Writer offers look at invading marines

If you want to know what it was like to race in a roofless, windowless, aging Humvee through open desert, under intense fire from front and side, from Iraqis hidden behind berms and in huts that dot the landscape, from pieces of pipe in the road that can explode under your wheels and rip off your limbs — in other words, if you want to know what the war in Iraq was like for those who led the invasion — the facts are all laid out in Evan Wright’s new book, “Generation Kill.”

Wright, 39, is now back in his apartment in Los Angeles after being embedded with the Marines for the first two months of the conflict. For all that time, the Rolling Stone writer rode in the lead vehicle of the lead platoon at the front of the convoy that forged a path to Baghdad.

Nicknamed the “suicide battalion,” the 70-Humvee convoy traveled 10 miles ahead of the main invasion force — a kind of exterminating advance team meant to find the positions and draw the fire of Iraqi hostiles waiting in ambush.

Wright, a tall, hefty guy with pale eyes and hair, won easy acceptance from the troops because he not only fits the physical image of a Marine, he projects the same, unflappable calm and strength. And, he says, his credentials as a porn film expert didn’t hurt.

Having reviewed 8,000 films for Hustler magazine won him “more inclusion” from the 23 enlisted men in his platoon, and the four in his Humvee, “than any press card from a prestigious newspaper or TV channel ever could have,” Wright said.

And he has paid them back with a book that should make them proud. It is written from their perspective, he says — an enlisted man’s eye view of the action. And it is a triumph of objectivity, with not a bit of tilt or spin, a warts-and-all word picture of what Wright saw and heard: the raw, dirty humor of young men on the edge, who get no sleep or change of clothes for days on end, whose every bodily function is discussed and analyzed, who find themselves intimately bound together in a series of unthinkable life-or-death situations.

These gung-ho fighters, ages 19 to 25, hyped up on instant coffee crystals and ephedrine pills to stay alert and awake, turn out to be awe-inspiring in their maturity and compassion, no matter what your perspective on this particular war, or on war itself.

The book, which began as a series of articles for Rolling Stone, could just as aptly have been titled “Generation Thrill.” The enlistees were not just up for battle, they were eager for mortal combat, hankering to “go get some” — a generation weaned on Grand Theft Auto and other shooter video games.

They were guys with nothing in common except modest backgrounds and tremendous, unfocused talents — in Wright’s words, guys who “were searching for something authentic in life. Something real, and dangerous, that won’t be co-opted by their elders and turned into a Mountain Dew commercial. That’s why they love the Marines. It’s painful and dangerous and lonely — and they hunger for that.”

And while Wright worries that “this Abu Ghraib scandal has given Americans an image that enlisted people might all just be these yahoos,” that’s not what he saw at all.

“These guys were very sharp and smart,” he says. “Many could have gone through college, could have qualified for scholarships.”

In fact, Wright found, the enlisted men often were more astute than some of their senior officers — a seeming cuckoo’s nest of oddballs.

There was the company commander they dubbed Encino Man, after the dimwitted caveman in the movie of the same name. Encino Man had “a seeming inability to understand the basics, like reading maps,” Wright says. Worse yet, he “actually attempted to call in an artillery strike virtually on top of the heads of his own men.”

Then there’s the unforgettable officer nicknamed Captain America, who commanded the other advance platoon with which Wright’s platoon traveled. From Day 1 of the invasion, he revealed an unfortunate tendency to become hysterical at any sign of danger.

On one embattled night, he screamed on the radio, “We’re all gonna die, we’re all gonna die”— a message transmitted to all his men.

“He always ran around with his bayonet ready, like Rambo,” Wright says.

Of course, the Marines’ biggest problems came from enemy insurgents. It was always difficult to tell exactly where they were firing from, Wright says. Often, they would be in or behind houses, launching rocket-propelled grenades and shooting.

The Marines had the firepower to evaporate the dwellings, but that meant they might also kill innocent civilians inside. That was against the rules of engagement, he says, but more important, it was against the moral code of the outwardly tough enlisted Marines. They could not have lived with themselves if they did that, he says: “They truly cared about who they hit.”

The Marines in Wright’s Humvee survived without major injury. The next group to use that vehicle wasn’t so lucky. One Marine died and two suffered critical injuries. The Humvee was blown up April 6 in Fallujah.

In the end, Wright says he is neither for nor against war. And neither is “Generation Kill.”

He says what he’s learned from his Iraq experience may be a cliche, but it’s true: “War should be undertaken with a very heavy heart.”