including each other, even after devastating injuries. saying something like, "I bet I can beat your two mile time now" to a recent amputee is not especially unlikely, among friends.

I think it would be unlikely that someone would tease a stranger about disfigurement to her face, but not at all unlikely that soldiers would joke about it with each other. Gallows humor is always prevalent in the Army.

Other things that he claims, like chasing down a dog, sounds unlikely, only because it would further endanger the vehicle and crew by going off road. Plus, you still have to clean all that stuff up, and who wants to wash dog guts off a truck in a 130 degree weather? Plus leaving a carcass in your route just provides a new place to hide a bomb.

On the otherhand, not stopping or swerving to avoid a dog makes sense, so you stay on your route, do not smash your gunner around in the turret, or impede the convoy. It may still leave the carcass, but the driver avoids getting kicked really hard by the gunner once he recovers...

I don't find the skull thing too surprising, either, unless the claim is it was visible outside the uniform. That would be corrected pretty quick.

Anecdotal snippets like that offer little to understanding this war. I also think there are many men who don't need a war to make fun of someone with his friends, run over a dog, or find skulls fascinating. That Beauchamp found himself doing those things is an indictment of his upbringing and gender more than it is the army or the war.

I agree. As a woman who was an army officer for seven years in my younger days I think there is a perception that men in general are the same as women.(i.e. "sensitive") They are not and unfortuantely what soldiers say and do in combat is often not pretty when judged by the hyper pc womanized standards of current American culture. When you are dealing every day with life and death issues, gallows humor is to be expected among men. Not that big a deal. K

Why only men with gallows humor? And who says women are pc? Even female soldiers get pretty rough around the edges after spending time in a war and a war zone. Maybe that's part of why it's so difficult for many soldiers, even female soldiers, to adapt to the civilian world again. I still haven't re-learned "polite", and I've had since 1991.

It is true that female soldiers can often be more crude than typical women. I don't know how they act when it is just females (because meybe they are even more crude than when with males), but I know that males still censor themselves with even the most ribald female soldiers...when it is just the boys, there is nothing off limits.