of civilian casualties, especially children, and the clinging trauma of checkpoint suicide bombers and deadly explosives disguised along dusty roads.

There are indelible memories like this:

"There was a piece of shrapnel; it looked like a rosebush, but like a rosebush kind of like in the winter, where it's really kind of dead but it's still really big. It was huge and it fell out of the sky and landed right in front of where I was facing. It was a piece of the car."

That recollection, chilling and immediate, comes from Adrian Cavazos, an Army infantryman recalling duty near Najaf in 2003, one of 29 Iraq veterans quoted at length in the revealing "What Was Asked of Us."

The book was compiled by Trish Wood, a Canadian journalist who spent two years tracking down and thoughtfully interviewing troops who had recently returned from Iraq to homes across the United States.

They're a varied lot -- men and a few women, all ages, representing multiple branches of service and with all kinds of views on the war.

A Marine, Joseph Darling, eloquently described a duty he often volunteers for now, presenting the flag to families at funerals for the fallen. "I stand at the head of the casket because that is where the stars are. The stars with the blue background are always over the heart of the deceased. The stars are always over the heart for love of country."

Another Marine, Justin LeHew, who was awarded the Navy Cross after his unit ensured that 77 wounded Americans were evacuated to safety in Nasirya, told how the Americans were "meat-grindered" there but didn't retreat. He talked about who gets medals:

"It's the kid, who, when I was a drill instructor in boot camp, would stare at the Pacific Ocean and start crying because it was the first time he had ever seen it in his entire life. ... It's the kids that come into the Marine Corps at 18 who never had shoes on their feet, and we're putting them on the battlefield out there and saying, Defend the United States of America from enemies foreign and domestic, and these kids do everything and even more than what is ever required of them."

What was asked of them is a lot, the reader recognizes as each describes enduring heat, boredom, terror, pain and loss. For many, there's also guilt and a desire to return once they've come home.

Wood, who said she was inspired by the late war correspondent Gloria Emerson and by a Vietnam war oral history, "Everything We Had," by Al Santoli, takes the reader into the heart of the most hostile action in Iraq and into the psyches of those who endured it.

A chaplain describes a deadly mess hall attack and his personal struggle afterward; an infantryman describes the kill-or-be-killed "honesty" of a fire fight. Others interviewed give firsthand accounts of incidents -- Abu Ghraib, the lost convoy that included former POW Jessica Lynch, an early suicide bombing at a military checkpoint -- that we know through the filter of news or official accounts.

Wood offers brief prefaces to chapters of her book but mainly lets the troops speak, detailing what they went through. Some of what they reveal reflects raw courage; some show heart-wrenching concern for comrades in arms; and some present their deeply conflicted feelings about the Iraqis, especially after roadside bombs made it impossible to know who was the enemy and made survival depend on, as Wood says, "dumb luck."

The author fact-checked the troops' statements as much as possible against news or other accounts.

In one case, she gave a pseudonym to a Marine interviewee who, "without thinking of the consequences," detailed his unit's actions "that may have crossed the line" in dealing with some insurgents captured in battle. Some readers may feel that introduces a moral muddiness in the otherwise straight "What Was Asked of Us," but it is fiction in service of truth about a war that is complicated by many kinds of ambiguity.

As Daniel B. Cotnoir, a Marine in a Mortuary Affairs unit, told Wood after describing the frantic, dangerous rush to gather up and prepare bodies to be returned home, "I'm very proud of what I did, but I wish I didn't have to do it."

Ellie