Making Soldiers

The poems from Hugh Martin’s The Stick Soldiers each tell a story that is part of a larger war narrative. This structure reminds of that of The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. However, while O’Brien frequently gave some sort of context to his individual stories, Martin does not do that with his poems, other than when he occasionally gives the location or the date. One thing that makes Martin’s writing quite different from other authors we have read this semester is the attention he gives to the preparation of the soldiers before they actually are sent off to war. “The Summer of Crawling,” which Martin notes is an account of Fort Knox, Kentucky, July 2002, is about part of the basic training drills the young men complete. Martin talks about how they had to “low-crawl across the yellow/ grass of the practice grenade-range” while being yelled at by the drill sergeant who also throws smoke bombs at them to make them crawl faster (31). Martin’s use of descriptive imagery and the fact that he dedicated a whole poem in his book to these events suggests that they hold real importance. The next three poems, “The Range,” “Basic Training,” and “Full Moon, M2 Machine Gun” are also about things that occur in the months leading up to the soldiers’ deployment. In “Full Moon, M2 Machine Gun” Martin talks about waiting in line for smallpox shots (35). I found this interesting because it reminds the reader of the smaller preparations that are also needed. It can seem obvious that physical training and some sort of mental preparation are important factors to training camp. Yet Martin includes the even the small details like how the doctor told the soldiers to let the scab grow where they had received their vaccines. These accounts are interesting to me, and it is interesting that Martin chose to include them, because the majority of what we have red has been focused on the atrocities of the war and life after.