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A review by jennifer
Redeployment by Phil Klay
4.0
If there's a required reading list for Americans, this deserves to be at the top. The description on the back says it all "Taking readers to the front lines of the war in Iraq and back, Redployment asks us to understand what happened there and what happened to the soldiers who returned."
It seems the least we can do and a poignant, somewhat mortifying request when I consider this paragraph from the story "Unless It's a Sucking Chest Wound" in which a former Marine has gone on to law school at NYU:
"Some of them, highly educated kids at a top five law school didn't even know what the Marine Corps did. (“It's like a stronger Army, right?”) Few of them followed the wars at all, and most subscribed to a "It's a terrible mess, so let's not think about it too much" way of thinking. Then there were the political kids, who had definite opinions and were my least favorite to talk to. A lot of these overlapped with the insufferable public interest crowd, who hated the war, who couldn't see why anbody'd ever do corporate law, didn't understand why anyone would ever join the military, didn't understand why anyone would ever want to own a gun, let alone fire one, but who still paid lip service to the idea that I deserved some sort of respect and that I was, in an imprecise way that was clearly related to action movies and recruiting commercials, far more "hard-core" than your average civilian. So sure, I was a Marine. At the very least, I wasn't them."
Did he nail you somewhere in this description? He definitely nailed me.
It seems the least we can do and a poignant, somewhat mortifying request when I consider this paragraph from the story "Unless It's a Sucking Chest Wound" in which a former Marine has gone on to law school at NYU:
"Some of them, highly educated kids at a top five law school didn't even know what the Marine Corps did. (“It's like a stronger Army, right?”) Few of them followed the wars at all, and most subscribed to a "It's a terrible mess, so let's not think about it too much" way of thinking. Then there were the political kids, who had definite opinions and were my least favorite to talk to. A lot of these overlapped with the insufferable public interest crowd, who hated the war, who couldn't see why anbody'd ever do corporate law, didn't understand why anyone would ever join the military, didn't understand why anyone would ever want to own a gun, let alone fire one, but who still paid lip service to the idea that I deserved some sort of respect and that I was, in an imprecise way that was clearly related to action movies and recruiting commercials, far more "hard-core" than your average civilian. So sure, I was a Marine. At the very least, I wasn't them."
Did he nail you somewhere in this description? He definitely nailed me.