thedrifter
03-21-09, 06:27 AM
March 22, 2009
Soldiers of Misfortune
By JAMES GLANZ
JOKER ONE
A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood
By Donovan Campbell
313 pp. Random House. $26
In a way that has always been awkward to discuss with friends, I feel pity for anyone who has never traveled a war zone in the company of Marines. That feeling has nothing to do with the experience of combat. Instead, it relates to something much more impersonal, something that comes with being around the toughest and most lethal fighters in the world. A regular citizen caught up in war is able to see, record and report the things that humans do to one another, from the generous to the horrible, in a situation where it would ordinarily be too terrifying to think of anything but getting out alive.
The arrangement known as “embedding” — the almost complete immersion in the movements and life of a military unit — is the standard way for reporters to travel with Marines or the other service branches in a place like Iraq. Embedding is seldom available to nonjournalists. But a new book by Donovan Campbell, a former Marine lieutenant who led a 40-man platoon in the Iraqi desert city of Ramadi during the most violent days of the insurgency there in 2004, is its literary equivalent.
“Joker One: A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood” should be read by all those who have ever wondered what conclusions they would have drawn about the Iraq war if they had been dropped into the middle of the conflict in much the same way my colleagues and I were. Be advised that Campbell, though he is a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Business School, never stops being a Marine, thinking like a Marine or using the jargon and profanity of a Marine, so do not expect much guidance on larger matters like whether the war was justified or well planned. But that is the point: Campbell provides the raw, bullet-by-bullet footage, and it is up to the reader to decide what it all means.
The book, named for the platoon’s radio call sign, is ostensibly about a young lieutenant whose faith in God, the Marines and his own leadership is shaken, then restored, as his men are maimed and killed on the filthy streets of Ramadi. But it is really the story of a unit whose training, equipment and overall background left them supremely unready to face an Iraqi insurgency. The Marines may not have comprehended what they were up against, but of course they fought anyway.
Campbell himself never really comes to grips with how deplorably his beloved Marines were prepared for Ramadi. But a central virtue of “Joker One” is that the narrative is honest — and remarkably detailed, relying on Campbell’s logbooks and diary, as well as his formidable memory — even when the story makes him or the Marines look bad. Reflecting on the unit’s training exercises at Camp Pendleton before the deployment to Iraq, for example, he notes in passing that “when all is said and done, a 19-year-old Marine lance corporal from Idaho with a bedsheet over his head has only limited success simulating a Sunni Arab woman, no matter how hard he tries.”
Once that sophisticated cultural training was complete, it was time to go to Iraq. As the Marines landed in Kuwait and crossed the border to Iraq in March 2004, Campbell found that his unit’s seven-ton trucks had no armor, the radios did not work properly, and no translator would be provided for the dangerous overland trip to Ramadi.
Almost immediately, Campbell sensed that something was wrong in the city he had been told was “on the glide path to success.” On an early patrol, the men of Joker One hand out candy and pencils to local children, who seem delighted: children are the same everywhere, he reflects. Then, after the Marines have handed out everything they have, the children begin showering them with rocks — large rocks. Incredibly, the unit still does not have a translator, so there is no way to find out why this is happening or even to tell the kids to stop.
But after Campbell pulls out of the area, one of his men radios that he has fixed the problem the Marine way. “I grabbed some old man standing by, pointed to the little kids throwing rocks, and he chased them away,” the Marine, named Carson, says. “We’re good to go, sir.” “Oh. Good work. Thanks, Carson. Keep it up,” Campbell radios back.
At the base later on, still unnerved, Campbell begins to realize that something is seriously amiss in his understanding of the city he must patrol for seven months. He muses, “What kind of child tries repeatedly to stone someone who has just given them a present?”
Welcome to Ramadi, gents. Having been wrapped in a cocoon of ignorance by their pathetically insufficient training, Campbell’s Marines are left to deal with the consequences as the insurgency explodes on the crooked streets of one of the meanest and deadliest places on earth. What follows might be characterized as a cross between the Battle of Agincourt as seen from the French side and the opening scenes of “Saving Private Ryan,” with no one to save.
Near the beginning of his book, Campbell reflects that “it’s so hard to tell the truth, because the telling means dragging up painful memories, opening doors that you thought you had closed and revisiting a past you hoped you had put behind you.”
He never quite puts his finger on the meaning, if any, of the extraordinary violence that imbues the truths he tells in “Joker One.” But he has laid it all out for anyone else who wants to have a try.
James Glanz, a member of the investigative staff at The Times, reported from Iraq for five years.
Ellie
Soldiers of Misfortune
By JAMES GLANZ
JOKER ONE
A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood
By Donovan Campbell
313 pp. Random House. $26
In a way that has always been awkward to discuss with friends, I feel pity for anyone who has never traveled a war zone in the company of Marines. That feeling has nothing to do with the experience of combat. Instead, it relates to something much more impersonal, something that comes with being around the toughest and most lethal fighters in the world. A regular citizen caught up in war is able to see, record and report the things that humans do to one another, from the generous to the horrible, in a situation where it would ordinarily be too terrifying to think of anything but getting out alive.
The arrangement known as “embedding” — the almost complete immersion in the movements and life of a military unit — is the standard way for reporters to travel with Marines or the other service branches in a place like Iraq. Embedding is seldom available to nonjournalists. But a new book by Donovan Campbell, a former Marine lieutenant who led a 40-man platoon in the Iraqi desert city of Ramadi during the most violent days of the insurgency there in 2004, is its literary equivalent.
“Joker One: A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood” should be read by all those who have ever wondered what conclusions they would have drawn about the Iraq war if they had been dropped into the middle of the conflict in much the same way my colleagues and I were. Be advised that Campbell, though he is a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Business School, never stops being a Marine, thinking like a Marine or using the jargon and profanity of a Marine, so do not expect much guidance on larger matters like whether the war was justified or well planned. But that is the point: Campbell provides the raw, bullet-by-bullet footage, and it is up to the reader to decide what it all means.
The book, named for the platoon’s radio call sign, is ostensibly about a young lieutenant whose faith in God, the Marines and his own leadership is shaken, then restored, as his men are maimed and killed on the filthy streets of Ramadi. But it is really the story of a unit whose training, equipment and overall background left them supremely unready to face an Iraqi insurgency. The Marines may not have comprehended what they were up against, but of course they fought anyway.
Campbell himself never really comes to grips with how deplorably his beloved Marines were prepared for Ramadi. But a central virtue of “Joker One” is that the narrative is honest — and remarkably detailed, relying on Campbell’s logbooks and diary, as well as his formidable memory — even when the story makes him or the Marines look bad. Reflecting on the unit’s training exercises at Camp Pendleton before the deployment to Iraq, for example, he notes in passing that “when all is said and done, a 19-year-old Marine lance corporal from Idaho with a bedsheet over his head has only limited success simulating a Sunni Arab woman, no matter how hard he tries.”
Once that sophisticated cultural training was complete, it was time to go to Iraq. As the Marines landed in Kuwait and crossed the border to Iraq in March 2004, Campbell found that his unit’s seven-ton trucks had no armor, the radios did not work properly, and no translator would be provided for the dangerous overland trip to Ramadi.
Almost immediately, Campbell sensed that something was wrong in the city he had been told was “on the glide path to success.” On an early patrol, the men of Joker One hand out candy and pencils to local children, who seem delighted: children are the same everywhere, he reflects. Then, after the Marines have handed out everything they have, the children begin showering them with rocks — large rocks. Incredibly, the unit still does not have a translator, so there is no way to find out why this is happening or even to tell the kids to stop.
But after Campbell pulls out of the area, one of his men radios that he has fixed the problem the Marine way. “I grabbed some old man standing by, pointed to the little kids throwing rocks, and he chased them away,” the Marine, named Carson, says. “We’re good to go, sir.” “Oh. Good work. Thanks, Carson. Keep it up,” Campbell radios back.
At the base later on, still unnerved, Campbell begins to realize that something is seriously amiss in his understanding of the city he must patrol for seven months. He muses, “What kind of child tries repeatedly to stone someone who has just given them a present?”
Welcome to Ramadi, gents. Having been wrapped in a cocoon of ignorance by their pathetically insufficient training, Campbell’s Marines are left to deal with the consequences as the insurgency explodes on the crooked streets of one of the meanest and deadliest places on earth. What follows might be characterized as a cross between the Battle of Agincourt as seen from the French side and the opening scenes of “Saving Private Ryan,” with no one to save.
Near the beginning of his book, Campbell reflects that “it’s so hard to tell the truth, because the telling means dragging up painful memories, opening doors that you thought you had closed and revisiting a past you hoped you had put behind you.”
He never quite puts his finger on the meaning, if any, of the extraordinary violence that imbues the truths he tells in “Joker One.” But he has laid it all out for anyone else who wants to have a try.
James Glanz, a member of the investigative staff at The Times, reported from Iraq for five years.
Ellie