Joel Turnipseed was a 22-year-old philosophy student at theUniversity of Minnesota who went off to war with a bag full of books:Plato's Republic, Henry Thoreau's Walden and T.E. Lawrence's SevenPillars of Wisdom.
Now, more than a decade later, he's out with a new book on the1991 Gulf War, Baghdad Express (Borealis Books, $22.95), which alongwith Anthony Swofford's best-selling Jarhead is one of two soldiers'memoirs from that war that have been attracting notice.
Turnipseed was a Marine reservist, an automotive mechanic whodrove tractor-trailers full of ammunition. He survived Scud attacksbut stopped 25 miles short of the front lines.
On the eve of war, he describes a colonel bursting onto a stage,"grabbing the microphone from its stand while still in stride, likeWayne Newton doing Patton." He tells the troops, "Sodom Insane is notgoing to back down, and neither are we."
Turnipseed describes how the Pentagon got permission to dispensedrugs as a prophylactic measure against nerve-gas attacks. Itpromised to warn soldiers of risks and side effects, but "abysmallyfailed to keep its word."
He sees Iraqi POWs as "hollow men" who gave new meaning toNietzsche's writings on the "knowledge of misery."
It's a short book about a short war, but Turnipseed writes that he"will spend a lifetime trying to explain the complexity of emotions--anger, pride, love, honor, ambiguity, betrayal and hope--that inherein the motto Semper Fidelis: Always Faithful."
Gannett News Service
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