Marcus Eriksen • Beacon
By By Dane Roberts Wans On Bookreview
CONFRONTING THE PAST DEMANDS a price both in time and in memories. This autobiography points out that all of us have ways of adjusting.
This story breaks down into three sections: Life before the river journey, life on the journey, and life after the journey. In total it offers a slice of life covering author Marcus Eriksen’s days in the Marines to his stand against the present war in Iraq. In between he takes a river ride 2,300 down the Mississippi on a raft. I feel the book, overall, is a good read.
In the first section he points out, as all boys at that time, he held a heroic myth of a warrior. “We sneaked into theaters to see our heroes in our favorite films: “Deer Hunter,” “Apocalypse Now,” and “First Blood.’”
Eriksen joined the Marines when he was just 17, six days out of high school. “I begin my dissolution. All of us assume our new first name: Private… The line for haircuts doesn’t stop moving. Stripped of our external identities in one day, it will take another three months to strip our minds of individuality.”
He became the person he had dreamt of. He trained and became a member of the group. In 1986 he was honored as the Marine of the Year. “I am the Marine in the posters on my high school bedroom wall,” he recalled. “I am a warrior.”
He was sent to Iraq in 1991 to fight in the first Gulf War. He came back disillusioned. He saw the horror of the chaos he was part of. He traveled the Highway of Death on the road to Basra, Iraq where bodies of the dead “were laid in a row like sardines in the middle of the southbound lanes.” He even had recurring dreams of Kuwait.
In the second section he constructs a raft constructed of 232 empty soda bottles and recycled junk named “Bottle Rocket.” It is on this raft that he rode down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. This journey was started after 9/11 and the sending of troops back to Iraq. Eriksen was shocked. He wanted to do something.
The people he reconnects with on the way help him to reconnect with himself. “I sought to recover the freedom I had lost and to understand the bitterness and anger that engulfed me.” He traveled for a period that covered four months and 2,300 miles. “This was a chance to reconnect with America, find forgiveness, and reclaim my life.”
Section three finds him helping set up Arlington West, not as a protest but as a way that the public could remember it was people involved in the war not just numbers. He also took the memorial on the road as he traveled. He traveled from Alabama, to the White House, to Ground Zero in New York He summarizes, “Forgiveness begins with sharing your past. It’s talking with other vets who know you without knowing you. Telling your story releases the burden of horror and grief from your memory.”
In the telling of this portion of his life, Eriksen helps us remember war is not a movie consisting of heroes and non-heroes, but of people. It has a cost, not just to others but to yourself. This book should be read by people who need to know the effects of war upon the individual.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 11, 2007. Read the original PDF.