'I don't believe all this hype about it being a cleaner, quicker war'

Anthony Swofford knows that out there, beyond the hi-tech briefings by the five-star generals, beyond the sanitised images of war and the laser-guided missiles, there is another war: the real one. The one where young men have to go on "shitters detail", spend a night in a muddy foxhole and then get blown to pieces the next day.

War, says Swofford, is largely a matter of boys dying while the strategies and diplomacy and big questions happen elsewhere. But as for the boys themselves he is under no illusions: "Sophistication in weaponry doesn't breed sophistication in men."

Swofford knows this because he's been out there, amid all the sand and mud and fear. He was a 21-year-old grunt or, more specifically, a "jarhead", in what is now being referred to as the first Gulf War and has written a realistic and painful account of his own experiences in the US Marine Corps. It is, inevitably, called Jarhead, the slang for the peculiar hairstyle of the marines, who consider themselves a cut above the rest.

But Jarhead is no thinly disguised recruiting advertisement or the kind of gung-ho memoir of heroic exploits so popular in Britain. Swofford's is precisely the reverse: describing the brutality of training and the combination of nervous anxiety and sheer terror that was life in a scout/sniper platoon in the desert in the winter of 1990-91. Its moments of grim humour do include his description of three days of beer and war movies as preparation for Desert Storm and, once there, the question of how you dispose of human waste. And he didn't even get to fire a shot in anger.

So, via writing school in his mid-twenties, Swofford the grunt has been reinvented as Swofford the college lecturer and writer, a profession that was in him from the age of 14, but forced to the back of his mind as the child of a military family. But he carried The Iliad into battle. Eventually he found the courage to record his experiences and, helped by rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, he and his publisher could barely have found a better time for such a work.

Although he says "my life is very different now", he understands what is going on out there in the desert and part of him wants to share it. "I know what it's like to dig another fighting hole, I know the feel and texture of the desert," he said, in an interview in Glasgow on a tour to promote the book. "And I feel I should be in the sand and mud with them."

But it is, he believes, a war like all other wars. "I don't believe all this hype about it being a cleaner, quicker war. The experience of war for the soldier doesn't change very much, whether it's the Second World War, Vietnam or the Falklands."

In the book, Swofford describes the "terrifying" moment he comes under fire from his own troops and so understands the impact such incidents can have. "In the aftermath, there is a real dip in morale, it's horrifying. There is a real feeling of helplessness and devastation. Its Marine Corps firing at Marine Corps and you can't fire back."

Swofford also describes how the marines are instructed by their officers what to tell reporters, how the "I'm proud to serve my country" is the only line to take. He now believes the reporters in the field are doing better. "They are really capturing the experiences of the grunts." Unlike many, he is not addicted to the rolling news coverage on television ("I don't think it gives you a real sense of what's going on"). He prefers newspapers.

While pointing out he is "no strategist", Swofford subscribes to the theory that the reason this war appears to be going more slowly than many had initially believed is because there are not enough troops on the ground. Desert Storm had about 500,000 while the current conflict has fewer than 200,000. He didn't vote for George Bush and believes America is wrong to try to behave as if it were policing the world. Tony Blair he likes. "I think he has persuaded a lot of people on the left in the United States to support the war."

Swofford's own experiences give credence to his views as a member of the anti-war camp who contends that more time should have been given to diplomacy. But that does not stop him feeling the plight of soldiers in their muddy foxholes.

"I know they will be feeling defeated and fatigued."

One senses part of him will always taste the sand in his teeth. "I'm still a bit of grunt."

Bookshelf Iraq

Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession (Verso Books) and Out of the Ashes: The Ressurection of Saddam Hussein (HarperCollins): Two books by brothers who are experts in Middle East affairs. The first covers the growing US desire to "finish the job" begun in 1991, while the second is a definitive account of Saddam's rise and the aftermath of 1991.

Andy McNab Bravo Two Zero (Corgi): A wildly successful, genre-creating account of an SAS patrol sent deep into Iraqi territory in 1991. Bought and adored by those who dream of joining the SAS.

Kenneth M Pollack The Threatening Storm: the Case for Invading Iraq (Random House): A former analyst for the CIA and the National Security Council makes the case "more cogently than Bush" some reviewers said, for action now rather than later.