A WOMAN AT WAR

An absorbing and unretouched view of the far-from-picture- perfect Gulf War, presented with grit, humor, and exceptional clarity by Washington Post reporter Moore. In contrast to the precisely choreographed rout depicted in early, heavily censored reports, Moore—from her almost front-row seat in the mobile command post of the Marine Corps' chief on-site officer, Lt. Walter E. Boomer—offers a grim and often gripping account of ``a war like every other, fraught with mistakes, miscalculations, and human frailty.'' Despite such innovations as computerized tactical models and satellite communications, this very modern war remained, at ground level, ``messy and dirty and imprecise,'' with massive casualties avoided only through ``pure dumb luck.'' In the best battlefield tradition, the author, a veteran Pentagon correspondent, devotes much of her narrative to well-rounded portraits of the soldiers themselves. Chief among them is a group of remarkably candid, intelligent, and compassionate officers led by Lt. Boomer, a Vietnam vet who ``knew war and abhorred its consequences.'' On the grunt level, there are glimpses of young tankers riding alternating waves of boredom, fear, and anticipation as they hover on the edge of a border minefield, as well as of the gung-ho female troops who had to fight to be sent to the war zone. Deftly mixing fast-paced battlefield scenes with an unsparing analysis of the political and tactical considerations of command decisions, Moore—who came closer to enemy fire than many soldiers- -earns her stripes as a first-rate war correspondent. (Photos—not seen)