Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.7044342092
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Putnam Adult
Manufacturer: Putnam Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: 2005-10-06
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Studio: Putnam Adult

A raw, edgy, yet intimate new voice from the front lines in Iraq-the most authentic we have had yet from the war, heralding this generation's Catch-22.

Like many of his generation, Colby Buzzell was jumping from one dead-end job to another, a paycheck away from moving back home. He spent his time skateboarding and killing as many brain cells as humanly possible. Tired of the monotony, he found himself in front of an army recruiter. Within months he was in Iraq, a machine gunner in the controversial Stryker Brigade Combat Team, an army unit on the cutting edge of combat technology, and the first of its kind.

This is the startlingly honest story of a young man and a war. Trapped amid "guerilla warfare, urban-style" in Mosul, Iraq, Buzzell was struck by the bizarre, absurd, often frightening world surrounding him. He began writing an online web log describing the war-not as it was being reported by CNN or in briefings on Capitol Hill, but as he experienced it. The result is an extraordinary narrative, rich with unforgettable scenes: the fierce firefight in which the resistance came from "men in black"; chain-smoking in the guard tower, counting the tracer rounds fired over the city; the raid on an Iraqi home during which a woman couldn't stop screaming as her husband was being taken away; and the hesitation of a young soldier who had been passed around from platoon to platoon because he was too afraid to fight. As the popularity of his "blog" grew, Buzzell became the embedded reporter the army couldn't control despite its best-and often hilarious-efforts to do so.

My War is the debut of a fresh and remarkable voice, and it is already being compared to the classics of youth and combat Herr's Dispatches and Heller's Catch-22. But My War is much more than a war story; it is the story of a generation caught between the hyper-reality of a technological age and an ever more complicated and dangerous world.
My War is a book that will challenge many of the most common assumptions about the Iraq War and the people fighting in it. Colby Buzzell, the book's author and a U.S. Army machine-gunner who did a year-long tour in Iraq, is not the stereotypical small-town soldier from a Red State. He grew up in San Francisco eating pot brownies at the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair, skateboarding, and listening to punk and heavy metal. He supported Ralph Nader for president, reads George Orwell, and his dad worked in Silicon Valley. But he was sick of his "life in oblivion," bouncing around from one dead-end job to another. As Buzzell writes in his typically gritty prose, "I didn’t want to get all old and have my bratty grandkids ask me, 'Grandpa, where were you during the Iraq war?' and me going, 'Oh, I was busy doing temp work and data entry for 12 bucks an hour.'"

In search of adventure, Buzzell joined the army and got sent to Iraq. First stationed in the ultra-dangerous Sunni Triangle, he quickly mastered how to use the M240 Bravo machine gun: "Just get behind that muthafucka and just fire it." His fellow soldiers, mostly hip-hop fans or headbanging metal-heads like him, killed time watching porn on mini-portable DVD players or listening to Metallica on their iPods while on patrol. Long boring spells were interrupted by wild fits of confusing action. On one of Buzzell's first missions, two platoons fired thousands of rounds at near point-blank range at an unarmed Iraqi civilian. Amazingly, he survived. Out of boredom, Buzzell started a blog, one of the first by an ordinary "Joe" grunt in Iraq. It became a media sensation and got Buzzell in trouble with the REMFs ("Rear Echelon Mutha Fuckers") because of his less-than-glamorous portrayal of the war and his superiors, whom he accuses of constantly lying to the public and the soldiers under their command. My War may be disappointing to readers looking for deeper introspections on the moral questions behind the war, but it is a pretty convincing case against the claim that everything in Iraq is going fine. --Alex Roslin

Customer Rating:
Summary: Fear & Loathing in the US Army
Comment: A self-proclaimed Hunter S. Thompson fan, as well as a once-aimless GenX-er, Colby Buzzell makes his own loathing of many things obvious from the get-go. The fear comes later, and is most vividly expressed nearly 200 pages into this memoir of the Iraq war. Here's his delayed reaction after being in one of the most hard-fought and fierce fire-fight he'd ever encountered on the streets of Mosul -

"I was smoking like a chimney, one right after another. My nerves were completely shot and I was emotionally drained and I noticed that my hands were still kinda shaking ... I was thinking how lucky I was to be alive. I've never experienced anything like the fear I felt today ..."

Stryker machine-gunner Buzzell is a curious character in his own story. Intelectually curious, he is a voracious reader of good books, yet he seems to find little to like in this world. Possessed of a wicked and ironically sly sense of humor, he uses it repeatedly to jab at our country's leaders, the war, politics, the media - just about everything, in fact, including himself. I found myself liking the guy in spite of myself. He made me laugh and he made me wince in recognition. His narrative, with its casual attitude towards porno, "spank" mags and masturbation among the troops, brought to mind Tony Swofford's book about the first Gulf war, JARHEAD - although Buzzell himself dismisses that book scornfully, and that first "war" as well. It was also very like Johnny Rico's fine memoir of the current war in Afghanistan, BLOOD MAKES THE GRASS GROW GREENER. It also flashed me back to my own war, the Cold War. Soldiers are the same, regardless of the setting or the era, it would seem. Nothing much changes. Buzzell's choice of a title for his memoir-cum-blog, MY WAR, is certainly not unique. It is the third military memoir I have read with this title. The others were both WWII memories from journalist Andy Rooney and artist Tracy Sugarman, both fine books. And so is this one. The army tried to call Buzzell back to active duty in 2008, but he was found to be unfit for service - PTSD. The physical, mental and emotional casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan continue to mount and multiply, and the ends to these wars are still not clearly in sight. Perhaps books like Buzzell's will help speed their resolutions. I hope so. - Tim Bazzett, author of SOLDIER BOY, AT PLAY IN THE ASA

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Special View
Comment:
Think of it not as a "book" but of an opportunity to get a very fresh debrief on one soldier's days at war in Iraq.

Colby makes no attempt to elevate his vision to the strategy of the war and thus the view is like that of a keyhole. But that's what makes it very special. The other important element is that the blog provided a realtime download of the facts and the emotions which survived the editing process.

Although he mentions a couple of longer missions it appears that they were seldom gone from their air conditioned barracks and secure perimeter for more than a few days at a time. For a lot of the other troops in the theater that's pretty soft living to the extent that living can be soft when you are in a place where a lot of well armed people want to kill you. For others who seldom venture outside the secure bases Colbly and his fellow troops are the cavalry, rewarded with the respect due soldiers at war and apparently with the affection of the ladies of the Air Force.

The key to enjoying the book is to accept what it is not and appreciate what it is. Much of it is like Bill Mauldin's cartoons but in words. The brightness of his future as a writer is evident not in the organization and editing of a "story" but in the ability to capture his and his fellow soldier's emotions in the smoke and chaos of combat and the life of an EM in that environment.

His comments on the Stryker vehicle are informative.

His reaction to having to have his blog reviewed reminded me of the reaction of the typical skateboarders when told they can not destroy private property and annoy and endanger customers. However, it's not unexpected.

My War is the personal journal of what promises to be a gifted writer. My guess is that in a few years he will look back and appreciate the extent of the transition which occurred in his life, as a writer and as a man.

I expect we will see more of him in the future.

Highly recommended and perhaps best if read alongside First In, the story of an old, Cold War warrior shipped off to Afghanistan in the opening days of the war on terror.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Nothing short of brilliant
Comment: Absolutely amazing book. I originally bought it for my father, but was so drawn into it that I had to purchase one for myself as well. A perfect perspective that anyone who has been to the gulf will immediately recognize.

A brilliant read.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Not as hard hitting as the blog, but still a good read
Comment: I've been a fan of Colby Buzzell since his blog first exploded on the scene in 2--4. I was working in Army Public Affairs when I heard someone mention "Hey, have you seen this guy's blog? Looks like it was written by a second grader." Snobby co-workers aside, it was a little rough around the edges - but it was a powerful narrative of the everyday Joe soldier... without all of the happy-faced nonsense picture the Army and the administration insisted on trying to paint for the Iraq war.

This guy got it... he understood what the war was all about - from his level. He wasn't like a number of his contemporaries who've written about the war, the ones who try to figure out what was going through the President's mind, or why our leaders made the decisions they did. Buzzell stays at the squad and platoon level the whole time, and doesn't pretend to have any idea why things happen.

I'm pleased to see his success as a writer in the years since his separation from the Army. I look for him every month in Esquire, and was especially touched by the article he wrote about being recalled in the IRR.

Anyway, great read at a great price. I hope this isn't the last we see of Colby Buzzell.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Raw, Vivid, Real
Comment: This is the sort of war history your cousin or nephew would have written -and still might! It's not a polished meditation on the nature of war or a defense/attack of invading Iraq in the first place. Colby Buzzell's book is best described as an average combat infantryman's experience told in a vivid, raw and real way.

I can easily hear my nephew's voice when Buzzell tells of his life before the Army and his reasons for joining. In his focus on certain incidents - his rejection by a bored Marine recruiter followed by an enthusiastic Army recruiter, for example - Buzzell's account must ring true for countless other soldiers. His matter-of-fact, unblinking descriptions of the mostly tedious life of occupation troops punctuated by combat with enemy jihadis is compelling reading. While every Army infantry soldier will have his own story, almost certainly all would find something in Buzzell's narrative that would make them say "Yeah. I remember that. It was like that. That's my war too."

So why only 3 stars? Well, I thought we could have used a lot more "what I felt" moments, stronger characterizations (we only know Buzzell), and a better sense of how Colby thought the war and his life were going. Unlike some other reviewers, I thought the start of "My War" was the best part: Colby introduces himself as a directionless young man looking for a purpose, trying to decide what he wants to do and finally choosing to enlist as a way of doing something purposeful, something more than parking cars, earning some money, in the meantime.

But while we get a good idea of the aimless pre-Army Colby, we don't get much of Colby's interior life after. He drops into a more descriptive "we went here, did this, and went there" mode. There's little of Colby's attitude to the monotonous base life, little of the feelings combat must've aroused. It's as if Buzzell doesn't have too many introspective moments that he cares to share with us. It would've helped our understanding if he'd included more moments like the 4th of July celebration and how the army's attempt to make things more like home only served to make you miss home all the more. Colby wonders then if his old civilian friends are even thinking of him and deciding that it wasn't likely.

We don't even get a good sense of his army friends. Virtually none are even given a capsule description. Aside from a sentence or two on a disliked leader or a respected squad medic, we don't know these guys. A quick bio and description would've gone a long way to making the other soldiers real.

I wouldn't expect Buzzell to analyze the war and his part in it to any great depth - but I did think we needed more about this infantry soldier's opinion on what he and the Army were accomplishing. Did he feel that progress was being made? What did Colby the private think of his mission? Was he finding purpose as a soldier or "just killing time".

I hope that the "killing time" subtitle is not an apt one. At least, not in the "wasting time" sense. Colby has a talent for writing. I hope that he's able to direct himself into that direction. As he develops, maybe Colby can give us those characterizations we missed this time. I've no doubt he has it in him to be more introspective and not just about the war. I understand that since he's left the army, he's been divorced (his marriage was a quick, mostly unexplained paragraph or two in the book), moved back home, and seems mostly at loose ends (at least if you judge by his own writing of life after the army) again. Fortunately, his re-call to active duty in 2008 wasn't completed and Mr. Buzzell is not Pvt. Buzzell again.

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