Rating: 
Summary: People have a hard time with truth
Review: It's funny how in this day and age people have a real hard time dealing with the truth. They want their stories sugar-coated. They want their U.S. military personnel pristine, virtuous, devoid of vice. Well, sorry folks. "Leave it to Beaver" was not an accurate depiction of the world any more than "Gomer Pyle" was an accurate depiction of the Marine Corps.
Anthony Swofford's account of his life experience and time in the corps is honest, brutally so in fact. He spares no details in his account of the corps, its methods of creating killers and its lack of illusion regarding its purposes. The marines are young, juvenile, often lascivious, desiring combat but often fearful and despairing once they're in the thick of it.
Swofford's account of the Gulf War provides a close-up of what we all saw on the news during this frightening time for the world. The apprehension leading up to Desert Storm. The overwhelming might of U.S. military power. The slagged Iraqi tanks and trucks and bodies after it had begun. Swofford's view is from the ground. We get a real sense of the "fog of war." He and his unit survive enemy fire and endure friendly fire from U.S. tanks that hours before had been in formation with them. They see the charred bodies of Iraqi soldiers and Swofford imagines what they might have been doing, empathizing with them. The stink of the bodies and the surreal world of the ground war are elaborately described from the grunt marine's point of view.
Much of the book describes Swofford's upbringing in a military family. The values he was raised with and how it formed him into the man he becomes. It's not what you'd expect. It's filled with poignancy, regret, and as Swofford relates, "despair." Yet he survives and grows from the experience. War has shaped and in some ways twisted his family into a dysfunctional unit. His father's experiences building landing strips in Vietname for the Air Force are prelude to the son's tour of duty in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
While this book may be hard to stomach for people who have a delusional view of life in the military, it is truth. And what more can we ask for than the truth?
Rating: 
Summary: Gritty memoir of life in the Marine Corps.
Review: This is a very difficult book to put down. Swofford writes with the flair of a novelist using language that is at times poetically vulgar. His depiction of a military life and his indoctrination to it alternate with painfully candid memories of childhood and family life.
Jarhead captures the military culture from the bottom up and records the day to day events of the life of a Marine leading up to the first Gulf War. The actual combat like the war itself seems almost anticlimactic after the tremendous buildup. His descriptions of the corpses of Iraqui soldiers that are seemingly everywhere at the close of the war are graphic and shocking.
Swofford has a great abilty to blend historical and factual experience with literary talent. This book will be considered a classic of the military memoir genre for years to come.
Reading this now as another war rages in the same terrain brings home the reality in a way that news broadcasts even with embedded reporters does not.
Swofford writes with the insights and skeptisism of an insider and does show the Corps. warts and all. However unlike some of the other reviewers I found nothing offensive in that. His writing also reveals an implicit pride in having been a Marine and an acknowlegement that the training and equipment of the US military is unsurpassed.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent -- this book will challenge your preconceptions
Review: When the U.S. Marines were sent to Saudi Arabia in 1990 to fight the Iraqis, Swofford was there, a jarhead in the infanty, on the front lines. This is Swofford's story about what life was like fighting the war and living for six months in the deserts of the Middle East -- the sand, the camaraderie, the physical challenges, the heat -- as well as a few anecdotal flashbacks to boot camp. While those stories are definitely enthralling, what makes this memoir really stand out is Swofford's honesty and candor about what he felt while he was there -- the emotional ups and downs. Anger, hate, fear, compassion, sadness. Lather, rinse, repeat.Swofford swears like a sailor and writes like a pro, but everything else about him is 100% USMC. This book isn't pretty -- it delivers as many troubling truths about war and soldiers as it does inspiring tales of incredible valor. But it's a must-read for anyone curious about what life is like, physically and mentally, for the military personnel who fought in Iraq then, as well as now. Highly recommended, unless you are easily offended by lots of cursing or talk about private parts. I'm looking forward to reading more of Swofford's writing soon -- hope he keeps churning things out!
Rating: 
Summary: Iraq grunt reviews "Jarhead"
Review: Wow, surprised at all the emotion here. I didn't think this many people read books like this.
Couple of bullet points after reading the book and the reviews.
1. Swofford really downplays the honor of being a marine sniper. I was a line company machinegunner in 2/5 and all of the snipers I knew were a cut above. Not only that but if someone was deemed immature they would be dropped back to their line company platoon, no matter how well they did in sniper school.
2. I agree that the book is rife with innacuracies, exaggerations and downright lies. Then again, it is a memoir, not a history book.
3. The story about the guy watching a videotape from home that shows his wife having sex with another guy is the biggest urban legend in the Corps. Second-place going to the oft-repeated Mr. Rogers was a sniper story.
4. I am not wanting to sound like a tough guy but I don't know once person who pissed their pants in combat or talked about being afraid. By the time you've gone through boot camp, SOI a work-up for deployment and a trip to Oki, you're going to be ready to eat nails, if for no other reason than that all of the hard and miserable training has made you mean.
Pissing your pants in boot camp is very common because of all the forced hydration and few chances to use the bathroom.
5. His whining is actually pretty common, especially in the grunts. I know I'm guilty of it. What is uncommon is his lack of sense of humor. The funniest people I met were in the Marines. if you don't have a sense of humor, you won't be able to laugh off all of the bad things that happen to you.
6. Raunchy tales of whoring and drinking are 100% accurate.
7. His story about pulling a rifle on another Marine is probably false. Marines like to screw around and bend the rules but he went way past the line. No one I knew would have put up with that and not reported it.
8. His lack of aggressiveness is pretty shocking. When he talks about his buddies moaning that they are going to die before any mission is hard to beleive. The Marines I fought beside were all raring to go. If you've spent three years training to do something, you want to do it no matter how dangerous it was.
9. The infidelity of Marine wives and girlfriends is sadly true. then again, I can count on one hand the guys I knew who stayed faithful when we went to Oki.
10. The love/hate of the Marine Corps is a very tense subject for all Marines. When he talked about being embarrassed by other Marines while out in town, I was right there with him. I avoided Marines like the plague whenever I was on libbo. I started counting the days until I got out when I still had a year left, but I am more proud of being a Marine than anything else. It's a very strange life, being a Marine.
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