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Death and After in Iraq
Casemate
May 2011
On Sale: May 1, 2011
192 pages ISBN: 1612000010 EAN: 9781612000015 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
In 2008, CBS' Chief Foreign Correspondent, Lara Logan,
candidly speculated about the human side of the war in Iraq:
"Tell me the last time you saw the body of a dead American
soldier. What does that look like? Who in America knows what
that looks like? Because I know what that looks like, and I
feel responsible for the fact that no one else does..."
Logan's query raised some important yet ignored questions:
How did the remains of American service men and women get
from the dusty roads of Fallujah to the flag-covered coffins
at Dover Air Force Base? And what does the gathering of
those remains tell us about the nature of modern warfare and
about ourselves? These questions are the focus of Jess
Goodell's story, Shade it Black: Death and After in Iraq. Jess enlisted in the Marines immediately after graduating
from high school in 2001, and in 2004 she volunteered to
serve in the Marine Corps' first officially declared
Mortuary Affairs unit in Iraq. Her platoon was tasked with
recovering and processing the remains of fallen soldiers. With sensitivity and insight, Jess describes her job
retrieving and examining the remains of fellow soldiers lost
in combat in Iraq, and the psychological intricacy of coping
with their fates, as well as her own. Death assumed many
forms during the war, and the challenge of maintaining one's
own humanity could be difficult. Responsible for diagramming
the outlines of the fallen, if a part was missing she was
instructed to "shade it black." This insightful memoir also
describes the difficulties faced by these Marines when they
transition from a life characterized by self-sacrifice to a
civilian existence marked very often by self-absorption. In
sharing with us the story of her own journey, Goodell also
helps us to better understand how PTSD affects female
veterans. With the assistance of John Hearn, she has written
one of the most unique accounts of America's current wars
overseas yet seen.
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