Baghdad Express: A Gulf War Memoir

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Summary: An ironic and enlightening military memoir
Review: "Baghdad Express: A Gulf War Memoir," by Joel Turnipseed, tells the story of a Marine Corps reservist who was activated to serve as a truck driver in the first Gulf War in the early 1990s. The book features illustrations by Brian Kelly. Turnipseed is a bookish misfit who would rather "be back in a coffee shop reading Wittgenstein" than serving in this war. This is a lively and well-written memoir. Turnipseed's witty, thoughtful prose is a pleasure to read--it's a voice steeped in pop culture and keen observation skills.

The narrative is full of interesting details about life in a wartime "tent city," events that occurred on truck driving missions, and other aspects of his tour. The dialogue that he recreates is great, especially the very un-P.C. banter between Turnipseed and the other soldiers in the tent known as the "Dog Pound." A place where Plato meets Public Enemy, the Dog Pound is a place for uncensored discussions of race, sex, and political matters.

Turnipseed's narrative is not just about war, but also about his struggle to find meaning, refuge, and happiness in great works of philosophy and literature--quotes from which are woven into the text. The text is also enlivened by comic book style sections. Turnipseed takes a critical and satirical tone towards the military, but also celebrates the troops and the unique bond that they share. This book is also particularly valuable for giving us the voice of a reservist in a support job; it's a great complement to the "hardcore" warrior-type military memoirs available. As a reservist in a support job (military postal service) who was called up to serve in Afghanistan, I can tell you that Turnipseed's narrative rings true; it's a highly entertaining and moving work that I recommend to both military and non-military audiences.

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Summary: News from somewhere I've never been
Review: "Being bombed is boring." So begins one of the chapters in Joel Turnipseed's book, the best I've read yet about Gulf War I. From sentences like these, one gets the sense that one is in the presence of an author only interested in one thing: the truth. Turnipseed has the rare talent to get that kind of honesty onto the page, and also to make it completely absorbing. I want to compare this book to the movie "Deerhunter" for the way it does not have any interest in shaping things so much as simply showing them to you as they happened in all their raw irony. What makes this book so inviting is that the author has a wonderful sense of who he is, both in civilian life and as a soldier. He combines this with his style of spare honesty and self-effacement that is refreshing and downright fun. Joel does not claim to be brave. He does not claim to have it all together. It is his uncertainty in so many of his life and war situations that makes for the best reading. He etches his fellow soldiers' effortlessly, and you feel like you know them. You finish this book hoping that this will not be the last work from this exciting young talent.

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Summary: interesting point of view
Review: I enjoyed this book, for the main reason of seeing how a philosophically minded Marine cope with his fellow Grunts and his reservist status in the first Gulf War. I especially liked reading about his time in the Dog Pound, with their unique use of language and hip urban style. All of it rings true. My only disappointment with this book is that it was too short and I somehow felt "cheated" that it didn't live up to what the cover blurbs made it out to be. I wanted more philosophical insights, more profoundly crafted sentences, and a longer duration. When I finished reading it, my thought was, "that's it?" It could've been a lot longer. As it stands, it doesn't really amount to much more than offering a glimpse of what it was like for a short period of time for one philosophically minded Marine. Hopefully Turnipseed will have another book in him and go much deeper in his interest in philosophy and applying it to life, wherever it finds him.

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Summary: Semper Fi
Review: I was a Combat Engineer in the same Reserve Unit as Joel Turnipseed.
I finished my enlistment in "89" Got out and became a "Hippee".
I was recalled to active service for The 1st Gulf War , sent to Camp Pendleton and stuck on Guard Duty for the length of my recall.
This book illustrates the hardship of being a compasionate liberal in the
Marine Corps. It echos some of the same feelings I had as a week end warrior reluctantly called to duty. Turnipseed greets us with admisions of Shock, Apathy and Indiference. Not a common theme in Recruiting liturature. Marines reading this book will find no suprise in Turnipseeds concluding revelations . Esprit de Corps runs deep, even in us Liberals.
Once a Marine Always a Marine. There aint no used to be.

Semper Fi

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Summary: Philosopher goes to war
Review: Joel Turnipseed, a marine reservist with a passion for philosophy, finds that there are more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in his philosphy when his unit gets called to duty in the first Gulf War. Turnispeed spends the war driving tractor trailers for Uncle Sam while fighting off mind numbing boredom by reading the works of Plato and Thoreau whenever he gets the chance. By the end the war, Turnipseed, finds the philosophy he had used as the compass of his life, challenged by the realities of war and the world.

If you're looking for a patriotic, John Wayne, blood n' guts retelling of the Gulf War, you'd probably best look elsewhere. Turnipseed sticks to the part of the war that he experienced, which was essentially driving a truck back and forth up a stretch of highway in Saudi Arabia. He does give us an idea of what military life during Gulf War I was like for the everyman reservist, boredom interupted occasionally by a Scud attack. Turnipseed gives a truthful account of his tour of duty, mixing the good with the bad. He includes the positive aspects of the marines (the camaraderie with his fellow soldiers, the people who exceeded his expectations of what a marine is) as well as the bad (the pointless bueracracy of his higher ups, the grim reality of an Iraqi POW camp).

Baghdad Express is an engaging read that is well worth the price of admission. The book is a little self absorbed, but hey what did you expect from a philosopher's war memoir. Early on in the book Turnipseed inscribes "Know Thyself" on his helmet. Baghdad Express is his attempt to do just that.

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Summary: He writes with wit and adds insight through philosophy.
Review: M*A*S*H*, with the 4077th, was one of TV's most beloved military sitcoms. Turnipseed, like the writers of M*A*S*H*, captures, in this memoir, the monotony of military life, the irony of military regulations, and the tragedy of war.

For those who have suffered through the empty hours of guard duty; for those who were assigned to meaningless, tedious tasks; for those know the meaning of the acronyms: 'FUBAR' and 'SNAFU', this book will bring back memories.

Turnipseed was lost, homeless and directionless before being called to active service. In the 1991 Iraq War, Turnipseed was stationed with the Marine Corp Sixth Motor Transport Battalion.

"Not till we are lost, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves". These words by Thoreau 's were Joel Turnipseed's scripture and his compass during the war.

During this war, he found meaning and direction. He writes with wit and adds insight through philosophy. Recommended.

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Summary: Excellent Book on GI's in 1st Gulf War!
Review: Mr. Turnipseed combines some fine philosophical musings with outrageous and bawdy humor to write a wonderful memoir about the general outrageousness of the first gulf war! At times the obscenities get a bit overdone, but that's the way these guys talk. Mainly set in a Saudi Marine Camp, you can tell that the main thing these guys want is some peace, quite, and solititute, three items desperating missing, and especially valuable to our bookish, very thoughtful author. He feels a bit out out of it, among the group of rough, but lovable buddies who call him the "Professor". Beautifully written, though the typeset seems a bit small for this reviewer, Mr. Turnipseed is fortunate that he was mainly a supply driver, and did not get too involved in the blood and guts of this war. All in all, a fine read, and I'm looking forward to the Mr. Turnipseed's next effort, probably a novel as stated on the dust jacket.

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Summary: News from somewhere I've never been
Review: Thank you, Joel, for sharing your story. This story may not reflect everybody's experience who was in the Gulf War, but that's OK. Turnipseed doesn't claim to speak for everybody, only himself. Why amazon and other sites continue to allow posts such as the one below, which border on personal character attacks, is truly a mystery to me. Anyone who wants to represent their experience more accurately is welcome to write his/her own book and put his/her real name on it so we can all post our opinions about them on amazon. By the way, I think Joel writes top-notch dialogue!

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Summary: Getting by with a little help from his friends
Review: This book was on its way to a lukewarm review as a better-than-average-but-ultimately-forgettable war memoir, until Lance Corporal Turnipseed accidentally plowed his semi-trailer into an unforgiving sand berm and was forced to spend the night stranded in the desert. Discovering his plight, his buddies respond as though they were cast members in a remake of "Angels with Dirty Faces."

Despite being on the tail rather than the tooth end of the American war machine, the Marine reservists of the Sixth Motor Transport Battalion are a lot like their combat counterparts. Most of the people in this book would also have been at home in the classic 1953 Leon Uris novel, "Battle Cry."

The poignant moments in this memoir owe Turnipseed and his Gunnery Sergeant no little debt. Without the fish-out-of-water conversations between the philosophical author and his streetwise tent-mates (Gunny Benson foremost among them), this loosely-organized collection of anecdotes has all the potential of an unused ammunition round. But with those conversations, Turnipseed's story becomes an exhilarating riff on profanity, pathos, and humanity. The Marine Corps motto, "Semper Fidelis," morphs into "Fido," but that's okay.

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Summary: An outcast at war in the gulf
Review: Turnipseed's book is about, in my opinion, the most noble kind of soldier, a reluctant warrior. Turnipseed had been AWOL for a few months before Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1991. He was a philosophy major at the University of Minnesota, and when he went to Saudi Arabia in January, he brought a number of his books with him. He views the war from his own quirky (and yes, liberal) standpoint, but he also does a good job of looking at it through the lens of the works of Plato, Thoreau and a host of other philosphers. During his time in Iraq, he comes across a number of sympathetic and not so sympathetic characters -- they all spring to life from the pages through his descriptions and dialogue. There are a number of really good reviews on this site that do this book more justice than I do...read them.

I really wish they would teach this book at West Point.