Iraq War, 2003, War Correspondents - News & Media Biography

War Reporting for Cowards

Name: War Reporting for Cowards
Author: Chris Ayres
ISBN: 9780802142566

by Chris Ayres

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Overview

Chris Ayres is a small-town boy, a hypochondriac, and a neat freak with an anxiety disorder. Not exactly the picture of a war correspondent. But when his boss asks him if he would like to go to Iraq, he doesn't have the guts to say no. After signing a 1 million dollar life-insurance policy, studying a tutorial on repairing severed limbs, and spending 20 thousand dollars in camping gear (only to find out that his bright yellow tent makes him a sitting duck), Ayres is embedded with a battalion of gung ho Marines who either shun him or threaten him when he files an unfavorable story. As time goes on, though, he begins to understand them (and his inexplicably enthusiastic fellow war reporters) more and more: Each night of terrifying combat brings, in the morning, something more visceral than he has ever experienced — the thrill of having won a fight for survival.

In the tradition of MASH, Catch-22, and other classics in which irreverence springs from life in extremis, War Reporting for Cowards tells the story of Iraq in a way that is extraordinarily honest, heartfelt, and bitterly hilarious.

Synopsis

Chris Ayres is a small-town boy, a hypochondriac, and a neat freak with an anxiety disorder. Not exactly the picture of a war correspondent. But when his boss asks him if he would like to go to Iraq, he doesn't have the guts to say no.
After signing a $1 million life-insurance policy, studying a tutorial on repairing severed limbs, and spending $20,000 in camping gear (only to find out that his bright yellow tent makes him a sitting duck), Ayres is embedded with a battalion of gung ho Marines who either shun him or threaten him when he files an unfavorable story. As time goes on, though, he begins to understand them (and his inexplicably enthusiastic fellow war reporters) more and more: Each night of terrifying combat brings, in the morning, something more visceral than he has ever experienced-the thrill of having won a fight for survival.
In the tradition of M*A*S*H, Catch-22, and other classics in which irreverence springs from life in extremis, War Reporting for Cowards tells the story of Iraq in a way that is extraordinarily honest, heartfelt, and bitterly hilarious.

The New York Times - Gary Shteyngart

The truly indispensable part of this book is its final section. Once we finally get to Iraq, Ayres is at his journalistic and comic best. The scene in which Ayres tries to complete a bowel movement over what turns out to be a tarantula's nest will change the way you think about evacuations forever. But the heart of the book is the relationship between the wusslike Briton and the gutsy soldiers he is assigned to cover.

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Editorials

Gary Shteyngart

Publishers Weekly

Ayres asserts from his opening sentences that he is a coward. But this sometimes amusing, often harrowing but poorly organized account of war life makes it clear he is anything but a wimp: he is stuffed inside the confines of a Humvee, digs foxholes in the desert and watches Iraqis blown apart or incinerated (and fears the same will happen to him; he clutches a can of diazepam to commit suicide if he is struck by nerve gas). He reported from Iraq for the London Times from 2002 to 2003 and asserts that he takes no point of view on the war, yet the tone of his story is highly uncritical of the war, and his epilogue (alas, now hopelessly out of date) puts the U.S. firmly in control of the battlefield and describes the insurgency as on the wane. The book's strengths lie in Ayres's details of the gritty, hot, lonely daily grind; its weakest aspect is the too-long tangent of his rise as a young reporter. Ayres's gratitude at surviving his tour is palpable, as he writes, "Now that I know what war is like, I've stopped worrying about death.... I made it home. I'm still alive." Agent, George Lucas. (Aug.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In 2003, Ayres was transformed from an L.A.-based British business reporter for the London Times to an embedded correspondent in Iraq because he was afraid to say no when his boss asked if he'd like to go to war. Though initially terrified-he discovered that a $5000 "advance against expenses" was for use as ransom money in case of kidnapping-Ayres slowly accepted his assignment. He uses flashback to revisit his time as a reporter in New York City (on 9/11) and then describes the preparation in L.A. for his assignment. Seemingly mundane tasks, such as buying a bright yellow tent that he later finds would attract unwanted attention in the desert, come alive in his colorful writing. Though other embedded reporters have written books, Ayres is unique in his humor-driven and slightly sarcastic slant. In the end, he was embedded in Kuwait and Iraq for less than a month and on the front lines for a total of nine days; he has no heroic pretensions and offers little opinion about the conflict. Some readers might be offended by his tone. Recommended for larger public libraries seeking to collect comprehensively on the conflict. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 4/15/05.]-Leigh Mihlrad, Albert Einstein Coll. of Medicine of Yeshiva Univ., Bronx, NY Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

London Times journalist Ayres reluctantly joins the "elite, noble, and fucked-up profession" of Middle East war correspondent in this report from the frontlines. Awoken at 6:30 in the morning, the author learns that his editor at the Times, a former foreign correspondent and a titan in the field, wants him to go to war. Ayres, too, is a foreign correspondent: he files stories on celebrity life in Los Angeles. Still, he does not want to let the boss down, nor lose his job. "Yes! Love to!" he blurts. Since he is embedded for a mere nine days, much of this memoir concerns how Ayres happened to arrive there in the first place. After all, here is a guy who started out his journalistic career as a financial writer-and a fraud at that, he admits, since he knew diddly about economics-before moving on to the celebrity circuit in LA. Not before witnessing the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and experiencing the anthrax craze that followed, however; both receive excellent, sinewy coverage here. Then this self-described clumsy geek hypochondriac with panic attacks gets the wake-up call, and he caves before his best instincts, scared that another will take his place and shine, scared of squandering the opportunity so many journalists desire. Outside Baghdad, waiting to die as Iraqi tanks bear down on his storm-stuck Humvee, Ayres berates himself for the cowardice of letting his journalist's ego get the upper hand, for a selfishness that would cause his loved ones great and lasting pain. While these moments of bitterness claw at his soul, he delivers a first-rate glimpse of how terrifying are the wages of war, and not just the carnage and doom: the first time he needs to use thefield as a toilet, he squats directly over a tarantula's nest. Ayres a coward? Come on, give the guy a medal.