I remember hearing this story two years ago - there was this dumb lieutenant writing a milblog about his adventures in Iraq. Like other soldiers who wrote milblogs, higher command didn't like one particular post where he sounded off about how life sucked, and told him to cut it out. He continued journaling though, and now he has a book based on his experience. On the surface, it looks like another "hey I was a platoon leader in Iraq, my guys were great, the Iraqis were strange, the enemy was always there, and then I went home." He smirks a lot and expresses his hate of Powerpoint often. But this book presents more than that.
Matt Gallagher is LT G, a cavalry officer in charge of a scout platoon in 2-14 CAV, 25th Infantry Division. During his milbogging, he used fake names to talk about his NCOs and troops - SFC Big Country, SSG Bulldog, and Private Hot Wheels, for instance. He also uses these names throughout the book, which threw me off a bit, especially when he uses photographs of his soldiers and identifies them all in the acknowledgements in the back of the book. But I guess that's how he makes the connection between the milblog and the book.
What sets Gallagher's book above other "I was there" Iraq war books is that he doesn't try to preach about what went well and what didn't work. He joined the Army in 2005 and deployed to the desert in 2008, leaving the Army after his one tour. He wasn't interested in a career in the military, and that's okay. That frees him, I think, to talk more about the experience of working with his troops, working with his superiors, and working with the Iraqis during the fifteen months in theater. And what makes it sing is his very eloquent writing that really allows you to identify with his troops, the Iraqis, and the long monotony punctuated by moments of extreme terror.
His initial responsibility was to conduct security patrols in a small village north of Baghdad. Being that this was post-surge, things had settled down but there were still insurgents trying their best to disrupt the fragile civil society. So his troop spends its time talking to the sheiks, working the area, trying to keep it clear of IEDs, just doing the time. His leadership pushed hard for him to commit to an Army career, but when he demonstrated that he wasn't interested, that led to the problems of blogging about it. He refers to Major Moe, Lieutenant Colonel Larry, and Sergeant Major Curley as the sources of his woes, and let's be honest, those of us with prior military time have all had our run-ins with Moes, Larrys, and Curleys. Not all field grades are like that, but there are always those few individuals in your career who made it hard for you to enjoy doing your job.
After about ten months, he gets transferred to a post in 1-27 Infantry Regiment, who's running stability operations near Sadr City in a more populated area. No longer tied to a troop unit, he's working in the operations center, coordinating the patrols, but gets the opportunity to go outside the wire on a few patrols. His experiences with private military contractors, interpreters, and Iraqi military leaders continues to color the narrative with vivid details. He doesn't get political at all - at one point, he does talk about the day after the November 2008 election.
As President-elect Barack Obama strode to the podoum in Chicago to give his election day victory speech, four soldiers and I watched on television from JSS Istalquaal's common area with the light initiates of dawn piercing the glass of the small window in the corner. One of the soldiers, a young black NCO who sat on the couch in front of me, spoke for all of us and to no one in particular at the same time. "Holy shit," he said. "I can't believe this is actually happening."
When the outcome of the election had become clear a few hours earlier, most of the politicially inclined on our JSS called it a night, but a few diehards and I stayed up to watch the victory speech in Grant Park. Such a choice had little to do with my own politics and more to do with the knowledge that history had been made, and since I couldn't participate in it, witnessing it would suffice. Further, we all understood the potency of this moment, as it directly related to our professions as military men: The so-called forever wars we fought in would now actually have an ending.
This book is very much in the spirit of Colby Buzzell's "My War," with the same wry views of military life and a strong ability to connect the reader to a first-person account of the war. It's not going to tell you whether the military is doing the right thing in Iraq, whether Iraq will recover from this "post-conflict" operation, or guide any other platoon leader on what to do and not do in Iraq. It does connect you with the soldiers, though, and brings home the point that, whether you approve of the military operations in the Middle East or not, the boys are all right.
In the interests of full disclosure, I was given this book at no cost by the publisher.
Good review J.
Not sure that I'd buy the book, based on what you've written. I'm interested in war memoirs that go deeper than the "I was there, this is what I saw" book, or that come at war experience from an unusual angle.
David Donovan's Once a Warrior King is a good example of the latter, as his experience in South Vietnam was with Vietnamese troops, not Americans.
Posted by: Peter | 29 May 2010 at 09:18 PM