Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War

by Evan Wright

Vigorous public ball scratching is common in the combat-arms side of the Marine Corps, even among high-level officers in the midst of briefings. The gesture is defiantly male, as is much of the vernacular of the Marine Corps itself.

What unites them is an almost reckless desire to test themselves in the most extreme circumstances. In many respects the life they have chosen is a complete rejection of the hyped, consumerist American dream as it is dished out in reality TV shows and pop-song lyrics. They’ve chosen asceticism over consumption. Instead of celebrating their individualism, they’ve subjugated theirs to the collective will of an institution. Their highest aspiration is self-sacrifice over self-preservation. There is idealism about their endeavor, but at the same time the whole point of their training is to commit the ultimate taboo: to kill.

There is an undeniable Peter Pan quality to the military. A Marine psychiatrist attached to the First Division says, “The whole structure of the military is designed to mature young men to function responsibly while at the same time preserving their adolescent sense of invulnerability.”

While the Marines might possess that “adolescent sense of invulnerability,” I have the more adult handicap of having always lived in denial. It’s a problem for which I’ve attended therapy sessions and self-help groups in an effort to overcome, originally at the urging of a now ex-wife. But I find that in a pitched firefight, denial serves one very well. I simply refuse to believe anyone’s going to shoot me.

But the fact is, there’s a definite sense of exhilaration every time there’s an explosion and you’re still there afterward. There’s another kind of exhilaration, too. Everyone is side by side, facing the same big fear: death. Usually, death is pushed to the fringes in the civilian world. Most people face their end pretty much alone, with a few family members if they are lucky. Here, the Marines face death together, in their youth. If anyone dies, he will do so surrounded by the very best friends he believes he will ever have.