Shade it Black

Death and After in Iraq

By: Jessica Goodell, John Hearn

Narrated by: Emily Durante

Length: 5 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2011 Jess Goodell and John Hearn (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Credit-Worthy Slug to the Gut

One of my earliest memories, I swear, is of seeing large, black bags being slung by American GIs into helicopters in Vietnam. I remember asking my mother what on earth was being taken out of Vietnam? I mean, shouldn't there be things brought into the country? Supplies, etc? She told me, young as I was, "Those aren't supplies. Those are the bodies of the boys who were just killed. It's the dead young men."
I was floored. Death was… inconceivable. As I watched the TV, I wondered what was going on. How could we, as a country, as human beings just let this go on?
Through the rest of the war, and all the following wars, I've kept myself aware of that one fact: people are dying, and it's ugly, and it's permanent. I thought I knew what was going on.
"Shade It Black" taught me how little I've known about the godawful, horrific truth. The title is based on the protocol for those working in Mortuary Affairs: A paper is used with the drawing of a person on it. For wounds, points of bullet entry, put a dot or an x on the drawing. If an arm, a leg, some body part is missing from an IED or other explosion, shade it black.
And in the war, there's a lot of that. This is a woman's unflinching account of what it's like to work in Mortuary Affairs. The endless scooping up of as much of what used to be human beings as they can, all in an effort to send as much of that soldier back to loved ones as is possible. It's about trying to eat when you realize that much of your food smells like the roasted flesh of dead soldiers. The dawning realization that you're looking at living soldiers, seeing them as dead, and wondering what's in their pockets, what will be sent back home as part of personal possessions. That napkin that Marine just stuffed in his pocket? What will the people back home make of that? In their grief, loved ones will give it special significance.
Things like that broke my heart. But it doesn't stop there. Because not only does this set her apart from the rest of the Marines, who shun MA people like a jinx or the plague, she's an outcast because she's a female Marine. And when she gets home, she's an outcast because nobody can possibly, in a million years, truly understand what her PTSD is like. Even other soldiers, fellow MA workers, are out of reach because the unity one feels when one is at war doesn't quite carry over to civilian life where everybody is just trying to get along. Though the war has been survived, the carnage lived through, she comes home to find that everything, hope especially, has been shaded black.
This is barely over five hours, but I definitely don't regret spending a credit on it. It was mind-blowing, gut-wrenching, and ultimately, hopeful. Before listening to this, I'd gone through "On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery," and I was touched by that book. It made me cry, and it made me proud. I'm glad I listened to it. But I'm glad I listened to it first. Because after listening to "Shade It Black"? All I can think about is: touching, yes. But oh what horrors there are in war...

Non-warfare WM Learning from Warfare WM

This was a very straight-forward, almost clinical, description of one Marine's experience in Iraq, a Marine who is also a woman. While listening to the audiobook, I felt like I could see through her eyes, and in so doing, I could better understand what it was like for a woman to be in a combat zone. It brought back memories of my time in the Corps, but it also enlightened me concerning the side I never experienced. Well done, Marine. Thank you.

I’ve been there, too Sister...

I am also a Female Marine veteran who served around the same period as this author and was stationed in Iraq near her unit during the same time here, and I’ve unfortunately dealt with them re: the morbid side of war as well (but, never personally met her, basically for the exact reasons the author mentioned):

I was enlisted aircrew (flight navigator) on KC-130’s, with a Marine unit who had been frequently charged with the heady obligation for flying these same KIA (Killed-In-Action) service members on the first leg of their long, somber journey home to their loved ones and/or final resting place, especially in 2004. (The military began calling them “Angel Flights.”) Usually, we received the KIA remains in the metal container “coffins” draped in US flags — like she stated — in Al Taqaddum AB, Iraq and then transported them to another airbase at the Kuwaiti border. From there, we passed them respectfully along to the USAF’s long-range jets that were neither safely or logistically able to fly into that extremely violent area of Iraq where her unit was stationed.

“TQ” (as we called the Airbase) was in the Iraqi Al Anbar providence, the same perilous region that was notoriously infested with insurgents and where most of our troops and countless civilians became tragic casualties in 2004 (eg. both Fallujah and Ramadi reside within that western providence that stretches all the way to the Syrian border and where ISIL was spawned). By October 2004, the Marine Mortuary Affairs unit there were no longer able to keep up with the overwhelming workload that resulted from the Second Battle of Fallujah (“Operation Phantom Fury”), when we suffered hundreds of casualties in a matter of days. During Phantom Fury though, sometimes we were flying body bags to Kuwait — it was sheer, macabre chaos by the time the author rotated out of country.

I found her narrative to ring mostly true for this time-period, although I remember a few things differently, eg. that the KIA remains were sent next to another (larger, more comprehensive) US Military Mortuary Affairs unit in Germany to undergo one last post-mortem exam (including a DNA ID verification, especially for the most extremely difficult cases) and where they’re thoroughly examined (and x-rayed) to veritably ensure that no live rounds or hazardous ordnance within the decedent’s remains before they’re finally flown stateside to the Mortuary Affairs HQ at Dover AB.

The author doesn’t really explain why they all end up in Dover: this HQ is the final bottleneck for all deceased US military personnel worldwide, who died by any means during their active service: where they are cleaned up cosmetically and moved into an actual funeral coffin — much like what’s typically done in most funeral homes — after being outfitted properly in their regulation dress uniform for an optional “open coffin” viewing presentation (or their uniform is laid out inside the coffin, if dressing them for viewing is unfortunately not feasible, ie. the tragic “closed coffin” scenarios). This is where the US military’s main strategic function is solely to honor the fallen individual and hopefully mitigate their bereaved loved ones’ suffering any further, by making the fallen soldier/sailor/airman/Marine presentable for their viewing, if at all possible. Then finally, the last leg of their journey is reached when the outfitted coffin is then escorted to wherever their last wishes were to be laid out, eulogized, given military funeral honors, and/or put to rest, while usually attempting to also accommodate any religious preferences, plus their mourning families and/or communities as well. The author’s assertion of her meticulous dedication to both the deceased and their perceived bereft loved ones is the definite norm for all those who selflessly volunteer for this sacred tour of duty at the risk of enduring some significant psychological repercussions.

As a female Marine, I will corroborate the validity of her struggles to be a woman in the male-domineering Marine Corps back then as well. (It’s sounds outrageous because it definitely is stupefyingly surreal, but nonetheless it’s absolutely true for that time period, if not still an ongoing malignant issue.) Sadly, also true-to-life is the prevalent PTSD and also frequently dealing with Marine veteran buddies struggling with (and too often succumbing to) suicide, which is a constant burden for almost all those veterans still surviving after enduring some of the worst aspects of a convoluted war. (One that’ll probably never make any logical/moral sense in hindsight to almost all of us who served in it.)

Now, to critique a bit and then summarize: I didn’t entirely agree personally with everything she expressed (on esoteric matters of philosophical perceptions, which typically varies from one Marine to another, eg. re: the morality Catch-22 with the pervasive intolerance/hazing within the Corps), also I was MORE than a little disappointed with the toned-down language (I assume that was the coauthor’s and/or editors’ idea), which IMO definitely diluted the authenticity of the author’s voice, because of how Marines truly speak, ESPECIALLY when they speak about Marine-specific matters: it SHOULD be raw and shocking, just like the subject matter. (I would do it here myself if I wasn’t positive the effin’ censors would delete my post.)

(The narrator of the audiobook was not convincing either, she didn’t exert any assertiveness in her voice, no illusions of fortitude to match the author’s own passion in the prose, FAR too timid IMO to believe this was coming from a US Marine (often pronounced basic Marine jargon incorrectly... Marines will be better off with the book or the Kindle instead.)

With that all said, I do hope Goodell’s book and overall message here reaches a very wide audience (especially all those “patriotic” well-meaning civilians who are in dire need of a wake up call). I give the Audible Version 4 stars (& Kindle Version 4.5 stars) overall and definitely recommend this to others: from the salty OIF veterans to the truly nascent civilians alike.

as a veteran

as a vet its painful reading about the demise of our military women and men

Gory but compelling

This is a deeply introspective book about death and the confrontational political implications of war casualties which presents more than meets the eye.

female portrayal of mortuary affairs in the marine

it was kind of hard to listen to what this Maine went through in sending our msrines home after giving the ultimate sacrifice. I enjoyed hearing it all from a woman's prospective.