John Freeman

Now that the first wave of reporter memoirs has reached bookstores, a second perhaps more powerful wave of accounts from actual soldiers in Iraq has crested on the horizon. The best of the lot by far is John Crawford's "The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell." Although he doesn't have the political indignation of Philip Caputo, nor the melancholy of Tim O'Brien, Crawford is a wonderfully descriptive writer--and reading this book feels like climbing into a Humvee to go patrol his sector with him in 130 degree heat.

The portrait of infantry life painted here is gritty and unflattering. Soldiers have no love lost for the hajji, as they call Iraqi men, nor can they take the risk of befriending the orphans or children who run about through the sewer-laden streets. Boredom is relieved by talk, drunkenness, and painkillers. On patrols they are pelted with rocks. Dehydrated and soaking through their decades old flak jackets, manipulated by higher ups into missions whose sole purpose is the advancement of careers other than their own, Crawford's fellow grunts are nihilists who don't need Nietzsche. Returning to America is a relief, but you sense something essential has been taken from them out there.

The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq

By John Crawford

Riverhead, $23.95, 219 pages (2005-08-23)

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