‘Last One In’ funny, touching look at Iraq war

A quick, engrossing read, Nicholas Kulish’ novel “Last One In” (Harper Perennial, $18.95) seems like a script for a movie.

It’s the story of a gossip columnist misplaced in Iraq who transforms into a good journalist.

He gets sent to Iraq during its early stages as the convoy of Humvees and tanks snakes toward Baghdad through dangerous sand storms and expected gas attacks.

Kulish, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, captures the malaise of war with comedic verve as he satirizes the conflict, but he never demeans the Marines with whom he once lived, bonded and survived.

Yet, “Last One In” also questions the sanity of embedding journalists with fighting units who then must protect an extra untrained body.

Jimmy Stephens, the main character, makes the worse mistake of his career as a gossip columnist when he wrongly accuses a big star of cheating on his wife in a bar’s men’s room.

His driving new editor, trying to upgrade his tabloid to a “real” newspaper, blackmails him into taking the place of the paper’s war correspondent or get fired.

Embedded with a group of dirty-mouthed but brotherly Marines, Jimmy remains befuddled as the invasion of Iraq begins.

His unabashed reporting from a state of fear provides a tale that comes off as hilarious but eventually horribly tragic.

Through Jimmy’s frightened yet perceptive eyes, the early days of the Iraq invasion unravel as a mismanaged catastrophe doomed from the moment of first conception.

Early in the novel, he relates the attitude held by almost every politician, military man and the general public at the time: “The amazing thing, and this was that Jimmy especially liked, was that there really wouldn’t be much to do.

“The intelligence suggested that the entire Iraqi Army was lined up not to fight the Marines, but to surrender en masse and fight each other for a cozy spot behind good old fashioned American barbed wire, where they would get their first square meal in weeks.

“Their wives, meanwhile were preparing a barrage of bouquets to welcome the arriving liberators.”

The squad of characters includes Sergeant Harper, Lance Corporal Dabrowski, Private Santos, and Martinez, then, the failed gung-ho officer Lieutenant Katzenbach., a potpourri of ethnic types and psychological screw-ups directly out of a World War II casting director’s dreams.

The best moments in the book remind the reader of Yossarian in Joseph Heller’s classic ant-war satire "Catch 22."

While Jimmy cowers in a shallow sand foxhole during an Iraqi shelling, he pulls out his cell phone, dials his editor in New York, and pleads to be “unembedded.”

Unfortunately, he mistakenly calls CNN and begs over national cable television, “Get me out of here! Get me out of here! Oh, my God, I’m going to die!”

Other passages in this novel come off as stark and heart-rending as that one is funny, which makes “Last One In” a worthy addition to the ever-growing antiwar satire genre.

No doubt better and more meaningful novels of the Iraq war will come out in the next few years, some as satire, some as testaments to the brave men and women who fight patriotically and sometimes die in questionable conflicts.

But, for now, this slim novel provides the readers with laughs then tears.

Kulish recently said in an interview with Paperback Writer, “The troops in my experience are bright, dedicated, impressive people. You can criticize decisions while backing the troops on the ground.”

Also, “My novel is inherently critical about aspects of the war, but one of my friends described 'Last One In' as a ‘love letter to the Marines.’ You can do both in a democracy that values free speech and open debate.”

“Last One In” works excellently as a satire, as a war novel and as a depiction of sheer idiocy which Kulish saw and reported when embedded with a Marine helicopter unit in Iraq in 2003.

A war novel only in the sense of its background, the novel really deals with relationships, the bonds that form between men.

So, even for those non-fans of war novels, the book provides a passionate, biting critique of modern war as reported on the pages of manipulated and “handled” news.

“Give Last One In” an A- and enjoy it.

Al Shaff is a Sahuarita resident and freelance writer. Contact him at menahga@cox.net.