Jarhead : A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles

My despair is less despair than boredom and loneliness.

I have gone to war and now I can issue my complaint. I can sit on my porch and complain all day. And you must listen. Some of you will say to me: You signed the contract, you crying bitch, and you fought in a war because of your signature, no one held a gun to your head. This is true, but because I signed the contract and fulfilled my obligation to fight one of America’s wars, I am entitled to speak, to say, I belong to a fucked situation.

It occured to me that we will never be young again.

Every war is different. Every war is the same.

Some wars are unavoidable and need well be fought, but this doesn't erase warfare's waste. Sorry, we must say to the mothers whose son's die horribly. This will never end. Sorry.

My combat action has commenced... I've pissed my pants, but only a little.

During the few months Troy had been back home, he’d told his friends about us, and so we quickly eased into the conversation as though we’d all known each other for many years. They embarrassed us with great thanks for having served overseas. They recounted combat events Troy had told them, and we realized by the context of their stories that Troy had made us heroes for his friends because we’d been heroes to him. At this point I was the saddest I’d yet been over Troy’s passing, because the true friend from war is the friend who obliterates his own story by telling the stories of others.

It dosnt matter how many mr. and mrs. johnsons are anti war- the actuall killers who know how to use the weapons are not.

Now I often think of the first time I received artillery fire, and the subsequent obliteration of the enemy observation post. I'll never know how many men manned the OP, but in memory I fix the number at two, and though at the time I was angry that the pompus captain took the handset from me and stole m y kills, I have lately been thankful he insisted on calling the fire mission, ans sometimes when I am feeling hopeful or even religious, I think that buy taking my two kills the pompous captain handed me life, some extra moments of living for myself or that I can offer others, though I have no idea to use or disuse these extra moments, or if I've wasted them already.

When you fail, you disgrace yourself and others. When you succeed, be proud and others will be proud for you.

If while alive you hurt or disappoint people you love, there's no use continuing such behavior when you're dead.

Mr. and Mrs. Johnson in Omaha or San Francisco or Manhattan will watch the films and weep and decide once and for all that war is inhumane and terrible, and they will tell their friends at church and their family this, but Corporal Johnson at Camp Pendleton and Sergeant Johnson at Travis Air Force Base and Seaman Johnson at Coronado Naval Station and Spec 4 Johnson at Fort Bragg and Lance Corporal Swofford at Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base watch the same films and are excited by them, because the magic brutality of the films celebrates the terrible and despicable beauty of their fighting skills. Fight, rape, war, pillage, burn. Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man; with film you are stroking his cock, tickling his balls with the pink feather of history, getting him ready for his real First Fuck.

I like to fuck a lot and drop acid becomes one of our rallying cries, better than any Ohh-rah or Semper fi.

And as a young man raised on the films of the Vietnam War, I want ammunition and alcohol and dope, I want to screw some whores and kill some Iraqi motherfuckers.