28 CHICAGO READER | NOVEMBER 18, 2005 | SECTION ONE

Books

By Chris Barsanti

Time was, soldiers had towait until they got back tothe States to tell their sto-

ries—or at best, find a sympa-thetic reporter. But Iraq wargrunt Colby Buzzell told hisstory the 21st-century way: afterreading about blogs in Time he

started one of his own, postingstories about firefights some-times hours after they hap-pened. Not surprisingly, thisdidn’t endear him to his superi-ors, even though they ultimatelyfound there wasn’t much theycould do about it—free speech

and all.Buzzell named his blog “My

War” after the Black Flag song—because he liked the band and,as he writes in his new memoir,My War: Killing Time in Iraq, it“sounded kinda tough.” It does-n’t take long to tell that he isn’t

going to win points for literaryart. A hard-drinking, hard-drugging California skater witha “Fuck the World” tattoo,Buzzell joins the army in 2003lacking anything better to do. Tohis great surprise he gets

From the FrontTwo new memoirs by recent Iraq vets display distinctly contemporary attitudes toward the war.

MY WAR: KILLING TIME IN IRAQ COLBY BUZZELL (PUTNAM)THE LAST TRUE STORY I’LL EVER TELL: AN ACCIDENTAL SOLDIER’S ACCOUNT OF THE WAR IN IRAQ JOHN CRAWFORD (RIVERHEAD)

continued on page 30

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30 CHICAGO READER | NOVEMBER 18, 2005 | SECTION ONE

Books

shipped off to Iraq thatNovember with the StrykerBattalion. Their motto is“Punish the Deserving,” but athis Mosul firebase Buzzell endsup doing mostly late-nighthouse snatches and TCPs—traf-fic-control points, like drunk-driver roadblocks with insur-gents as the quarry.

Buzzell’s book, which startsoff as straight autobiographybut incorporates the full text ofhis “My War” postings later on,gives readers plenty of reasonsto think he’s little more thananother jaded Gen Xer whocan’t see the reality in front ofhis face for all the music andmovies banging around in hismedia-saturated head. The

“Stryker Soundtrack” he listensto on his iPod while on missionis a pissy teenager’s wet dream,encompassing everything fromthe Exploited and the DeadKennedys to Wagner and theStar Wars theme. The writingveers toward the self-con-sciously plain and macho; hehas a boner for Bukowski andoh, does it show. But Buzzell,who also reads a lot of Orwellwhile in Iraq, never completelysuccumbs to Hemingwayitis,presenting his military experi-ence as less an exercise in man-liness than just a stupid ridethrough a hellish place, sur-vived by luck alone.

His blog entries—composedin the heat of the moment andapparently unedited—give the

book an even more honest per-spective, stripping awayBuzzell’s FTW pose. The high-light is “Men in Black,” an epicpost about a vicious ambush inMosul. Probably one of thesharpest, nastiest accounts of afirefight ever recorded, there’sno artifice to it; it’s a brilliantlypared-down rendering of raw,panicked, white-hot terror. “Wewere stuck in the middle of a killzone, all of us in 3.3 million dol-lar RPG magnets,” he writes.“I’ve put the events of that dayin a shoebox, put the lid on it,and haven’t opened it since.”

For all that, Buzzell isn’t onefor reflection. He remains to theend an immature smart-ass,albeit one with a bit more rightto his antisocial tendencies. On

the plane back home he snarksto himself that if this were amovie, Green Day’s “Time ofYour Life” would be playing andhe’d be reflecting on “all the life-changing experiences andepiphanies” he’d accumulated inbattle. In fact, he confesses, he’sreally just looking forward tothat Social Distortion show inSeattle in a couple weeks.

The biggest differencebetween Buzzell and John

Crawford, author of anothernew Iraq memoir, The Last TrueStory I’ll Ever Tell, is thatCrawford’s probably never heardof Social Distortion. He’s a well-adjusted adult who never hadany intention of fighting a warhe didn’t believe in. But signing

up with the Florida NationalGuard seemed like a pretty goodway of paying for college, espe-cially since he already had threeyears’ experience in the 101stAirborne. In 1998 the chances ofactually seeing action seemedslim, but four years later, whilehe and his wife were celebratingtheir honeymoon on a cruise,Crawford got the word that hisunit was going to Iraq.

Once overseas he downplayshis life back home and puts thewar front and center, letting thenumbing, pointless misery of itall drive his tale. Crawford’sunit crossed the border on thefirst day of the invasion andstayed in action for more than ayear, just another group ofpoorly equipped guardsmengetting “passed around thearmed forces like a virus” whileevery one of the units he foughtwith was rotated home. At onepoint, the government evenannounced that his unit hadbeen pulled out of Baghdad,though, as Crawford points out,“all around us the capital of ourenemy seethed.”

There’s a coruscating rage toThe Last True Story that’s miss-ing in much of what has beenwritten so far by Iraq vets. Butwhat’s telling about Crawford’saccount is that his anger isdirected not at the war itself,but at the men keeping himthere after the regular armyheroes have left. He’s over-whelmed by the inevitabilityand ineffectiveness of the fight-ing. A comrade’s death fills himwith inexplicable rage toward anIraqi man working in the gasstation near Crawford’s base. “Inever wanted to hate anyone,”he writes. “It just sort of hap-pens that way in a war.”

In between chasing insur-gents around Baghdad,Crawford records small detailsthat keep his book fromdescending into self-pity: hisunit’s useless Vietnam-era flakvests, the battalion commanderwho can’t remember the namesof the dead, the Iraqi translatorwhose house is torched becausehe’s too friendly with theAmericans. It all adds up to anunsettling portrait of a manslowly ground down by anunnameable disgust, returninghome with “a lingering, wasting

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sickness that comes only whenyou have nothing left.”

Still, for all their differentstrengths, neither My War norThe Last True Story will join theranks of classic war tales. Theformer is too much of its time,gripping but with a flash-in-the-pan feel, while the latter is toosuffused with sadness to winmany admirers. Thoughadmirably honest and vivid inthe extreme, neither bookreaches much beyond individualexperience. Is this due toambivalence, confusion, or sim-ply the authors’ inability to dealwith the enormity of their situa-tion? It’s hard to say, but bothbooks suffer from a refusal tostake out a position, to cutthrough the fog of war. There’snothing in either to rank withHomage to Catalonia,Dispatches, or even AnthonySwofford’s eviscerating gulf warmemoir, Jarhead, whose codaalone outstrips both Buzzell andCrawford: “Some wars areunavoidable and need well befought, but this doesn’t erasewarfare’s waste. Sorry, we mustsay to the mothers whose sonswill die horribly. This will neverend. Sorry.” v

Ink Well by Ben Tausig

Dinner With the Family

ACROSS 1. “Fiddlesticks!”6. Turkish potentate

10. Good buddy14. Done cooking15. Raft16. Comrade in arms17. How 24 unfolds19. Word before box or joint20. Gangland seafood recipe?22. For23. It’s often iced in summer24. Open, as a toothpaste tube27. Reddish brown gem29. Thrice, “etc”33. Bone in a cage34. Powerful 229-year-old37. What you might do after being

40-Down39. Preparation method for a

squealing sheep?41. Grill43. Glass on the radio

44. Blowup: abbr.45. Milk container47. In gear?51. Sorrow53. Laid up56. Lucky strike57. Capo’s twist on an Asian soup

staple?62. The gamut64. Draft behind closed doors?65. Weathercock66. “Ahh . . . ”67. Head in68. Old items69. Surrender one’s hand70. Comedy Central fete

DOWN 1. Obsesses before the mirror2. Lady of la casa3. Chicago or Pearl4. Citrus coolers5. Marshal Earp6. How the naive may be led7. Smooth-talking8. Powerful auto engine9. Induces wonder

10. Louisiana accent11. Maryland harvest12. Male with a rack13. White alternative18. Majors in film21. Luminous astronomical object25. Travel option26. WTTW programming source28. Sarcastic rejoinders30. Collectively31. OED entry32. Links locale35. Beetlejuice setting36. It’s dropped for kicks

LAST WEEK: IT’S A SIGN

52. Moves like slime54. He had a salty wife55. Turn down58. Nine-to-fiver’s shout59. Very60. Present time61. First Bond villain62. Michigan, in Chicago: abbr.63. Line on a bill

38. Houston Rockets superstar,familiarly

39. Far from rare40. Decked41. Logical conclusion42. Numero ______46. Hosed down48. Nabokov nymphet49. Mountain ridges50. Las Vegas region

CHICAGO READER | NOVEMBER 18, 2005 | SECTION ONE 31