Benjamin Van Horrick
“The invaders drive north through the Iraqi desert in a Humvee, eating candy, dipping tobacco and singing songs. Oil fires burn on the horizon, set during skirmishes between American forces and pockets of die-hard Iraqi soldiers.”
These are the lead sentences in Evan Wright’s series, “The Killer Elite,” documenting the Marine Corps’s 1st Reconnaissance Battalion as it barreled north toward Baghdad during the 2003 US invasion. The three-part series did not appear in Time or Newsweek, but rather Rolling Stone. The tone and tenor of the series brought the war from Baghdad to the home front with a combination of grit and honesty. Sean Woods, Wright’s editor at Rolling Stone, recently remarked that working on these pieces “was like writing the first draft of history.” That first draft of history still hits home just as strongly as Generation Kill, the book he subsequently wrote based on his embedded experience. With the news of Wright’s death by suicide this month, readers should take a few moments to reflect on his embedded reporting and how he combined his sparse prose and his unfettered access to create an enduring, frantic, manic, and humane account of young men at war.
Wright’s early life and career trajectory did not foretell his success of as a war correspondent. However, in retrospect his turbulent youth and immersion in American subcultures proved invaluable. During a 2013 episode of the Longform podcast Wright recounted his experience at a reform school, which he termed “Abu Ghraib for kids.” The experience left Wright with a deep distrust of social groups and a suspicion of the cultural establishment. When he began writing professionally, he did so on society’s cultural periphery, working first at Hustler magazine reviewing pornographic films. Later, he wrote several long-form pieces profiling American subcultures—neo-Nazis, war profiteers, skateboarders, sex workers—work that would form the basis of his essay anthology Hella Nation.
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