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Book Reviews
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What Every Person Should Know about War
by Chris Hedges
(Simon & Schuster Free Press, 2003)
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Chris Hedges, author of “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,” has organized this reference book in question-and-answer form, detailing facts about the experience of military life and death in time of war. Hedges bases his manual on well-referenced information from government, medical, and psychiatric sources and personal accounts. He covers the soldier’s career from enlistment to the aftermath of military service, be it death or return to civilian life.
The clinical tone of “What Every Person Should Know About War” belies the intensity of rigorous physical and mental training, combat stress, injuries from conventional and non-conventional weapons, torture, rape, and urban warfare. Soldiers’ reactions to these events are unflinchingly described: the reader/soldier is addressed as “you,” for example, “You will get used to the noise [of explosions]” or “You will probably go through several emotional reactions when you kill.” There’s a description of how long it will take for you to die from loss of blood. I can take only a little of this material at a time, but that little is chilling.
Chris Hedges wants “every person” to know these facts so we will be conscious of the sacrifices we demand from those we send to war. Our young men and women, he says, do not deserve to be deceived about the risks of war.
Yet military recruiters have been accused of misleading and lying to would-be recruits and their families about what may be in store for them. In her article “AWOL in America,” Harpers (March 2005), Kathy Dobie cites the recruiting process as a key element to blame for the rising number of deserters from the military.
The recruiter’s spiel features career and educational opportunities, financial bonuses, good-looking gear, and easily available sex. A new recruit’s reluctance to kill is met with scorn or, more recently, psychological techniques of desensitization, conditioning, and denial defense mechanisms.
The current push for increased recruitment is all the more reason that Hedges’ book is essential reading for young men and women, their families, and those who counsel them. It should be available in every high school library.
Julie Krejsa
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