by SARAH ROWLAND

Specialist Stuart Wilf likes to fuck. We know this because the young soldier alludes to it when he introduces himself and says, "I like to fuck." We learn a lot about Wilf and others like him in Michael Tucker's Gunner Palace, a revealing documentary that goes behind the scenes of an American artillery unit stationed in Uday Hussein's bombed-out luxury love shack.

The German-based U.S. filmmaker - who spent a couple of two-month stints with the 400-member unit in September 2003 and February 2004 - feels like he fluked out by gaining access to such a forthcoming group of mostly small-town 19-year-olds.

"I realized how scenic the setting was right away," says Tucker, calling from Berlin. The director was in Baghdad working on another film when he stumbled upon this war-torn parallel universe. "There weren't too many palaces around where they were throwing ‘Gunnerpalooza' parties [army-sanctioned, booze-free shindigs by the pool], not to mention a commanding officer who looked like he'd walked off the set of Apocalypse Now and was very willing to have me there."

Although Dubya declared the end of "major combat" in June 2003, Tucker's film shows how the death toll keeps rising during what the soldiers sarcastically refer to as "minor combat" - whether it be from mortar attacks, snipers or improvised explosive devices. In one of the most powerful moments in this absurd tragedy, a ballsy gunner looks over his sunglasses into the camera and thanks Bush for dumping billions of dollars into the military so that they could buy this extra metal armour for their Humvees. He goes on to explain how the added protection "will probably slow down the shrapnel so that it stays in our bodies, instead of going right through it." The kid taps the vehicle for effect and turns around to find his buddies rolling around on the ground laughing hysterically.

"I'm especially proud of that scene because it kind of captures how surreal everything was during that first year of the occupation," says Tucker. "By that time, three of them had been killed and 45 of them had been wounded."

Throughout the first half of this roughly cut eye-opener, it's easy to dismiss these uncensored kids as completely inbred, especially when Wilf sports his "My Ass Smells Like Shit" T-shirt and starts playing Megadouche riffs on his guitar. But as Tucker points out, these army brats have barely finished going through puberty.

"I find it really unfair that people sitting 8,000 miles away have such high expectations for kids who are just out of high school," says Tucker. He can relate to them because he was only 17 when he enlisted for six years in the '80s, missing the Gulf War by about three months. "People forget that this is a generation born out of South Park. They almost wear their - and I mean this in a good way - ‘I'm-an-idiot' badge with honour. It's pretty obvious that they are laughing at themselves."

Not for long. There's nothing like seeing your buddy blown in half to wipe the smile off your face. "When everybody starts dying, that was a turning point," he says, referring to disillusioned kids in various states of mourning, talking on camera in monotone voices and questioning why their country even wants them there in the first place.

"It was really important for me to show that at the end of the film. Yeah, these kids are goofy, but they were profoundly changed by all of this."

Gunner Palace opens Friday, April 15

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