The Gun, by CJ Chivers

Nonfiction, Current Affairs; 416 pages
Publication year: 2011 (UK edition)
Published in the UK by Penguin


Stickiness factor (could I put it down?): No More Nails

Random quote:


The ballistics of the rifle and cartridge are also studied, including the so-called terminal ballistics - the effects the rounds have on objects they strike, from a wooden board to a car windshield to various parts of the human body, which can be determined, to a degree, by shooting large live mammals (adult pigs are a favourite; goats have often been used) or human cadavers. 


Plot summary:


In 1947 a invalid sergeant in the Red Army Mikhail Kalashnikov won a state-sponsored design competition to create Stalinist Russia's new standard issue assault rifle. Named after an acronym of its designer's name and the year of its design, the Avtomat Kalashnikov-47, better known as the AK-47, has become the world's most recognisable and prolific firearm. Its history and status means that it is instantly recognisable as the symbols of both state control and armed rebellion. Setting the gun in its historical context, Pulitzer Prize winning author CJ Chivers examines this twentieth century icon, looking passed the myths and misconceptions to reveal the true history of the gun that has come to define warfare. 


My thoughts:


Despite following up my review of Matterhorn, by Karl Marlantes, the very first on this blog, with a review about weaponry, I am not some barrel-chested redneck who thinks that the Rambo series should seriously be implemented as foreign policy. Honest. And this book is not about fire-rates, great battles, armchair strategy or dismantling guns, blindfold, in under a minute. 


Instead, CJ Chivers examines the wider implications of the AK-47 on societies and on warfare itself. No one is quite sure how many of these assault rifles there are in the world at the moment, Russia zealously used the rifle as a means of securing friendships with countries diplomatically at odds with the USA and now many of the former beneficiaries that manufactured this weapon under licence from Russia have lost control of their vast stockpiles. It is safe to say, where ever there is news footage of armed insurgents, the AK-47 is always there, being brandished for the camera. 


But the AK-47 wasn't the beginning of the story, in fact it is not even the end. Chivers traces th history of the machine gun from its beginnings as Dr Richard Gatling's rapid fire machine gun, patented in the USA in the 1860s, to America's disastrous implementation of its M-16 assault rifle during the Vietnam war, then onwards to its ubiquitous presence in conflicts such as Afghanistan.   


Although the book uses the AK-47 as the Plimsoll mark for the ubiquity of assualt rifles in the world today, Chivers' story is wider than that and means that the story is a wider and more varied one than a gun geek's listing of all of the features of the weapon. As with all popular history books that I have read, there is an emphasis on the often eccentric innovators that have propelled these weapons into the world. Hence there are sizeable sections on Gatling's crank handle operated gun, which he hoped would reduce battlefield casualties, through Hiram Maxim's first fully automatic weapon and then to Kalashnikov himself - as much a product of Stalinist Russia as the gun that bears his name. There are also some strange byways covered, such as the shooting of livestock and corpses (as referenced above), which help to bring home the messy, painful reality of firearms. 


One of the problems of writing about the AK-47 is that its true origins are shrouded in state secrecy and fogged with propaganda. Chivers gives the reader a series of stories relating to the gun's creation and lets us make up our own mind. Personally, I always find that the most prosaic explanation is always the one that rings truest - real life is rarely as full of startling coincidences as a good yarn. Possibly due to this historical inaccuracy, or possibly due to Chivers' own experience, he seems more at ease with telling the story of the disastrous introduction by the US of the M-16 rifle. Certainly it is terrifyingly gripping, as the leaders of the US armed forces colluded with the M-16's manufacturer to knowingly send men out to battle with defective weapons. Errors occur, serious errors, and others pay the price. As riveting as this section is, there is a lingering feeling that Chivers feels more at home writing about US troops and military history.   


I have another couple of little niggles about the book, which on the whole I enjoyed reading. 


The first is that sloppy copy editing means that the text has not differentiated between the national flag of Zimbabwe and its flag. On page 225, Chivers states that the AK-47 appears on the Zimbabwean flag. Unfortunately, this is not true. A representation of it appears on the country's coat of arms. It is on the Mozambique flag that the Kalashnikov features. Ha! Got you Chivers. Pointless pedantry triumphs again!


The second niggle is based on a throwaway remark made while Chivers is discussing Maxim's move to Britain to work on his full automatic machine gun. The line that is this: "The Industrial Revolution had not blossomed as fully in England as it had in the United States." While I know that he is paraphrasing Maxim, it is the word 'blossomed' that rankles. I am British, and it is a core point of history at school to ram home the fact the the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, through British invention and engineering. I found myself spluttering out my cup of tea and saying 'Blossomed? Blossomed? We invented it, mate. But still, the book does something for 'national pride' by hammering home the fact that both Britain and the United States proved totally inept, backward and out of touch, when it came to dealing with tactics and planning for automatic weapons. If anything, it is Russia, where cars were true rarities, that comes out as the true innovator in the mechanics of death. A dubious honour, I realise.  


The book is fascinating and terrible, grizzly and compelling. With only these minor faults from stopping it being a true marvel; much like the AK-47 itself.  


You can buy The Gun from Amazon and a bucket load of other places.  

Matterhorn, by Karl Marlantes

Fiction; 667 pages

Publication year: 2010
Published by Corvus

Stickiness factor (could I put it down?): Super Glue


Random quote: 


But he felt there should be more time, some ritual of getting ready, before they plunged into the dark valley. (P148) 


Plot summary:


Fresh-faced and newly arrived from an Ivy League education at Princeton, Second Lieutenant Waino Mellas joins the Bravo Company of US Marines on the mountaintop 'firebase' code named Matterhorn. He is young, ambitious, scared out of his wits, and in Vietnam. 


My thoughts:


I am lucky in that I've never had to face the never ending fatigue and terrible fear of combat. I have never had to drag myself on for hour after pointless hour, worrying that at any moment forces outside of my control will suddenly and with great violence end my life in a flurry of bullets and blood. Karl Marlantes has and his experience as a front line US Marine in Vietnam forms the bones, muscle and heart of this novel.
 
Although this is a work of fiction, it feels real. It feels as if every mile of dark jungle, every panic stricken moment under fire actually happened. There are small details, such as the dark purple staining on the soldiers' lips from the fruit flavours that they add to the water in their canteens and the vile concoctions that they create by mixing all of their rations together (with generous lashings of Tabasco sauce), that speak of personal experience, rather than clever research.
In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Marlantes explains that this novel sprang from his desire to explain something of the experience of the Vietnam war, away from the grand strategic overviews of history or the visual orgy of lights and iconography of something like Apocalypse Now, which have come to define our view of the Vietnam war. His novel does not come with a Jimi Hendrix sound track and a Colonel Kurtz figure somewhere up the river. Instead, the story looks at the rather personal conflicts that combat places on a group of men.


Tasked with preparing a mountain, codenamed Matterhorn, to be an artillery firing base, the Marines of Bravo Company must fight against the impossibility of staging patrols in the dense, unforgiving jungle, for what would appear to be a pointless exercise. At the whim of officers whose distance from the jungle and their own careerist agendas, the Marines are forced to act on ridiculous orders - covering front line foxholes to protect them from nonexistent artillery, when it means obscuring sight lines for a more likely ground assault; marching men without food or water over mountainous terrain towards meaningless, arbitrary objectives. 

It would have been easy for Marlantes to portray the commanding officers as 'bad' or incompetent men. However, the novel carefully and patiently examines each character's motives and decisions. Ultimately, the reader has to ask themselves whether they would have made any wiser decisions once the god-like objectivity of their view was removed. For instance, Simpson, the commanding officer maybe a petty, alcoholic but as one of the characters points out, heavy drinking isn't unknown in the Marine Corps. Plus, Simpson's vivid memories of the Korean war mean that he is no stranger to the hardships of frontline combat. 


Away from the jungle, in base camp, the company is riven with racial divides. This was the time of the civil rights movement, and the black marines are well aware and very sensitive to their status as a lower class than the white soldiers. It is this conflict that forms the sad conclusion to the novel, rather than the bloody battle to retake the hill. Whatever bonds battle forges, they cannot be as strong as the divisions and resentments that 'The Real World' has forced between these men. 


Vietnam has its stereotypes, informed by the many films that have covered Vietnam, and these stereotypes exist here, but with a striking realism that stops them being the sorts of symbols we expect to see in order to tick them off our Vietnam War Score Card, and instead become living, breathing aspects of the lives of 'real' people. In his Guardian interview, Marlantes says of his characters "Now, with maturity and distance, I had come to love them all" and that is something that the reader takes away as well. 


I strongly recommend this book, it is a gripping, funny, terrifying book full of real empathy. If you are looking for something that has all the tub thumping bravado of a Chuck Norris film, you will be disappointed; Matterhorn is not about how great explosions are but is a study of how war can shape the lives and souls of men. Maybe that sounds too melodramatic, but this is a genuinely moving story about the individuals called to fight and their experiences of war's violence. 


Matterhorn is available from Amazon and many other retailers.