Shade It Black: Death and After in Iraq - Hardcover

Goodell, Jessica; Hearn, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1612000010 ISBN 13: 9781612000015

Publisher: Casemate, 2011

Synopsis

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.

Table of Contents

Prologue

1. To Iraq
2. Mortuary Affairs
3. Camp TQ
4. Processing
5. Pressure
6. Convoys
7. Stigma
8. Pushed
9. Fire and Rain
10. Processing Iraqis
11. Toll
12. Immorality Plays
13. Personal Effects
14. Four Marines in the News
15. Mothers, Sisters, Daughters
16. Boom
17. Heads
18. The Girls’ Generation
19. Life and Death
20. Anticipation
21. Home
22. Miguel
23. Searching
24. St. Louis
25. Seattle
26. A Break
27. Tucson
28. Nightmare
29. Chautauqua
30. Hope

Epilogue
Afterword
Postscript
Further Reading

About this title

About the Author:

Jessica Goodell, a native of western New York State, concluded her enlistment in the Marines and enrolled in graduate school in the fall of 2011. She has been assisted in this work by John Hearn who teaches at Jamestown Community College in Jamestown, New York.

Review:

“...Goodell’s verbal images are visceral, as keen as you will find in contemporary combat non fiction. As a student of co author Hearn’s in 2006, Goodell never said a word about Iraq or Mortuary Affairs. Fortunately reader, she is talking and writing.” (Military Times)

In this absorbing memoir, Iraq veteran Goodell recounts her service, the brutal, sexist culture of the Marine Corps, and her struggle to adapt to the world upon her return from Iraq. After enlisting, Goodell volunteered to serve with the Marines' first declared Mortuary Attachment in Iraq's Al Anbar province, in 2004. The Mortuary Attachment platoon was responsible for doing "what had to be done but that no one wanted to know about": they "processed" the bodies of U.S. and other soldiers killed in combat, so that they could be identified and returned to their families. She describes in gruesome detail what this involved, and how it affects the soldiers who care for their comrades in this way. She rubbed up against a Marine Corp culture that includes routine indignities ...outright misogyny ... and sexist marching cadences. Coming home, unable to gain weight or sleep or relax and unprepared for post-service life among a population that had no idea of who she was or what she had gone through, Goodell began to come apart. Her memoir is a courageous settling of accounts, and a very good read (Publisher’s Weekly)

“Shade It Black is a powerful, direct and honest account of one Marine’s experiences in Iraq. It is a story of trauma and struggle, but also of integrity and ultimately growth. For me, the twin themes of trauma and posttraumatic growth in this book recalled Somerset Maugham’s classic, The Razor’s Edge.” (W. Keith Campbell, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of Georgia)

About this edition

• Publisher: Casemate
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1612000010
• ISBN 13: 9781612000015
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192