February 20, 2005
Fighting Words
Monica Davey, New York Times
ON one more steaming day in Baghdad, word filtered out to the artillery regiment that some of the younger guys were not going to get to fly home for their promised rest-and-relaxation break. Soldiers fumed. They'd spent months of long hours in this crazy place, knowing that at any moment a homemade bomb might explode, a rocket-propelled grenade might land or an Iraqi child might spit at them.
But though they were armed to the teeth, they chose to respond with a different kind of weapon. They stepped outside and, of all things, began to rap.
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It is the music of Specialist Drummond and his colleagues in the First Armored Division's Second Battalion, Third Field Artillery that makes up much of the background sounds in a new documentary, "Gunner Palace," about the experience of one group of ordinary soldiers in Iraq. The movie, which will open in theaters on March 4 and was directed by Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein, records the everyday lives of 400 soldiers living in the bombed-out palace of Saddam Hussein's son Uday after the fall of Baghdad.
Rap might seem at odds with the conformity of military life, but Mr. Tucker, who served in the reserve in the 1980's, sees it as an extension of the cadence, or the calling-out songs to which troops run. And from the lyrics they write, it's clear that some of these soldiers identify their role - urban guerilla warriors fighting an unseen enemy - with that of the heroes of the genre. Even the USO has responded: They sent Nappy Roots, Bubba Sparks, 50 Cent and G-Unit to perform for soldiers in Iraq, and Ludacris appeared at a giant welcome home for soldiers at Fort Hood, Tex.
"Rap has become another part of barracks culture," Mr. Tucker said in a phone interview. "As far as soldiers go, rap is almost the perfect medium: they are able to say so much, to let off steam and also to have so many hidden meanings in what they say."
One day in April 2004 Sgt. Nick Moncrief, who said he had felt close to death many times during his 14 months in Iraq, felt at least four bullets whiz past his face while he was guarding the perimeter of an area in Baghdad. "Those bullets were close to me the way you're close when you're getting ready to kiss a girl."
Not long after that, he scribbled down a rap: "I noticed that my face is aging so quickly/Cuz I've seen more than your average man in his fifties/I'm 24 now/Got two kids and a wife/Having visions of them picturing me up out of they life."
Now back at his post in Germany, Sergeant Moncrief, who also appears in Mr. Tucker's film, has turned 25. "My message in my rap is that I have a lot of anger about the war," he said. "Why are we there? Why me? That's basically what I want to say when I write: Why?"
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Monica Davey, New York Times
