DS,

Thanks for that, I’ll have to take another look at it. It seemed to me that the unit was dismissed before they made it to their home station, then split up and went home alone. Either way, it doesn’t seem to be the way a unit comes back from war today. I don’t know of any unit that is dismissed before they reach their base or home station.

I definitely agree with your second comment. The book was more about literary style and less about Iraq. I can’t think of a single part in it that was specifically about the Iraq War.

Thanks for commenting, and I’ll check out that part of the book again.

In general, I agree with your critique. I think the style of writing Powers attempts was done first and better by Tim O’Brien. I think it’s a decent book, but totally undeserving of being flouted around as being the iconic book of the Iraq War or something when it’s all vague generalities and 5-page long landscape descriptions.

Understood, no argument. I guess I liked most of it because I was in the Corps at that time, and related to a lot of what he talked about. But yeah, now that you mention it, the book does seem a little slanted toward the anti-war crowd.

The whole book was pretty much a long list of how messed up his family life was, and how messed up “The Suck” was , and how messed up you had to be to embrace it. …… like I said, tailor made for the Bicoastal mass market…… just my.$02.

I actually enjoyed Swofford’s book, although I didn’t understand the whole thing about bursting into tears, throwing down his AK and hiding under a humvee at the end of the book. That felt like manufactured drama to me.