Don’t put your privates on parade in the sun
Some of mary Roach’s previous books were called Gulp, Bonk, Spook and Stiff. With her latest, Grunt, a theme seems to be emerging. I can think of a few possibles for her next book, but none, sadly, that can be printed in these august pages.
Grunt is about the curious science of humans at war, and it’s droll, often deeply strange and sometimes rather disturbing.
Roach is American and a comically inclined journalist who likes peeking at stuff that no one else has peeked at.
Sometimes you simply have to marvel at her ability to get behind the press release and into the laboratory. occasionally — in particular, the diarrhoea chapter — you might begin to wish she hadn’t bothered.
Crucially, though, she isn’t interested in guns or weaponry or fighting at all. (This was a relief to me — I’m not interested in these things either.) What attracts her to military science are ‘the quiet, esoteric battles with less considered adversaries: exhaustion, shock, bacteria, panic’.
She’s interested in the parts no one makes films about: not the killing, but the keeping alive.
At a military lab in massachusetts, for instance, everything a soldier wears, eats, sleeps on or lives in is developed or tested. This includes self-heating parkas, concealable armour, synthetic goose down and restructured steaks. Also, if you’re a priest, extended-shelf-life communion wafers. And a sandwich that keeps for three years.
Roach meets Peggy, the flame goddess who tests new fabrics at the highest temperatures. With protective clothing, there’s always a trade- off. Polyester is strong, cheap and doesn’t ignite, but it melts.
‘What you don’t want to be wearing inside a burning army tank is polyester tights.’
The current Flame Resistant Army Combat Uniform (FRACU, pronounced ‘frack you’) is made of something called Defender m, which balloons away from the body as it burns, but tears easily. They’re still working on it.
elsewhere, she discusses the importance of earplugs, which reduce noise by some 320 decibels, essential in the deafening theatre of modern warfare; and the danger of earplugs, which is that when you wear them, you can’t hear anything.
There’s often scepticism among Army leadership.
‘Senior Ncos will flat-out tell you: “Don’t give me more s*** that’s supposed to be the next high-tech wonder but that’s going to break or the batteries are going
to go dead and I’ve got to carry it” ,’ says one boffin.
Roach has a wonderful way of describing people. One marine has ‘muscles so big that when he walks in front of the slide projector, entire images can be viewed on his forearm’.
There is, one should say, an entire chapter about penile reconstructive surgery, followed by one about penile transplant surgery. I read both of these with my legs crossed.
The first ever transplanted hand had to be removed later, after its recipient decided that it was evil.
Roach visits a fort in Florida where scientists try to counter heat-stroke.
You can sweat up to 2kg an hour in combat, and up to 10kg of water in a day. There are about 3,500 cases of heat illness among active U.S. Armed Forces personnel every year.
‘ Fainting is both symptom and cure . . . heatstroke, however, can kill.’
Going shirtless in the sun, it turns out, makes you hotter, not cooler. ‘ You can imagine how heat illness experts feel about sunbathing: people who willingly lie in direct sun, on hot sand, nearly nude.’
The flies of the Gulf War operated as an unpleasant but effective alarm clock. ‘You’d be asleep with your mouth open,’ said one soldier, ‘soon as dawn came, the flies would be out, looking for food and moisture. They’d fly right in your mouth. You’d wake up to the sound of marines coughing and cursing.’
It’s all completely fascinating, even the chapter about diarrhoea, of which we shall say no more. Roach writes with great verve, and if she overreaches sometimes, well, I think we forgive her.
The sheer profusion of facts makes the book worthwhile: body-building has become the number one pastime on bases in Afghanistan. Maggots breathe through their bottoms. Rabbit poo costs more than rabbits — $35 a gallon is not unknown. All life is here.