Examples Of Rehumanization In Swoffat

Another excellent example of rehumanization takes place in the film when Swoffat comes across a convey of burnt vehicles and charred bodies, the aftermath of a coalition bombing campaign. We see both civilain and military casualties in this scene showing what appears to be regular citizens who were fleeing the war zone and were in the same vicinity as an Iraqi platoon that was bombed, innocent victims, illustrated most profoundly when we see the charred body of a young girl still sitting upright with a ribbon in her hair seated inside the school bus. Swofford goes off on his own and encounters a bombed out group of Iraqi soldiers and sits down across from one, taking in the whole experience. In this scene we see pain in his face as the nature

of the situation envelops him and results in a visceral reaction causing him to vomit. He identifies and empathizes with this person, having a ‘conversation’ with this them (human not enemy) commenting “One fucking hell of a day, huh?” (Jarhead)

The film also explores expectations of war comparing popular knowledge versus actual experience.

As noted earlier, we witness the soliders gathered around watching numerous war movies using these as a sort of training to show them what to expect in battle and also serve as a way to pump-up the troops making them battle hungry. Reality however sets in upon arrival into the battle zone when the soliders realize that war is not an endless, adreneline filled adventure as depicted in the movies but rather a series of few anticlimatic situations (Swofford’s platoon do come under fire a couple times instilling true fear that witnesses Swofford urinating his pants but even those short burts of action are rare and “non threatening” as the enemy appears to lack compatent ability to aim its artillary properly) with the majority of the primary battle consisting of fighting the boredom of endless training, constant drills, and a daily montonous routine that begin to take a toll on the mental condition of the soldiers. Simultanously during this period of stress and fatigue the Marines also experience further difficulties as they find themselves becoming more and more detatched from society and from the norms of everyday life. The soldiers become estranged from most civilan relationships – this is noted throughout the film/book as we see numerous men lose their girlfreinds or wives (the rule and not the exception) and their photos put up on the wall of shame of women who have

left, cheated, lied etc.

Nothing stays the same,Swoff.
Not our girlfriends,
not our families,
not anyone.

Time doesn't stop
back in the real world.. (Jarhead)

Swofford puts the barrel of his gun in his mouth contemplating pulling the trigger and we would be quick to jump to the conclusion that this could be the result of fear and stress and/or the knowledge of his girlfriend’s infidelity but we discover that it is more a result of the above than any other individual situation. Swofford declares: “my despair is less despair than boredom and lonlienss”. (Swofford 74)

Admist all this stress and isolation, Johnny a member of the sniper team, begins to question his/their purpose in this war. “I don’t know if we’ll be needed,. The war’s going to be moving too fast. Sixteen hundred yards is nothing. Sixteen hundred yards was two weeks of fighting in Vietnam and a whole goddamn year in World War One. It’ll last about five minutes out here, if you ask me”. (Swofford 158) This allows us to see how they wrestle with their purpose or purposeless contribution to the war but also an insight to how technology can affect a war. We see old radios that are constantly breaking down along side brand new cutting edge equipment such as the infra-red netting used to conceal troops and equipment as well as the use of excessive air campaigns turning Desert Storm into what was later termed an “air war”. This fast paced air campaign did all but make use of snipers obsolete as when Swofford’s one and only opportunity to fire his rifle on the enemy was supplanted at the last moment in favour of an air strike instead. He ended up not firing his weapon once in battle.

The endless days of monotony peppered with rare but short bursts of intense fear along with shared isolation and experience of being on the frontlines where each other’s lives are in one another’s hands help form tight primary battle group relations among these soldiers. It is common to hear these small front line groups refer to each other as family and express years later that they’ve never had before or after such a tight and close bond to any group of individuals. An example of the commradery they have formed is evidenced in the spontaneous break out of “field-fuck” (when marines mockingly sexually violate one member of their unit) in presence of the reporters. At first it may appear as nothing more than a bunch of fratt boys joking around but it actually serves as an outlet for the myriad of emotions they are experiencing and as a way to communally deal with the stress of war.

The exhilaration isn’t sexual, it’s Communal - a pure surge of
passion and violence and shared anger, a pure distillation of
our confusion and hope and shared fear. We aren’t field-fucking
Kuehn; we’re fucking ...

President Bush and Dick Cheney and the

generals, and Saddam Hussein ... we’re fucking the sand and the

lonliness and the boredom and the potentially unfaithful wives and girlfriends...we’re fucking our confusion and fear and boredom;

we’re fucking ourselves for signing the contract ... we’re angry and

afraid and acting the way we’ve been trained to kill, violently and

with no remorse. (Swofford 21)

It is through such tight bonds that soldiers are offered a way to cope with and handle the experience of war providing them with a sense of commradeship sharing a mutual situation very few will ever know and perhaps somehow aid them in making it out of it all alive or at least with their sanity in tact, despite that all this might just be wishful thinking:

We turn the inside of our hooch into a circus,

and inside of this circus we cannot be injured,

inside of our circus we cannot be touched.

But we are insane to believe this. (Swofford

149)

Anthony Swofford’s participation in Desert Shield and Desert Storm did not include much battle but his memoir provides an excellent insight into the physical training and mental struggles that afflicted him and the other Marines throughout the deployment. We are able to analyze his understanding of the causes and historical background of the war, learn how politicans and media colluded to mobilize public support behind the battle and have a peek into the technology of war learning of new cutting edge equipment like infra-red netting and very detailed descriptions of various guns/rifles and their capabilities. The memoir however excells in two important areas: How deinvdividualizion and dehumanization are both used to create men capable of killing and how in turn, proximaty to the enemy by frontline troops can work against this process possbily having a soldier empathize, rehumanize and finally refuse to shoot/kill the enemy. Secondly we are given detailed insight of the psychological effects that war has on soldiers and how group dynamics and commradeship help to mitigate these effects. Moments of instense engagement followed by weeks or months of endless training, monotany, boredom, lonlieness and despair are all cited as possible sources of PTSD that soldiers may experience upon return to civilian life. The shoeless Vietnam veteran with darkened eyes and tattered clothes who joins them on the bus at the end leaves us wondering if this is a haunting spectre of the future that lies ahead of them.