Eat the Apple – My Marine Corps Experience
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By John Waters
September 04, 2021
Matt Young enlisted in the Marine Corps in February 2005. He made it to the Fleet seven months later as a rifleman, joining Third Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment on Camp Pendleton. “The battalion had done the push,” he told me in a phone conversation earlier this summer, referring to the Battalion’s deployment for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In fact, by the time Young checked in, many of the Marines had already done two tours in Iraq: the 2003 invasion and a 2004 trip to Fallujah as part of Operation Phantom Fury. “I was a rifleman with 81mm mortar platoon in weapons company. We were right back in Fallujah by January 2006. That was my first tour.” He ended up doing three deployments to Iraq, all with mounted infantry. “It’s hard to imagine deploying with a line company because I got comfortable where I was. I felt safer in HMMWVs and trucks, even though we probably weren’t safer, except maybe during an ambush.”
In his memoir Eat the Apple (Bloomsbury, 2018), Young, now an author and teacher writes searingly about his time in the Marine Corps. He focuses on the uncomfortable things, the secrets soldiers know but are ashamed to admit. “He wants people to ask him what it’s like to kill and he wants to be able to tell them,” Young writes in an early chapter, the thoughts of a Marine six weeks into basic training. Spliced into the narrative are handwritten lists and cartoons, an amalgam of images and observations that float through a young man’s head as he tells his story. The effect is immersion in the author’s experience. Whether training at the rifle range, on a combat patrol, or alone in a barracks room, Young explores the psychology of servicemen—their fears, dreams, and fascinations—with as much honesty and fearlessness as anyone writing about war. I asked Young to explain his approach to the memoir, whether he regrets service in Iraq, and what it was like to lose a Marine in combat. Our conversation has been edited for content and clarity.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2021/09/04/eat_the_apple__my_marine_corps_experience_793091.html
