WAR IS NEVER KIND

Topic 3.2

CRIME, TERRORISM, AND WAR

CLASS 3

WAR IS NEVER KIND

2. Watch an episode from the movie The Hurt Locker. Do you believe the things you see on the screen? Do they correspond to the critics’ and viewers’ praisings?

3. In small groups, share your ideas on the problem of war films. Why do you think there are so many such Hollywood-made movies today?

4. Read an excerpt from a novel by a contemporary American author and find proof of the fact that in any war it is the innocent who suffer most.

From THE LUCKY ONE

by Nicholas Sparks

The Marine Corps is based on the number 3. It was one of the first things they taught you in basic training. Made things easy to understand. Three marines made a fire team, three fire teams made a squad, three squads made a platoon, three pla­toons made a company, three companies made a battalion, and three battalions made a regiment. On paper, anyway. By the time they invaded Iraq, their regiment had been combined with elements from other units, including the Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, Firing Battalions of the Eleventh Marines, the Second and Third Assault Amphibian Battalions, Company B from the First Combat Engineer Battalion, and the Combat Service Support Battalion 115. Massive. Prepared for anything. Nearly six thousand personnel in total.

As Thibault walked beneath a sky beginning to change colors with the onset of dusk, he thought back to that night, techni­cally his first combat in hostile territory. His regiment, the First, Fifth, became the first unit to cross into Iraq with the intention of seizing the Rumaylah oil fields. Everyone remembered that Saddam Hussein had set most of the wells in Kuwait on fire as he'd retreated in the First Gulf War, and no one wanted the same thing to happen again. Long story short, the First, Fifth, among others, got there in time. Only seven wells were burning by the time the area was secured. From there Thibault's squad was ordered north to Baghdad to help to secure the capital city. The First, Fifth was the most decorated marine regiment in the corps and thus was chosen to lead the deepest assault into enemy territory in the history of the corps. His first tour in Iraq lasted a little more than four months.

Five years after the fact, most of the specifics about that first tour had blurred. He had done his job and eventually was sent back to Pendleton. He didn't talk about it. He tried not to think about it. Except for this: Ricky Martinez and Bill Kincaid, the other two men in Thibault's fire team, were part of a story he'd never forget.

Take any three people, stick them together, and they're going to have differences. No surprise there. And on the surface, they were different. Ricky grew up in a small apartment in Midland, Texas, and was a former baseball player and weight-lifting fanatic who'd played in the Minnesota Twins farm system before enlisting; Bill, who played the trumpet in his high school march­ing band, was from upstate New York and had been raised on a dairy farm with five sisters. Ricky liked blondes, Hill liked brunettes; Ricky chewed tobacco, and Bill smoked; Ricky liked rap music, Bill favored country-western. No big deal. They trained together, they ate together, they slept together. They debated sports and politics. They shot the breeze like brothers and played practical jokes on each other. Bill would wake with one eyebrow shaved off; Ricky would wake the next night with both of them gone. Thibault learned to wake at the slightest sound and somehow kept both eyebrows intact. They laughed about it for months. Drunk one night, they got matching tat­toos, each proclaiming their fidelity to the corps.

After so much time together, they got to the point where they could anticipate what the others would do. Each of them in turn had saved Thibault's life, or at least kept him from serious harm. Bill grabbed the back of Thibault's flak jacket just as Thibault was poised to move into the open; moments later, a sniper wounded two men nearby. The second time, a distracted Thibault was almost struck by a speeding Humvee driven by a fellow marine; that time, it was Ricky who grabbed his arm to stop him. Even in war, people die in auto accidents. Look at Patton.

After securing the oil fields, they had arrived at the outskirts of Baghdad with the rest of their company. The city had not fallen yet. They were part of a convoy, three men among hun­dreds, tightening their grip on the city. Aside from the roar of Allied vehicle engines, all was quiet as they entered the outlying neighborhoods. When gunfire was heard from a graveled road off the main thoroughfare, Thibault's squad was ordered to check it out.

They evaluated the scene. Two- and three-story buildings sandwiched together on either side of the potholed road. A lone dog eating garbage. The smoking ruins of a car a hundred meters away. They waited. Saw nothing. Waited some more. Heard nothing. Finally, Thibault, Ricky, and Bill were ordered to cross the street. They did so, moving quickly, reaching safety. From there, the squad proceeded up the street, into the unknown.

When the sound of gunfire rang out again that day, it wasn't a single shot. It was the death rattle of dozens and then hundreds of bullets from automatic weapons trapping them in a circle of gunfire. Thibault, Ricky, and Bill, along with the rest of the squad across the street, found themselves pinned in doorways with few places to hide.

The firefight didn't last long, people said later. It was long enough. The blizzard of fire cascaded from windows above them. Thibault and his squad instinctively raised their weapons and fired, then fired again. Across the street, two of their men were wounded, but reinforcements arrived quickly. A tank rolled in, fast-moving infantry in the rear. The air vibrated as the muzzle flashed and the upper stories of a building collapsed, dust and glass filling the air. Everywhere Thibault heard the sounds of screaming, saw civilians fleeing the buildings into the streets. The fusillade continued; the stray dog was shot and sent tum­bling. Civilians fell forward as they were shot in the back, bleeding and crying out. A third marine was injured in the lower leg. Thibault, Ricky, and Bill were still unable to move, impris­oned by the steady fire chipping at the walls next to them, at their feet. Still, the three of them continued to fire. The air vibrated with a roar, and the upper floors of another building collapsed. The tank, rolling forward, was getting close now. All at once, enemy gunfire started coming from two directions, not just one. Bill glanced at him; he glanced at Ricky. They knew what they had to do. It was time to move; if they stayed, they would die. Thibault rose first.

In that instant, all went suddenly white, then turned black.

In Hampton, more than five years later, Thibault couldn't recall the specifics, other than the feeling that he'd been tossed into a washing machine. He was sent tumbling into the street with the explosion, his ears ringing. His friend Victor quickly reached his side; so did a naval corpsman. The tank continued to lire, and little by little, the street was brought under control.

He learned all this after the fact, just as he learned that the explosion had been caused by an RPG, a rocket-propelled grenade. Later, an officer would tell Thibault that it had most likely been meant for the tank; it missed the turret by inches. Instead, as if fated to find them, it flew toward Thibault, Ricky, and Bill.

Thibault was loaded into a Humvee and evacuated from the scene, unconscious. Miraculously, his wounds had been minor, and within three days he would be back with his squad. Ricky and Bill would not; each was later buried with full military honors. Ricky was a week away from his twenty-second birthday. Bill was twenty years old. They were neither the first casualties of the war nor the last. The war went on.

Thibault forced himself not to think about them much. It seemed callous, but in war the mind shuts down about things like that. It hurt to think about their deaths, to reflect on their absence, so he didn't. Nor did most of the squad. Instead, he did his job. He focused on the fact that he was still alive. He focused on keeping others safe.

5. Work in small groups. Read the following statement: “Wars are fought by soldiers, yet they are won by generals”. How well does this statement correspond to the message of the above excerpt?

6. Work in pairs. Read the battle description attentively and pay special attention to the author’s style and manner. Does it remind you of anything similar? What effect does the description produce?

7. Read the article – very fast – and use only three words to convey its message.