WARBODY

Powerful collaborative account of a Marine sniper’s journey through the wilderness of war’s toxicity.

This synthesis of combat memoir and environmental polemic follows an equally unorthodox structure, alternating chapters by co-authors Howe, an associate professor of history and environmental studies at Reed College, and Lemons, who “served four tours in Iraq and Kuwait and then came home and became seriously and mysteriously ill” following his 2009 honorable discharge. Howe argues, “Alexander Lemons’s wartime experience exposed him to a crazy cocktail of potentially toxic substances” and traumas. They first met in 2012, with Lemons’ path to graduate studies derailed by spiraling illness, then began working together on this project in 2018, refining an approach they term “historical anatomy.” Howe explains, “Together, we use Alex’s story to rethink the violence we associate with war” but also “include the slow violence of toxic exposures and lasting trauma.” From an athletics-focused Mormon background, Lemons reflects, “I enlisted because I grew up in a family of caretakers.” He believed in the sniper’s exacting standards: “In the logic of the Marine Corps, becoming a sniper was…the one combat job that keeps more Marines safer than any other.” His wartime vignettes are hypnotically brutal, as he attempts to unearth the invisible or intentionally overlooked environmental hazards, from burning trash pits to exposure to heavy metals and depleted uranium, omnipresent in modern warfare. Yet once discharged, Lemons faced a grueling 10-year odyssey through both the VA and integrated medicine to grapple with debilitating conditions brought on by these exposures, alongside PTSD. Their unusual approach can be unwieldy, but it’s engaging; as Howe concludes, “mitigating exposures for both Marines and civilians also requires new forms of strategic thinking about warfare itself.”

Unflinching examination of the hidden costs of American-style war.