Warbody: A Marine Sniper and the Hidden Violence of Modern Warfare

by Joshua P. Howe, Alexander Lemons

A friendship between an environmental historian and a chronically ill US Marine yields a powerful exploration into the toxic effects of war on the human body.


Alexander Lemons is a Marine Corps scout sniper who, after serving multiple tours during the Iraq War, returned home mysteriously ill. Joshua Howe is an environmental historian and professor who met Lemons as a student in one of his classes. Together they have crafted a vital book that shifts our understanding of the risks that members of the military from the acute violence of bullets and bombs to the “slow violence” of toxic exposure and lasting trauma. In alternating chapters, Lemons paints an intimate portrait of his experiences of war and its aftermath in his body, while Howe expertly delves into the hazards Lemons and millions of other veterans have faced, including a heightened risk of traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and exposure to heavy metals, fine particulate matter, and noxious chemicals. Chronicling Lemons’s moving journey back to health, Warbody challenges us to rethink the violence we associate with war and the way we help veterans recover.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Biography, War, Memoir, Health, Medical

304 pages, Hardcover

Published March 11, 2025

About the author

Joshua Howe is Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies at Reed College. In addition to his new book co-authored with Alexander Lemons, Warbody: A Marine Sniper and the Hidden Violence of Modern Warfare (W.W. Norton, 2025), he has published two books about the political history of global warming: Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming (University of Washington Press, 2014) and Making Climate Change History: Documents from Global Warming's Past (University of Washington, 2017).

Reviews

[Carla Small · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the mix of anecdotes and personal experiences with scientific literature well done. It did give me a lot of personal anxiety about myself. Having served in similar areas to Lemons. Even working with marine snipers during similar time frames. I’ve not had anywhere near the issues lemons had but it connected some dots to issues I did.

Helpful, informative, endearing and little bit nostalgic.

[Sarah McNeely · Rating 5 out of 5]

This important book that reveals the hidden costs of war. It discusses often overlooked effects that deeply impact our environment and our well-being. This compelling book shines a light on the slow violence experienced by one Marine sniper, unveiling the invisible hazards of conflict that many overlook.

For anyone seeking to heal from the scars of war, support someone on their healing journey, or simply restore our battered planet, this book is a must-read. Imagine a fusion of the timeless classics *Silent Spring* and *Catch-22*—Joshua Howe and Alexander Lemons have crafted an astonishingly original environmental history that explores the devastating effects of industrial warfare on the human body and the specific toll the Iraq War took on Lemons himself.

*Warbody* is a thought-provoking, darkly humorous, and deeply moving exploration that will leave readers both enlightened and inspired. Don't miss the chance to discover this remarkable narrative!

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enlightening and informative book on the triad of war's damage to the body: TBI, PTSD, and long term exposure to toxins. The military is not a believer in "leave no trace." We basically destroyed Iraq environmentally with our burn pits- a lazy solution to garbage disposal under the guise of safety and security. The air in Iraq is some of the most polluted in the world. A Marine sniper was left shattered from service there and it took twenty years of unconventional treatment and persistence to get him healed.

The synergy of all the toxic chemicals is mind boggling: lead from bullets, depleted uranium dust from shells, mercury in the fish from the polluted waterways, insecticide in bedding and clothing, malaria and nerve gas pills taken as preventative measures.
That's a witch's brew assaulting the human body. Doctors couldn't figure it out. The author became anorexic. Headaches. Lethargy. No one considered heavy metal poisoning. He turned to chelation therapy to leech his system.

Meanwhile the Iraqi people had nobody. Higher cancer rates and birth defects. They looked on in horror as the Americans burned trash instead of using landfills. The American invasion stopped trash pickup and all services. We gave them chaos masked as freedom.

You would have thought after Gulf War Syndrome from 1991 we would have learned a thing or two. Instead we have a brand new illness from this conflict- IAW- LI- Iraq Afghanistan War Lung Injury.

[Avery Holbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this book should be mandatory reading for anyone that works with Veterans to have a glimpse into how toxic exposure affects the lives of those that serve.

[Megan H · Rating 4 out of 5]

The body does keep the fucking score, and it sucks to admit. Howe and Lemons crafted an effective and original cannonball to add to the "war bad" stockpile by detailing the slow violence warfare commits against soldiers and civilians unlucky enough to inhabit the areas surrounding battlefields.

What makes the book work is the push/pull between Howe's historical anatomy approach to assessing wartime toxicity by investigating the experiences of one person, and Lemons's memoir-like accounts of his life, service, and hazardous exposures. The history side provides the background and analysis one would expect from a nonfiction piece, fragmented by punchy vignettes of Lemons's tours and life in the aftermath. It's easy to be a little detached or focused on macro scale effects while engaging in historical research, but the the immediacy of environmental exposure's impact on individual bodies is inescapable here. I'd be knee-deep tracing the development of chemical warfare from pesticides, when a few pages go by, and here comes Alex Lemons talking about soaking his marine fatigues in DEET and tossing the containers into the upwind backyard burn pit.

Attempting to critique what's not in a book feels like conjuring ghosts to argue with, but I do feel both segments of the book were allergic to meaningfully engaging with the political context of The War on Terror. Of course, the scope of this book was never meant to be a comprehensive history of the American military's entanglements in the middle east, but a little context would've helped ground these passages in time. If I were to indulge in cynicism, I'd suggest sidestepping some of the political history was an intentional tactic to avoid overtly isolating audiences with a more favorable view of the U.S. military whenever a topic was not exclusively about the environment (and can environmental history ever exist separate from politics?).

Relatedly, Howe's sections touch upon hot button issues like the role defense contractors play in polluting the land around FOBs, but he changes topics before actually sinking into that accountability minefield. Along the same lines, Lemons's passages don't go very deep into his motivations for enlisting, or how his perspective evolved during/after his deployments, particularly in response to progression of his ailments. It's hard to sit here and tell someone what they should share about their own damn life, but these seem like critical topics and very much relevant to understanding the narrative's nuance.

All said, I think this book offers something fresh to the mountain of military histories. I'd love to see the historical anatomy method applied to other bodies. What would a lithium miner's medical background reveal about our battery powered world? A Diné's health mysteries about the racial inequities of nuclear waste management in America?

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Warbody is a fascinating look at wars we’ve already almost forgotten, told two ways—through the scope of a marine sniper and the lens of a careful historian. I was hooked by the blend of the two voices, alternately fascinated by the harsh reality of combat and the deep dives into the environmental afterlife of battlefields. War is gnarly. I imagine the book could be deeply validating for combat vets, but for a civilian who gravitates toward WWII fiction, it was also just a compelling story.

[Dmitry · Rating 3 out of 5]

(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)

Сегодня почти все знают, что такое ПТСР у военных, но мало кто знает, какой физический вред наносят боевые действия солдату просто по факту его нахождения на поля боя, без учёта ранений. Точнее, какой вред наносит современное оружие не врагу, а тому человеку кто это оружие использует. В этом смысле, если верить автору, практически все солдаты, прошедшие через современные военные конфликты, могут определяться как инвалиды. Конечно, слово «инвалид», слишком сильное слово, однако если всё обстоит именно так, как это описывает автор, то получается что огромное количество военных, даже без учёта их ранений, являются не вполне здоровыми людьми, в физиологическом смысле. Я говорю о том, что современное оружие, при использовании, выделяет так много опасных химических веществ, что человек, вдыхающий их или на кожу которого они попадают, наносит себе очень существенный урон своему здоровью и именно об этих химических веществах и повествует книга.

Книга как бы делится на две части, где в первой даётся описание того как происходит взаимодействие солдата с этими опасными веществами, которые выделяются при использовании современного оружия и которые проникают в тело солдата многими разными путями, защититься от чего довольно трудно и автобиографическая часть включая опыт ПТСР. Меня заинтересовала только первая часть книги, в которой автор рассказывает об этих самых веществах.

Bullets are mostly solid lead, which, in the grand scheme of things, is actually not that easy to absorb, even if you handle bullets all day long. But the solid lead in a bullet—especially as you follow it through its use—is almost always accompanied by another form of lead: lead dust. Every time a bullet leaves the barrel of a gun, small pieces of metal enter the air, settling over surfaces, equipment, hair, and skin. Theoretically, Marines would wear gloves every time they handle ammunition or weapons. They would wash their hands after every session at the firing range and every batch of rounds they pack. They would lay sheets over shooting areas for practicing kneeling and prone shots near the ground, where lead dust collects. And they would wash their hands before meals.
In reality, however, Marines don’t often take these precautions. As a result, lead dust from bullets finds its way into bodies. It enters mouths directly when Marines bite their nails or lick their fingers, and it finds its way into digestive systems via contaminated food, water, containers, and cigarettes.
It also comes back with them to their barracks in what some researchers refer to as “take-home lead.”
<…>
The bullet we started with may kill the target in the near term, but a deep dive on lead reveals the way that bullets in their numbers ultimately do violence to the shooter as well.

Разумеется, не только оружие является таким вот своеобразным «скрытым убийцей» рядовых солдат, сюда же можно отнести и средства передвижения, которые используются военными.

Combustion in war is both exciting and mundane. First the mundane. The fossil fuels in tanks, trucks, amtracs, SUVs, and jeeps yield nitrates, sulfates, elemental carbon, organic carbon, lead, and sulfur dioxide. These “mobile-source” emissions from moving a military around have made the air around Iraq’s military roads a lot like the air around the busier urban highways in California, with a couple of important differences. First, almost every heavy military vehicle in Iraq ran on JP-8, the diesel substitute aviation fuel that increases the amount of pesticides a Marine can absorb through her skin. For a diesel engine tuned to the stuff, JP-8 can outperform diesel in terms of certain emissions, but during the war in Iraq, there was no minimum sulfur content for JP-8, and only some military vehicles had been specifically tuned to the lighter aviation fuel.11 Filters clogged, engine wear increased, and emissions remained high. And second, because Iraq never regulated the lead out of gasoline, most of the local fuel — especially the gas in civilian vehicles—still contained our favorite toxic heavy metal: lead.

Но и это ещё не всё, в этой страшной картине токсичной среды современной войны, ведь во время боевых действий происходят взрывы, что означает – пыль. О да, даже не читая книгу можно прийти к заключению об опасности пыли во время хода боевых действия, что означает, что люди, оказавшиеся в эпицентре взрывов, находятся в очень токсичной «коробке».

War dust also contains metals and sharp particulate matter because of dramatic instances of combustion—explosions. Consider the phrase we use when we destroy an object with an explosion: we blow it up. That is, a Marine uses the force of an explosive to turn something singular and solid into much smaller pieces that our colloquial phrase suggests can rise aloft like dust on the wind. Perhaps not surprisingly, some of what gets “blown up” does in fact become dust, a once contained substance like, say, asbestos, suddenly liberated and made available for humans to inhale as a toxicant or carcinogen.

В общем, как можно увидеть, война не только убивает предметами, которые можно увидеть и потрогать – пули и ракеты – но и тем, что увидеть нельзя, а из-за этого возникает ощущение ложной безопасности. Да, пуля может убить сразу, но вот эти токсичные вещества могут убивать человека медленно, постепенно. К тому же автор является не солдатом какой-нибудь страны третьего мира, он живёт в стране, которая обеспечена самым совершенным медицинским оборудованием и в которой работают врачи высокого уровня, но даже в этой стране проблема токсичности оружия никуда не делась, что в таком случаи можно говорить о солдатах, которые представляют менее развитые страны, к примеру, солдаты таких стран как Россия и Украина. Возможно из-за того что и украинская и российская армии используют не такое современное оружие, ситуация тут менее драматичная, но что-то мне подсказывает, что это попытка выдать желаемое за действительное. В любом случаи эта книга является ещё одним аргументом против того чтобы страны использовали силовой способ (т.е. войны) для решения своих проблем. Это особенно актуально для России и Украины, которые могли избежать военных действия, если бы только этого хотели политические элиты этих двух стран.


Today, almost everyone knows what military PTSD is, yet few know the physical toll that combat takes on a soldier simply by the fact of being on the battlefield, not including injuries. More precisely, what harm do modern weapons do not only to the enemy, but to the person who uses them. In this sense, if we believe the author, virtually all soldiers who have gone through modern military conflicts can be defined as disabled. Of course, the word “disabled” is too strong, but if this is the case as the author describes it, then it turns out that a huge number of military personnel, even without taking into account their injuries, are not quite healthy people, in the physiological sense. I am talking about the fact that modern weapons, when used, emit so many dangerous chemicals that a person who inhales them or whose skin they get on, causes very significant damage to their health, and so it is about these chemicals that the book is about.

The book is kind of divided into two parts, where the first part describes how a soldier interacts with these dangerous substances, which are released when using modern weapons and which penetrate the soldier's body in many different ways, which is quite difficult to protect against, and the autobiographical part including the experience of PTSD. I was only interested in the first part of the book, where the author talks about these very substances.

Bullets are mostly solid lead, which, in the grand scheme of things, is actually not that easy to absorb, even if you handle bullets all day long. But the solid lead in a bullet—especially as you follow it through its use—is almost always accompanied by another form of lead: lead dust. Every time a bullet leaves the barrel of a gun, small pieces of metal enter the air, settling over surfaces, equipment, hair, and skin. Theoretically, Marines would wear gloves every time they handle ammunition or weapons. They would wash their hands after every session at the firing range and every batch of rounds they pack. They would lay sheets over shooting areas for practicing kneeling and prone shots near the ground, where lead dust collects. And they would wash their hands before meals.
In reality, however, Marines don’t often take these precautions. As a result, lead dust from bullets finds its way into bodies. It enters mouths directly when Marines bite their nails or lick their fingers, and it finds its way into digestive systems via contaminated food, water, containers, and cigarettes.
It also comes back with them to their barracks in what some researchers refer to as “take-home lead.”
<…>
The bullet we started with may kill the target in the near term, but a deep dive on lead reveals the way that bullets in their numbers ultimately do violence to the shooter as well.

Of course, not only are weapons such a peculiar “hidden killer” of ordinary soldiers, but also a means of transportation used by the military.

Combustion in war is both exciting and mundane. First the mundane. The fossil fuels in tanks, trucks, amtracs, SUVs, and jeeps yield nitrates, sulfates, elemental carbon, organic carbon, lead, and sulfur dioxide. These “mobile-source” emissions from moving a military around have made the air around Iraq’s military roads a lot like the air around the busier urban highways in California, with a couple of important differences. First, almost every heavy military vehicle in Iraq ran on JP-8, the diesel substitute aviation fuel that increases the amount of pesticides a Marine can absorb through her skin. For a diesel engine tuned to the stuff, JP-8 can outperform diesel in terms of certain emissions, but during the war in Iraq, there was no minimum sulfur content for JP-8, and only some military vehicles had been specifically tuned to the lighter aviation fuel.11 Filters clogged, engine wear increased, and emissions remained high. And second, because Iraq never regulated the lead out of gasoline, most of the local fuel — especially the gas in civilian vehicles—still contained our favorite toxic heavy metal: lead.

But that's not all in this scary picture of the toxic environment of modern warfare, because during hostilities, there are explosions, which means dust. Oh yes, even without reading the book, one can come to the conclusion about the danger of dust during the course of fighting, which means that people who are in the epicenter of explosions are in a very toxic “box”.

War dust also contains metals and sharp particulate matter because of dramatic instances of combustion—explosions. Consider the phrase we use when we destroy an object with an explosion: we blow it up. That is, a Marine uses the force of an explosive to turn something singular and solid into much smaller pieces that our colloquial phrase suggests can rise aloft like dust on the wind. Perhaps not surprisingly, some of what gets “blown up” does in fact become dust, a once contained substance like, say, asbestos, suddenly liberated and made available for humans to inhale as a toxicant or carcinogen.

In general, as can be seen, a war not only kills with things that can be seen and touched - bullets and missiles - but also with things that cannot be seen, and because of this, there is a sense of false security. Yes, a bullet can kill immediately, but these toxic substances can kill a person slowly, gradually. Besides, the author is not a soldier of some third world country, he lives in a country with the most advanced medical equipment and high-level doctors, but even in this country the problem of toxicity of weapons has not gone away, what in such a case can be said about soldiers who represent less developed countries, for example, soldiers of such countries as Russia and Ukraine. Perhaps because the Ukrainian and Russian armies do not use such modern weapons, the situation is less dramatic, but something tells me that this is an attempt at wishful thinking. In any case, this book is another argument against countries using force (i.e., war) to solve their problems. This is especially true for Russia and Ukraine, which could have avoided military action if only the political elites of these two countries had wanted to.

[Carissa]

Is the unlikely friendship between an environmental historian and a chronically ill US Marine. The book dives into not only Alexander Lemons time in the Marine Corps but his time as student and trying to figure out why he’s ill. The book lays out the ways serving in the Marine lead to lead poisoning in Alex’s body as well as the other environmental factors. And what I learned in this one doesn’t surprise me considering Marines were being poisoned at Camp Lejeune for decades. With Lasting effects.

I received a copy of this book from the author as part of a blog tour I was not required to write a positive review. All opinions expressed are mine alone

[Bob H · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is two narratives, interwoven. It isn't a spoiler to say that Alexander Lemons, after serving in the Iraq war and resuming civilian studies, met Joshua Howe, an environmental history lecturer. This book combines Lemons' own memoirs of serving in the Marines in the Iraq war, notably as a sniper, and Howe's context regarding the environmental and health injuries suffered in the conflict. Most of the book, in fact, chronicles Lemons' increasing health problems, chapter by chapter, with Howe's discussion of each of the hazards, starting with lead poisoning (bullets are made of lead, and the Marines and soldiers, machinegunners and snipers alike, would have been firing them, handling them, moving through lead-contaminated battlefields). There was also chemical weapons, still in storage after the invasion overthrew Saddam Hussein.

This brings up the chemicals our forces used generally, starting with pyridostigmine bromide, a preventative against chemical weapons, originally fed to our expeditionary force in the first 1990s Gulf War when Saddam's possible chemical use was a possibility. The PB would cause Gulf War Syndrome, but even so, the military dispensed PB again during the 2003 invasion despite the risk. There were also other chemicals, DEET and bug sprays and repellents used by our service members and found in their tents and other gear, also a health hazard. There were also the burn pits -- The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America's Soldiers well documented elsewhere, which brought a whole new level of toxic hazard. There was also traumatic brain injury (TBI), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the thick, choking dust peculiar to Iraq, and more. Lemons chronicles each of these as he personally experienced them, and Mr. Howe provides context and scientific detail.

It's no spoiler, either, to see how Lemons became more and more ill, during and after his military service, and he continues through the later travails in the VA and his life. It's compelling, if grim reading. Lemons' travails were, I fear, common to much of the servicemembers who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

(Copy provided by Amazon Vine program).

[Chase · Rating 5 out of 5]

genuinely one of the most nuanced, well written, down-to-earth, emotionally resonant and academically discussions of multifactor chronic illness, and the overlaps between environmental exposure, TBI, and PTSD in complex cases of unexplained illness, including traditional and alternative medicine.
while not a military veteran, i found this account deeply compelling and resonant with my own experiences of PTSD and chronic illness. this book is a wide spanning analysis with a focus on one man's journey through the struggles of chronic illness, post service reintegration, and recovery in the most holistic sense.
i would highly recommend this book, especially to anyone experiencing these struggles, or those interested in occupational safety and industrial hygiene.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyone by now has heard of PTSD, and many of us have heard of the burn pits that poisoned Iraqi soldiers, but I hadn't heard anybody put together the possibility of bullets fired on shooting ranges and battlefields leading to lead poisoning, particularly for snipers who practice continuously. Chapters alternate between Lemons writing of his wartime experience and efforts to recover, and Howe's research into toxic exposure and awareness (or lack of it) among VA doctors and other agencies. Both writers could benefit from a glossary of acronyms, but the overall story is staggering, and I ached for a way to help vets like Alex who had witnessed and inhaled and absorbed so many toxic fumes, metals, and chemicals. "Most sick people need, beyond anything else, a witness," Alex writes, and Howe and this book provide that and so much more.

[Ryan Barker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember first hearing about Gulf War Syndrome listening to the news when I was a kid. The general tone of the narrative of it was always dismissive or implied it was a conspiracy. Now, decades later, it seems clear that it was more than that.

This book mixes facts with anecdotes and illustrates the amazing amount of chemicals and heavy metals that soldiers and civilians in conflict regions are exposed to. It only makes sense that it would have a longterm impact on health.

This book does an amazing job of humanizing an issue that could easily be dismissed as "just another statistic."

[LNS · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! An amazing and eye opening read. The combination of Alex's retelling of his experiences as a sniper in the military combined with a scientific look at his environmental exposures during that time was fascinating. I highly recommend this book as a look into what our soldiers deal with when they are at home and deployed.

[Tim Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great read.

[JinSoo Saun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contents aside, insanely good writing on Lemons's part.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book that blends Marine Scout Sniper (SSgt) Alex Lemons' firsthand account of his deployments to Iraq, the impacts of those deployments on his physical and mental health, his recovery journey, and Joshua Howe's commentary on the "slow violence" of the toxic triangle of exposure to environmental toxins (a concoction of chemicals, particulates, heavy metals), TBI, and PTSD. I appreciated Lemons' candor and storytelling ability, and felt that Howe's research was thorough, directly relevant to Lemons' chapters, and struck an appropriate balance between depth and digestibility.