Remembering Fallujah Part 4: The Aftermath of Victory

his is the final part in a four-part series commemorating the Second Battle of Fallujah, which took place in November, 2004. Read Remembering Fallujah Part 3: Urban Combat Is Hell.

Chaplain Ric Brown knew when he first enlisted that he’d probably go to war. He didn’t realize he’d be in the most savage urban battle U.S. forces had seen in a generation.

Photo by 1LT Kimberly Snow

Ten years ago this month, the American-led task force that smothered the city of Fallujah to retake it from insurgents had mostly accomplished its mission. Operation Phantom Fury had begun by the end of the first week of November. Within a month the Marines, Soldiers, and Iraqi troops had secured every corner of the city that its previous masters had described as the “cemetery for Americans.” 

Brown was there from the beginning. 

Ten years later, the toll is both easier and more difficult to measure. 

Launched on November 7, Operation Phantom Fury achieved its objectives rather quickly. The Regimental Combat Teams swept through the city and exterminated most of the remaining insurgents within a week. By November 14, the Marines-led task force occupied Fallujah.

By then, as Marines conducted final clearing operations in the eastern part of the city, a message had been painted in black on the infamous green trestle bridge:

This is for the Americans of Blackwater murdered here in 2004
Semper Fidelis 3/5 Dark Horse

The Americans had won, but it came with a price. Brown lost four of his Soldiers in the battle, 19 during his tour.

“Six months after getting back from Iraq I’m in church one day and it hits me like a ton of bricks that I lost those guys, I lost my best friend who’s a sergeant major,” recalls Brown. 

Families and friends of nearly 100 American troops would go through the same process. 

Besides the deeply personal effect the heroic loss of service members has, there were institutional and political repercussions for the military. 

Immediately, the result was a candid and sobering reevaluation of the Iraq campaign. Politically, support began to deteriorate for the war at home. 

In June 2005, a New York Times columnist declared, “The All-volunteer Army isn’t working.” 

“The problem now,” Bob Herbert argued, “is that most Americans have had plenty of time to digest the images of people being blown up in Baghdad and mutilated in Fallujah.” 

Fallujah, and similarly terrible battles in Iraq, made continuing to fight the war nearly impossible without reinstituting a draft, according to the author. 

Meanwhile, the Army looked at innovative ways to win with the Soldiers it had.

During the Second Battle of Fallujah, then-Lt. Gen. David Petraeus served as the first commander of the NATO Training Mission-Iraq and the Multi-National Security Transition Command, charged with developing Iraqi security forces. Within a year he would assume command of the Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he would, along with Marine Lt. Gen. James Amos, supervise the authorship of a revised counterinsurgency field manual.  

The new field manual would be released and adopted theater-wide by February 2006. 

In the medium-term, updated COIN doctrine and a troop surge would help Petraeus, named commander of all coalition forces in Iraq in early 2007, turn the tide against the Iraqi insurgency. 

For the next few years, U.S. service members continued the fight in Iraq and surged against a growing insurgency in Afghanistan. It has been the longest sustained period of combat for America’s Armed Forces. The volunteers have proven up to the task, after all. They had outlasted the naysayers. 

Now, exactly ten years after that landmark battle in Iraq and three years after all U.S. forces withdrew from the country, the military is reducing its presence in the other major theater of the War on Terror. 

When I first met Chaplain Brown in Kandahar, I wondered about the parallels between Iraq and Afghanistan. As security deteriorated in the former, what would happen in the latter once we withdrew? 

Brown didn’t have an answer. 

Given that Fallujah was under the control of the same type of thugs who had gone against the Marines and Soldiers in 2004, I asked him if the men of Phantom Fury died in vain.

“No,” he replied without hesitation. “Their sacrifice wasn’t meaningless because they did what they were sent there to do.”

Indeed, with a hard-won victory in Fallujah, their legacy is a more powerful and resilient force. To suggest that the U.S. military can’t fight with volunteers now sounds absurd. 

Brown, too, is more resilient, and he continues to help his Soldiers, who are far away from combat. Now serving at a division level, he reminds himself that there are Soldiers outside the wire who have it worse. He tries not to lose sight of who is fighting. 

Before his men went into Fallujah, he took aside a squad leader and prayed,  “Lord, give this young man the strength and wisdom to protect his soldiers. Give him the courage and conviction to deliver them from the unknown. Give him the faith and guidance to know your path, Lord. Give him the perseverance to stay on it.” (From House to House: An Epic Memoir of War) 

I asked him what he would pray for the young Soldiers ending their mission in Afghanistan. 

“About the same thing," he replied. "It is about the leaders leading their Soldiers and giving their Soldiers confidence. It’s about having the strength and faith and assurance to give it, to pass it on.”

Remembering Fallujah Part 2: A Battle Against Evil

This is the second part in a four-part series commemorating the Second Battle of Fallujah, which took place in November, 2004. Read Remembering Fallujah Part 1: A Chaplain, an Infantryman, and the Fallen.

Chaplain Ric Brown has the most remarkable set of photos on his Facebook page. In several, he is holding hands with Soldiers perched in their armored vehicles, praying. 

One photo shows a Soldier with his head down, whether in reverence to the Almighty or fear of the scene of carnage he is about to drive into, is unclear. But Brown is there, comforting him. He says he doesn't know who took these photos, or even that anyone was taking them. Someone passed the photos along anonymously several years later.

But those boys needed the prayers.

And the fight in Fallujah had to be waged. As distant as that episode now seems, the strategic goals of the Iraq War hung in the balance in Fallujah a decade ago.

According to a report conducted by the Institute for Defense Analyses, by July of 2004, Fallujah was infested with insurgents, and U.S. officials worried that it represented the coalition‘s defeat and the insurgents’ victory. 

The city had become a symbol of the insurgency, as well as a tactical center for information operations, training, and manufacture of improvised explosive devices. It was an exporter of terror to the entire region.

Just a few months earlier, insurgents had ambushed and killed four U.S. contractors, hanging two of their charred bodies from a bridge on the west end of the city. 

During a savage demonstration, locals cheered and one Iraqi held a sign underneath one of the lynched bodies that read: "Fallujah is the cemetery for Americans." (From “The Battle for Fallujah: Al Fajr—the Myth-buster”)

Things were spinning out of control, and people were afraid. Hundreds of Iraqis deserted when they learned they’d be going there for Phantom Fury, according to the IDA report. 

Staff Sgt. David Bellavia and the men of the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment (2-2) were afraid, too, but they knew they had to fight. 

Lt. Col. Peter Newell, 2-2’s commander, spoke to his troops before they went into the fight. Bellavia recalls that he had to "raise his voice so he can be heard over the distant artillery fire exploding a few miles to our south." 

"This is as pure a fight of good versus evil as we'll probably see in our lifetime," said the battalion commander. 

I asked Brown if God was on his side that day. 

I’m cautious to say yes to God being on our side. There are things that are ordained of God. On one hand, God has emplaced governments… and if the government is tuned in and doing right by the people, then, yes, He is on our side.

Whether the Americans and their Iraqi allies had God or not, they had the weaponry. The two-star general in command of the operation described the awesomeness. 

I was wandering all across the front, meeting with the units as they moved into attack positions, and it was awe-inspiring. At that moment, this was the greatest concentration of combat power on the face of the Earth, as you looked at the attack forces ready to cross and surround the city, they were a combination of Army and Marine forces with their Iraqi counterparts. (From “The Battle for Fallujah: Al Fajr—the Myth-buster”)

The array had a confidence boosting effect on the Iraqis, too. One of the Marine officers recalled,

You could see the Iraqis drive around in their trucks and it would be kind of quiet, until they got the sense of it. Look at all this stuff! Literally, they would cheer and wave and they knew, "We are on the right side." They didn't really know what was going on, but once they took a look around and saw tanks and Marines and soldiers, and guns and helicopters, you could see their calmness, "We are actually on the winning team this time." (From “The Battle for Fallujah: Al Fajr—the Myth-buster”)

At 7:00 pm local time on November 8, 2004, heavy tanks and fighting vehicles began rolling through a breach that had been punched through the north berms of the city. Forces had been divided into two regimental combat teams. Second Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment led the main attack for Regimental Combat Team-1 in the west. 

Bellavia and Brown were with their Task Force 2-2, leading RCT-7 in the east. 

When Operation Phantom Fury began the day before, coalition troops secured bridges and seized the hospital, which the insurgents had used as a command center. U.S. Special Forces had worked with Iraqis to gather intelligence and prepare the information battlefield. 

While Brown doesn't declare whether God was rooting for the coalition, he recognized evil, and agrees with Newell that the Americans were fighting against it. 

So did Bellavia, who uttered a prayer following his chaplain’s example, asking for strength to fight evil. 

"I am ready, Dear Lord," he said. "And I am coming."  

Remembrance Day in Afghanistan

Poppies dotted the chests of most of the Soldiers in the crowd.

It's a British custom, I am learning. Houston and I went to Kabul to follow up our work on the MG Harold Greene Memorial. The dedication of a pavilion in his honor was held at Camp ISAF, where Green worked.

We stopped at a different facility, called New Kabul Compound, and grabbed lunch. I really can't do justice to the little third-country national who politely yelled at me for taking bread without the aid of utensils, so I'll skip that part. But I was glad I took it, because it made one of the best PB&J sandwiches I've had in a long time.

And as we sat in the beautiful November weather in Kabul, poppy-donning soldiers began to congregate. The 11th hour was approaching.

A brief ceremony commemorated what we in the U.S. refer to as Veterans Day. The American flag was at half mast, next to its Afghan counterpart raised all the way. It is the first time I had ever seen that.

The crowd was about 200 uniformed strong, mostly U.S. But I saw a few Brits, a handful of Germans, a dozen or so Mongolians, and two Romanians. A Canadian general spoke. A pair of British buglers played "Last Post" and "Reveille."

It was moving.

One hundred years have passed, and some of our allies are the same, while former enemies are now friends. It's interesting how great powers wax and wane, strategic alliances develop and crumble, usually in battlefields like Afghanistan.

But Veterans Day is about the individual Soldiers-- those who have fought overseas in defense of or duty to their country.

Remember them. 

The Legend of the Kosovo Eight

Sometimes a one-hit wonder needs to let well enough alone.

We had a major hit back in 2009, when our group toured Kosovo. We were known then as the 69th PAD, and we were rockstars. Great leadership, energy, and moxie. The chicks really dug us.

A certain COL Cooper didn't have much use for us, except for s few silly command photos and slices of Anthony's pizza (that he got by crashing our pizza party), but we got pretty big audiences with our photos, videos, and the mother of them all, The Guardian East magazine. Think of it as our White Album.

The magic and Glory came to end end around December 2009. The band fell apart, each of us going our separate ways. The leader, CPT Jonathan Masaki "Mahalo" Shiroma got promoted and went on to a solo career. MSG Paul Wade also left, then there was no keeping us together.

One member (He Who Must Not Be Named) departed before we finished touring. SGT Pepper, Swatts, Smith, Samudio, and I went home to fading memories of our greatness.

Our bassist and rhythm guitarist-- Samudio and Smith-- found new band to tour with. They played much bigger venues, like RC- East in Afghanistan. Places with crowds much bigger than we could have dreamed in Kosovo.

Kosovo was intimate, like the club scene of the Beatles' early Liverpool days.

But Afghanistan? Tough. Samudio came just after Kosovo. The man re-classed to get here. That's Army-speak for, he went to school to learned a new trade so he could deploy with a combat unit. So he's one of the few triple-qualified military police/ public affairs Soldiers in the Army. I'm pretty sure he volunteered just so he could make a cool documentary, but carried a big gun and saw combat.

Nevada Jack Smith went to a different state to get on an Afghanistan deployment. It was Hawaii, so we can't give him too much credit for sacrifice, but they did deploy to RC-South where things were a bit hairy. Less coffee and yoga back then.

Swatts went on to a tour in Iraq, which was probably then like Afghanistan is now. But these places are always risky, and it was no Kosovo. the pressure was high. It was the big time for all of them.

I bring this all up because I get teased for having it easy. Guilty as charged. I would not wish for combat action, and every time I here someone in operations tell me they're having a boring day I reply, "Good. Means we're doing our job."

Most deployments for most Soldiers are not year-long versions of Lone Survivor. They are more like bad vacations.

And public affairs Soldiers have it particularly easy. We complain about not having enough compact discs and limited access to YouTube. I wouldn't do any other job in the Army, though, unless of course I was ordered to. But no one orders us not to complain, because it is what Soldiers do best.

But these guys volunteered for the fight. That's the mark of a true warrior.

As our good captain (he is a major now, but he will always be "commander," to me) put it in more or fewer words:

Whether you get into a gunfight or not, whether you primarily reside on a FOB or go out of the wire everyday, you wear that uniform in support of our operations overseas. You should be proud of what you have done and our nation thanks you for it. I personally am proud of you in your respective roles in OEF. You have stepped up to do something very few other Americans your age have. 

I should also mention that MAJ Shiroma did a previous tour in Iraq, where his job as a HHC commander and PAO did not spare him the horrors and stresses of modern combat.

 am enormously proud to have played with these guys, and I respect them for standing up to fight. I think of them often as I enjoy iced coffee inside the wire at a relatively safe Bagram Airfield.

Man, the band should really get back together.

Remember Keating: A Five-Year Retrospective, Part 6

This is the final part in a six-part series. Read Part 1. Read Part 2. Read Part 3. Read Part 4. Read Part 5.

Three Medals of Honor have been awarded in connection with COP Keating, two from the final battle. As the highest honor a soldier can receive for action in combat, these awards ratify the ways the soldiers fought. In essence, they legitimate the way they organized themselves. That organizing activity was heavily influenced by the Warrior Ethos.

SSG (Ret.) Clint Romesha.

Properly understood as a tool that soldiers use to enact and make sense of their environment, the Ethos is a powerful instrument in combat. The actions of the soldiers in battle of COP Keating illustrates as much in several ways. While soldiers act during combat, they do so without carefully rationalizing those actions. Instead, they look for validation after the action. The language of the Warrior Ethos gives them material to make the necessary meaning.

None of this is to say that the American soldiers had not been combat effective until 2003, when they were enlightened with a breakthrough mission statement. But to dismiss the power of the Warrior Ethos is to commit two major errors. One is to ignore the overwhelming superiority of U.S. combat performance relative to the nation’s battlefield enemies. The other is to ignore the fact that the current force is regarded as the greatest fighting force of modernity.

Certainly many factors contribute to the effectiveness of soldiers in combat, but to take the extreme position that the Warrior Ethos affects it in only a minor way to is take the position that words don’t matter, that what trainers tell Soldiers don’t matter, and that soldiers are merely components in some mechanistic, post-human form of warfighting.

That claim defies the human dimension of battle, and the centrality of human relationship in organizing in it.

The above was adapted from a paper I submitted in a doctoral seminar in organizational communication. The paper was titled, "More than Mere Words: Enacting the Warrior Ethos in Combat."

Quotes from the Soldiers are taken from The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor by the eminent Jake Tapper. References to enactment, sensemaking, and other social psychology ideas are mainly from the various works of Karl E. Weick. 

Remember Keating: A Five-Year Retrospective, Part 5

This is the fifth part in a six-part series. Read Part 1. Read Part 2. Read Part 3. Read Part 4. Read Part 6.

Five soldiers were pinned down in a Humvee on the COP. The insurgents who were firing a seemingly endless supply of small arms rounds and rocket-propelled grenades had obviously studied how to disable the Americans’ best positions.

The soldiers—SGT Justin Gallegos, SGT Vernon Martin, SGT Brad Larson, SPC Stephan Mace, and SPC Ty Carter—understood they might die trying to escape, or would certainly die if they remained in the truck. Planning their egress, they made their move. Gallegos, Mace, and Martin were all hit immediately. Carter and Larson ran back to the truck. Mace was wounded by both RPG and small arms fire.  As he lay on the ground, bleeding and more exposed than ever, Mace tried to crawl on his elbows toward the Humvee. Carter saw him about fifteen yards away.

SPC Ty Carter

"I’m going to go get him," Carter told Larson. "No," the sergeant replied. "I can see him, he’s right there," Carter insisted. "You’re no good to him dead," was the reply from the senior soldier. They argued, and Carter continued to plea. Eventually, Larson consented, and Carter went out again to administer aid. The two soldiers carried Mace back into the Humvee under fire, and later to the aid station.

Perhaps the most conspicuous, and romanticized, element of the Warrior Ethos in the popular imagination of "leave no man behind." Carter’s persistence and selflessness would earn him the Medal of Honor; at the presentation ceremony, President Obama described Carter’s actions as "the story... of what our troops do for each other," explaining that "he displayed the essence of true heroism— "not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost."

"I will never leave a fallen comrade" expresses two truisms that make soldiers more effective in combat: one, they have received training aligned to social cohesion that helps them enact it, and two, they are imbued with the trust that makes the enactment natural. Both phenomena are evident on the battlefield in cases like Carter rescuing Mace and in the anecdote that began this paper.

Mission Statements serve to focus purpose and create organizational unanimity of goals. In this way, they help an organization allocate resources to for “translating organizational objectives into a work structure so that time, cost and performance parameters can be assessed and controlled.” . In the Army, soldiers are systematically trained to leave nobody behind. While the ethos of rescuing fallen soldiers is not new, its inclusion in a written mission statement as the ultimate line of the Warrior Ethos has encouraged the Army to explicitly incorporate it into large programs, such as Combat Life Saver, begun in 2007.

Perhaps a more elemental dimension of the leave nobody behind ethos is the trust that it instills in soldiers. Sociologists refer to trust in military action as social or unit cohesion, and its power is well documented. Interestingly, trust comes from drill—time spent on organizational action—by unit members acting together. Perhaps counter intuitively, then, drill and rehearsal don’t have as primary benefits preparation for a particular course of action, but to instill trust. Wong, et al., found that soldiers feel empowered to do their jobs when they believe that their team mates support them and will keep them safe.

Trust on the battlefield runs deep, as evident from Romesha’s emotional recollection of his own decision during the Battle of COP Keating. In an interview with Romesha on the eve of the Soldier’s Medal of Honor ceremony, Tapper asked about the importance of the Warrior Ethos:

"Tell me why it’s so important to you that the enemy not get their hands on a dead American soldier. Why does that thought bother you so much?"
Romesha: "Cause they’re ours. I mean, to give closure to the family, you know to have their son one more time. We’re not going to leave someone behind. Never gonna do it."

Perhaps this sentiment precedes action, to some degree, but it is justified and intensified after action. Carter didn’t have any particular fondness for Mace, but said in hindsight that he had to risk his life to save his team mate because they were both soldiers.

It was the ethos in action.

The above was adapted from a paper I submitted in a doctoral seminar in organizational communication. The paper was titled, "More than Mere Words: Enacting the Warrior Ethos in Combat."

Quotes from the Soldiers are taken from The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor by the eminent Jake Tapper. References to enactment, sensemaking, and other social psychology ideas are mainly from the various works of Karl E. Weick. 

Remember Keating: A Five-Year Retrospective, Part 4

This is the fourth part in a six-part series. Read Part 1. Read Part 2. Read Part 3. Read Part 5. Read Part 6.

"I will never accept defeat."

The enemy had breached the perimeter at COP Keating. The officer in charge, 1LT Andrew Bundermann, a 24-year-old graduate of West Point, stepped outside of the operations center to see his camp overrun and in flames; hundreds of enemy fighters still advanced toward them. He decided the Americans would have to consolidate their position and abandon the outer parts of the camp. "We need to fight this out; we need to hold our ground," Bundermann told his first sergeant and SSG Romesha. "F--- that," replied Romesha. “We need to retake this fucking camp and drive the f---ing Taliban out."

Bundermann’s idea to consolidate was probably the wisest, rationally. It was calculated. By all accounts, Bundermann was a good officer; His superiors said that he managed the battle effectively. But it was Romesha’s emotional response, a reaction based on refusing to give up what some members of his team had already died for. It was grounded in ethos.

1LT Andrew Bundermann and SGT Brad Larson

Romesha’s decision didn’t really make much sense in the moment that he made it. Nevertheless, his two superiors—Bundermann and 1SG Hill—agreed and proceeded to devise a counterattack. It was profitable only in retrospect, but it was an action borne of the dissonant and chaotic.

Organizing in combat is about men and women who seize those dissonant and surprising moments to direct action.

Whether Romesha’s instinct was resultant of systematic training or traits he brought to the Army is beside the point. The Ethos is articulated and reinforced in training and throughout Army activity, finding its way even into the citation for the Medal of Honor that Romesha was awarded in 2013:

"Undeterred by his injuries, SSG Romesha continued to fight and upon the arrival of another soldier to aid him and the assistant gunner, he again rushed through the exposed avenue to assemble additional soldiers."

Enactment helps us understand the process by which the individual acts in these chaotic situations. Romesha and his teammates formulated a plan to defeat the enemy, now inside the wire. But plans and goals seem to pose a counterexample to the retrospective conception of enacting and organizing. Remember that meaning and justification are used to create order from chaos, to maintain micro-stability during disruptive moments. One remedy, then, is to change the future tense of plans to future perfect tense. "I will never accept defeat" becomes, "I will not have been defeated." In this way, enactment becomes a way to avoid thinking about the disruptive nature of an alternative future. It allows the actors to avoid considering what the world would be like if he had to inhabit it as defeated actors.

Ethos allows soldiers to formulate such plans against all logic. In combat, sometimes logic reigns—as when Black hawk Medevac helicopter pilots refused to land at the COP for over 10 hours because of the intense fire (though a senior officer in the brigade told me a few days ago that that decision may not have been the right one). But as soldiers try to recover some form of stability and order during battle, they tend to organize under ethical considerations rather than rational ones. Refusing to accept defeat is one such consideration.

The above was adapted from a paper I submitted in a doctoral seminar in organizational communication. The paper was titled, "More than Mere Words: Enacting the Warrior Ethos in Combat."

Quotes from the Soldiers are taken from The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor by the eminent Jake Tapper. References to enactment, sensemaking, and other social psychology ideas are mainly from the various works of Karl E. Weick. 

Remember Keating: A Five-Year Retrospective, Part 3

This is the third part in a six-part series. Read Part 1. Read Part 2. Read Part 4. Read Part 5. Read Part 6.

The mission-first primacy of organizational action helps soldiers prioritize, focus, and execute. It was at the heart of adoption of the Ethos, and was "based on an understanding of what is most important to least important in the context that all specified and implied tasks must be performed."

All organizing occurs in contexts that are chaotic and open to multiple interpretations, and combat is only an exemplar of such a context. Thus, organizing involves the systematic reduction of equivocality .

SGT Joshua Kirk

Making sense of events requires a fair amount of post-decision validation. Equivocality can rear its head before or after a soldier commits to an action. After an action, like the decision by SGT Francis to keep fighting with broken ribs, must be validated in order to make sense of it, especially because it was a social act.

Inherent in enactment is the assumption that there is no single, objective reality to which actors can compare their activity. Reality is contingent and contextual, making decisions about the most important and most social things difficult. For example, less than 30 minutes into the battle at Keating, SGT Josh Kirk was struck in the head by a bullet, and was losing blood quickly. CPT Cordova, the ranking medical officer at the outpost, treated Kirk for several minutes while his condition deteriorated. Then,

After many minutes of trying to keep the sergeant alive by breathing for him with the squeeze bag, Cordova looked down at the floor. They would have to perform CPR on him all day to keep him alive, taking two of the four medical staff out of commission. Any other day, they would have done it without question, but not today. The wounded were already stacked up, and more would be coming in.... At 6:45 a.m., Cordova pronounced Kirk dead.

The Ethos helps actors validate actions that are otherwise difficult to justify. Commitment "marshals forces that destroy the plausibility of alternatives." In organizing, and especially in combat, there is little advantage to considering alternatives once an action has been taken. Intense actions, we find, enforces this tendency, and when actors validate intense actions, they often find unexpected and attractive meaning therein.

The language of the Warrior Ethos is highly flexible, rendering itself meaningful to a vast universe of action. It also promotes the social aspect of finding meaning, and encourages soldiers to commit. It is a linguistic tool that helps soldiers make sense of the nonsensical in battle.


The above was adapted from a paper I submitted in a doctoral seminar in organizational communication. The paper was titled, "More than Mere Words: Enacting the Warrior Ethos in Combat."

Quotes from the Soldiers are taken from The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor by the eminent Jake Tapper. References to enactment, sensemaking, and other social psychology ideas are mainly from the various works of Karl E. Weick. 

Remember Keating: A Five-Year Retrospective, Part 2

This is the second part in a six-part series. Read Part 1. Read Part 3. Read Part 4. Read Part 5. Read Part 6.

SPC Mark Dulaney shook SGT John Francis. "You good? You alright?"

A rocket-propelled grenade had sent Francis flying and he landed on his back. "Can you get up? Asked the specialist. "I think I got some busted ribs," replied the sergeant. He did, in fact, have five of them. "Should we go to the aid station?" asked Dulaney, a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

"F--- no," said Francis. "we gotta keep fighting til this s--t’s over."

In combat, effective soldiers take the initiative, military speak for staying on the move and on offense. Military culture, in fact, privileges decisiveness, sometimes to the detriment of the organization. COP Keating was, after all, under attack because senior army leaders to long refused to seriously reconsider the decision to build an outpost in Nuristan.

But just as action supplies the necessary material for cognition, commitment supplies incoherent groups the material for organization. The ways in which individuals develop a commitment is important for understanding how they act. Further, an examination of how soldiers put into action the first statement of the Warrior Ethos reveals some of the dimensions of how they make sense of the organizing going on around them.

Karl Weick is a social psychologist who has profoundly influenced the way organizational experts are now understanding how people communicate in high-tempo and high-risk situations. Nearly all of Weick’s ideas about organizing can be traced to a set of experiments he conducted in the late 1960s, when he invited participants to conduct a complex task with the promise of monetary reward. Those participants who were deprived of their promised reward subsequently rated the task more interesting.

Thus, the experiment and his analysis reveals quite a bit about why individuals act and follow direction—in other words organize—and how they find satisfaction in that work. Weick’s experiments had a "person [make] a clear commitment to the task, a commitment whose full content was not grasped at the beginning." Thus, action became the independent variable.

Weick calls commitment a "reference point for sensemaking." Fundamental to sensemaking in organizational life is the notion that action is almost always social. Thus, acts become "interacts" between and among actors. The anecdote above was an interact between Dulaney and Francis. Commitment, then, usually invokes the social.

When soldiers say (or think) "I will always place the mission first," they are equating the mission with the team. In one respect, it absolves the individual of responsibility and makes it easier to deal with the mental and emotional load of combat.

The commitment pattern is heavily reliant on language. By looking at action as a cause, we are free to speculate that the way soldiers express their commitments might also be the result of action. Sharing and socializing commitments is enabled by organizations that focus on language . The consistency and variety with which the Army employs the Warrior Ethos makes it more likely that commitment will be shared and understood in common ways.

The most superficial reading of the Battle of COP Keating makes plain that these guys were committed to the fight.

The above was adapted from a paper I submitted in a doctoral seminar in organizational communication. The paper was titled, "More than Mere Words: Enacting the Warrior Ethos in Combat."

Quotes from the Soldiers are taken from The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor by the eminent Jake Tapper. References to enactment, sensemaking, and other social psychology ideas are mainly from the various works of Karl E. Weick. 

Remember Keating: A Five-Year Retrospective, Part 1

This is the first part in a six-part series commemorating the Battle of COP Keating. 

Half a decade ago the war in Afghanistan raged on in climactic fashion: 

On 3 October 2009, Soldiers of Bravo Troop, 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry, repelled an enemy force of 300 Anti-Afghan Forces (AAF) fighters, preserving their combat outpost and killing approximately 150 of the enemy fighters. US forces sustained eight killed in action and 22 wounded, all but three of whom returned to duty after the attack. The Soldiers distinguished themselves with conspicuous gallantry, courage, and bravery under the heavy enemy fire that surrounded them.

—Excerpt from AR-15-6 Investigation re: Complex 

Attack on COP Keating - 3 Oct 09 Executive Summary

COP Keating from above. Photo by 1LT Brad Larson

Throughout the day I'll post five additional vignettes about the battle and its implications for the Army, all taken from a paper I submitted in a graduate seminar on organizational communication. 

As U.S. Forces continue their withdrawal, it is important to remember those who have borne the heavy costs of standing up a democracy in such an inhospitable place. It is important because we still have a mission here, and that mission will require much more resolve than during the years of fierce fighting and American casualties. It is important also because the U.S. Army will fight other wars, and lessons wait to be discovered from those already concluded. 

Read "Remember Keating: A Five-Year Retrospective, Part 2."

American and Afghan Alike—Honoring the Fallen

Pashtun names-- a dozen or so this week-- blare across the screen.

They represent personnel of the Afghan National Army, National Police force, and local police who have died in duty during the last few d
ays. I could pronounce some of the names if I tried, but I don't recognize any of them.

Still, they are my comrades. A two-star general, the one who commands all ISAF troops in southern Afghanistan, orders us to stand as we pay our respects. We honor the fallen of ISAF-- including American troops-- if there are any.

One American has died in our regional command this month. That means Afghans are taking the brunt of the insurgency. And while a dead American Soldier will always be a harder loss to bear than one from another country, Afghan KIAs (killed in action) are recognized as a sacrifice just as sacrosanct. 

The presentation that announces the troop deaths reads,

Soldiers do not fight because they hate what's in front of them. They fight because they love what's behind them. 

I can't pretend that American Soldiers would admit to loving Afghanistan enough to die for its freedom. But some of them have died, and all of us know the risk. And here we are.

We will soon leave, and these Afghan patriots who are fighting barbarism will continue to fight. To those back home who say that Afghanistan is a hopeless cause, I say you should meet some of the people who are willing to lay down their lives for a more civilized future. They have hope.

I haven't met many of them. But I have seen their names. I know what they did. And yes, I honor them.

My Army Weight Loss Secret

The following originally appeared on the site, "Suite 101" in 2008.

The United States Army has taught me quite a bit about losing weight and staying fit. At Basic Combat Training, six things led to serious weight loss.

Before I turned my body over to Uncle Sam, I weighed just this side of 200 pounds. I was officially overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which uses a Body Mass Index (BMI) to gauge weight category. 

Without getting into the specifics of how BMI is calculated, and why it is an effective tool for measuring healthy weight levels, I had too much body fat for my height. According to the CDC scale, a healthy weight level is between 18 and 25 BMI. I was out of bounds.

Six months later I was more than 20 pounds trimmer, at a satisfactory 22 BMI, and feeling great. What was my secret? I joined the Army. Now I certainly don’t expect anybody to join the Army simply to lose weight. There are, however, several things one can do to mimic the fitness and weight loss routine that the Army Basic Training provided for me.

Exercise in the morning

The cornerstone of the BCT fitness program is morning exercises. Six days a week I was on the Physical Training field for Army “PT.” It wasn’t difficult, simple calisthenics and a three-mile run on Wednesdays.

The main advantage of our exercise routine for me was its timing. Jeanie Lerche Davis of WebMD writes, in “Lose Weight With Morning Exercise,” that morning exercise helps the body develop a better routine, which affects sleep patterns and the body’s ability to lose weight. Even if you don’t do a full workout every day, regular morning exercise is a key component of an effective weight loss program.

Maintain sleep patterns

Regular sleep has also been linked to weight loss. At BCT, we were in the rack at 9:00 every night, and up by 4:00 am. While on the minimal side of the seven to eight hours suggested by most experts, the regularity made up for the dearth. My body knew when it was supposed to be working, and it got going at the same time every day. 4:00 am is too early for me as a civilian, but the routine is the important part. Under sleeping and oversleeping could hinder your weight loss.

Keep meals regular and proportioned

At BCT we ate three squares a day. The meals came at regular times, and were balanced and healthy. My biggest meal was breakfast, and I ate as much as I could, following the advice of a professional trainer I had met before shipping to Basic: “eat like a king for breakfast, like a prince for lunch, and like a peasant for dinner.” The first meal sustained me through the hardest part of my work day, and lunch maintained my energy level. Dinner was just enough to keep me from going hungry, and without a full stomach my body slept better without having to metabolize much until the next morning.

Get full in the morning

A smoothie, a bowl of cereal, and some toast should do the trick. If you’re on the  go, a couple of bananas and a breakfast sandwich with plenty of milk or juice could fill you up. It’s hard to do, but your body will thank you for it, and you’ll have more energy, be more productive throughout the day, and eat a lot less for your other meals.

Stay active throughout the day

Another important aspect of my Army experience was our constant activity. We were ever on the go: walking, carrying, marching, and cleaning. The bottom line is that we stayed busy. My body was always burning calories.

This is an easy thing for anyone to do. You don’t have to put yourself through a grueling workout. Do some yard work, clean the garage, straighten up the house, walk around the block. Just get off the couch or away from the computer a little more than usual.

Drink lots of water

If there is one thing I heard more than anything thing else, it was, “Drink water!” Our BCT leaders understood the importance of proper hydration for good health. Not only did adequate—on the generous side—water kept me from feeling hungry, it helped my body’s metabolism work smoothly.

Studies have shown that those who drink more water tend to lose more weight. Just about anybody can apply these five principles to a moderate weight loss plan. Do it the Army way and lose weight now!

My One-track Mind

The following originally appeared in the blog "Musings of a Factotum" May 19, 2009

I realized that I had not written much that was not military related in some time. It got me wondeing why I was so obsessed with the Army?

Well, isn't it logical? I am serving a deployment. To say that I am working for the Army full time is an understatement. I carry my weapon nearly all of my waking hours, and am on call for military duties 24/7. I do have some down time, but even that is spent performing maintenance on my equipment and getting ready for more work.

We are in a sort of news vaccuum out here, and the people I see, even at the "store" or at dinner, are all here for the same thing, and only reinforce the mindset that comes along with a deployment. 

Needless to say, I have to make every effort to redirect my thoughts away from the Army, and don't often have epiphanies about things that used to occupy my mind. So, it's hard to be clever about topics about which a factotum should be clever.

But it's important. I don't want to be so narrow. Does it not go to the heart of the question about whether it is good to be generalists or specialists? I would rather be the former, but certianly our society needs specialists. Maybe I am still looking for what really motivates me. Do we all find a speciality in the end?

I hope that's not the inevitable conclusion to our lives' paths. I love teaching, but I joined the military knowing full well that it could take me away from it. I am also trying to get into investing, but a teacher's salary doesn't exactly foster a climate of investment opportunity. The Army has taught me a bit about video editing, and I am learning more in hopes of applying it to my teaching. I also love writing, and both math and my military service have given me fodder to practice the craft.

At any rate, I like to dabble in lots of things. It's enjoyable, and I would encourage those around me to do the same. I am making my best attempt to avoid keeping my mind on one lonely track.

Editor's note: I wrote this on my last deployment to Kosovo. I find every bit of the information still applies to this deployment to Afghanistan.

Utah Pioneers in Afghanistan Never Quit

Few holiday celebrations can match the Days of '47 in fervor. Statewide in Utah are parades, cook outs, rodeos, demolition derbies, races, carnivals, and fireworks.

Those celebrations will extend to Afghanistan this year. Our little band of Utah National Guardsmen will host a bona fide, authentic, Beehive State barbecue ten and a half hours before anything in the Mountian Time Zone. 

They'll even order up some July-in-Utah weather, just for tradition's sake. Forecast is around 110 degrees. 

Many of these Soldiers will reflect on Utah's pioneer heritage while they live out their own kind of pioneer experience in southern Afghanistan. 

Our unit is based in Draper, a growing suburb of Salt Lake with its own unique pioneer roots. We left Utah in March for mobilization training on the East Coast. By early May, we were in Kandahar.

Many of our Soldiers are fourth- and fifth-generation Utahns, whose ancestors settled the state when it was known as "Deseret." 

But they each represent their own pioneer spirit. Deployments can be tough. One Soldier, on her first, said that she draws strength from thinking about pioneers. 

"When I'm going through a hard time, I realize that it doesn't compare to the suffereing that [Utah] pioneers experienced; they traveled through really rough conditions, but they kept going."

Persistance and a hope for a better future drove the earlier Utahns just as it pushes us to do our best to get the mission done here in OEF. 

Another Soldier, who served multiple tours in Iraq, compared some of the conditions that he had to operate in to the trials of Mormon pioneers who helped settle the West. 

"Growing up in Utah, we are taught about how they were persecuted, driven across the plains, and settled in a not-so-hospitable place. But they made it happen. It was similar for us in Iraq, in the sense that we lived in austere condidtions and had to do hard things. But we just did it."

From the days of 1847, when wagon trains full of religious refugees began spilling into the arid Salt Lake Valley, through the nineteenth century when life in the Western U.S. was rough and often wild, success required a certain pluck-- a refusal to accept defeat.

American Soldiers display that same moxy today, and none more so than those in Afghanistan who come from Utah, steeped in Pioneer culture and motivated by love of country. 

"The spirit of being a pioneer is having to do something that people haven't done before, and figuring out how to do it," our most experienced combat veteran said.  

One Soldier with our detachment was married just weeks before deploying. Another negotiated a hectic family move to another state. Two Soldiers put doctoral studies on hold for a tour of indefinite duration. Several left civilian careers on pause. 

The Utah Pioneer Ethos is alive and well in this corner of the world, 167 years after it became the stuff of legend in the great state we all call home. 

So fire up the grill. Just because we're 7500 miles away doesn't mean we can't keep up with the celebrations.  

(Bottom photo courtesy Visit Salt Lake)

I Fight Where I Am Told

"I am a Soldier. I fight where I am told. I win where I fight."

Gen. George Patton epitomized the American Soldier. Smart and brash, he won the hearts of his men and captured the imagination of his countrymen.

His famous dictum of duty is as relevant as ever, and still inspires me.

One can scarcely read news about Americna military fortunes today without ominous references to Iraq's disintegration and it's implication for our enterprise in Afghanistan. I recently had an extended conversation with a Soldier who was with the invasion force during the Second Battle of Fallujah, and is now just leaving Afghanistan.

His sentiments echo those of so many other Soldiers who are disappointed that the country where so much American blood was spilled is falling into the hands of an enemy that was so nearly defeated.

But do any of them regret it? I haven't met anyone who says so. Why?

"We did what we were sent there to do," said the Soldier I recently spoke with.

It is the same here in Afghanistan. Thousands of service members deploy and get the job done. We deploy and engage the enemy. We win.

Sometimes our political leaders limit what Soldiers do. Sometimes the bureacracy stifles them. But to a man, almost, these Soldiers who are out here put the mission first.

It is remarkable, actually, that an organization so vast and diverse has so few disciplinary issues and organizational breakdowns.

When we come home from Afghansitan, we will have left it in better shape than when we came.

And as in Iraq, if it fails, it will be because we are no longer here.

The Value of a Life

Tracking taliban twitter feeds can be illuminating. Groupthink is a very real danger, and I often get optimistic-- overly so, perhaps-- about the degree to which Afghans support democracy. So enemy chatter can be a healthy balast against listing towards one way of thinking.

When I came across this picture in one of the feeds and it made me a little angry. I'm sure it was designed as anti-Western propaganda. The underdog factor has is a powerful one.

But what does the photo really say?

The US routinely spends around $60,000 on a single Hellfire to kill an insurgent fighter. Yes, "insurgent" in the singular. It is not uncommon to fire multiple Hellfires at a single bad guy, plus the rounds of rockets and 30mm gunfire. Plus the cost of getting aircraft in the air-- fuel, pilots, and the support staff to monitor and approve air strikes.

It might cost the US $200,000 to kill an insurgent, and that figure is probably conservative.

On the flip side, we spend much more than the graphic indicates on protecting our Soldiers. For starters, the NATO Soldier pictured doesn't have a combat helmet, eye protection, or night vision equipment, which gets you into four figures easily. Add in the cost of all the military activities meant to give them advantage, like birds in the air, eyes in the sky, and quick reaction forces on standby. We insure our Soldiers' lives monetarily, and spend untold monies on providing adequate lifelong medical care.

The caption that accompanied the graphic asked the rhetorical question, "what will hitorians say about this war?"

Well it seems clear to me. They'll say that, while the Taliban often fought doggedly against heavy odds, they simply didn't value the lives of their fighters like the West did. Looks like the Taliban puts the value of a life at just north of 500 bucks.

And that probably summarizes well why we fight. Thes West values the lives of individuals, and a more tolerant government in Afghanistan would too. 

The Truth about Hero Worship of the Military

Responding to Benjamin Summers, who wrote a piece for the Washington Post two days ago, is a tough task that falls to me. As your (nearly) lone My Public Affairs correspondent, I assume the mantle of correcting the misrepresentations of the Post, even if it a Soldier writing.

Summers is a captain in the Army, according to his byline. But his military service doesn’t spare him the scrutiny, especially since he is talking a stand against the grain.

Overall, the piece is much more balanced and nuanced than the slightly sensational headline makes it seem. Summers makes two particularly good points:

1. Politicians and the public often ignore important of the complexities of military policy because of the tendency to simplify down to “for” and “against” the military. His main example is the backlog of VA medical care delivery, which demonstrates how conventional rhetoric hinders policy formation:

Headlines such as “Making America’s Heroes Wait” capture the tone, but they obscure the questions we should be asking, such as: Are there too many claims? How many caught in the backlog suffered a combat-related injury? If we added scrutiny to who qualifies for VA benefits, would the system function better? In the current environment, it’s just not politically palatable to ask these kinds of questions.

2. People eager to appear supportive of service members often talk themselves out of credibility, as many did when proclaiming SGT Bowe Bergdahl a hero prematurely. It’s just too risky to look critical of troops, so people speak out of turn or misspeak.

But Summers served, so he is inoculated from that risk, much as charges of racism against a minority speaker wouldn’t hurt as badly as against a white one.

He misdiagnoses the problem, however. Summers claims that the alacrity with which people cast all issues as either “for” or “against” is confined to military issues because of hero talk. He’s wrong. It is really part of a larger cultural and political problem in the US. The exact same tendency can be found in all policy domains in which the federal government has a stake.

How often do charges of being against teachers or against students replace more thoughtful questions about the costs and benefits of given education policy? Do accusations that one set of policies is “anti-senior” or “anti-poor” ring any bells? It should, because in our current political climate, every policy is representative of deep cultural divisions that elicit such heated rhetoric.

   

Citing a study by Pew, Summers ignores the larger political atmosphere and instead cites a growing gap between civilians and the military in American life. Such a gap may, in fact, exist, but it is more likely a symptom of the culture than its cause.

On a side note, Summers observes that the number of Congress members who have served in the military is at 20 percent, down from a high of 50 percent. I’m unclear what this has to do with his main argument; it struck me as wholly irrelevant. And given that the same study finds that less than one percent of Americans serve in the military, one could easily conclude that the 20 percent figure vastly over-represents the military in American politics. Yet the decline is usually offered as evidence of corrosion.

Ironically, most service members I know are uncomfortable with being called a hero. So it’s really the civilians who are using us as political pawns.

But, if that’s what it takes to keep the gears of democracy turning, then we are at your service. Maybe that makes us heroes. 

(Photo by SSG Whitney Houston)

The Taliban's Last Stand

There is a very curious building here at KAF. On official maps of the installation, it is labeled "TLS."

Taliban’s Last Stand, is what it refers to. And it fits. The night we arrived, it was the first building through which we passed. Not the most comforting welcome, since it’s as decrepit as any building could be without getting condemned.

It is of brick and stucco construction, with arched ceilings. There is still evidence of a fire or an explosion, and part of the roof is destroyed. It is in general disrepair, with no indication that anyone wants to do anything about it. Yet, it serves as a passenger terminal for folks coming to this bastion of Americna military power.

There are even pocks on the outer walls that look like they took rounds in a firefight. The name and the lore gives the impression that there was some final, Alamo-style battle at this place before the US finally drove out the enemy and established its foothold in southern Afghanistan.

Journalists refer to the place with bravado to show their bona fides. People arriving here probably all assume that it was only recently attacked and hastily convereted, as if the war is still imminently upon them.

I tend to be skeptical about stories that sound too cool.

So I did some research.

It is pretty well established that the Taliban maintained nominal control over Kandahar, including the airport, up until December, 2001.

Kandahar, in fact, was the base for the Taliban. Al Qaeda training site called Tarnac Farms, just a couple kilometers south of the air field, was certainly a holdout for bad guys, and it is rumored that 9/11 may have been planned there.

But what happened at TLS in the opening stanzas of the War on Terror? The building surely looks like the Alamo in many respects, only more weather-beaten. The apparent bullet scars, the crumbling brick, the soot.

Here's the story, according to reporting done at the time.

Mullah Omar had an office in Kandahar City, it was the center of the Taliban's poltical base. Naturally the US and our allies (Hamid Karzai and Gul Agha Sherzai in the south) wanted to take the city.

Sherzai was attacking from the south, approaching Kandahar. Karzai was attacking from the north. By early December, he was in a town called Tarin Khost, about 60 miles outside the city. The allies were rolling, and Karzai began surrender negotiations with the Taliban. 

A Taliban delegation went north to meet Karzai, where they finalized surrender terms on December 5. That same day, in Bonn, an international conference named Karzai the "Intermin Chairman" of Afghanistan.

Mullah Omar's facilities had been bombed (perhaps TLS was one?). Those bombs had a lot to do with getting the Taliban to think about surrendering, I assume. But they were also buying time to escape. By offering surrender, many leaders were left to pack up and pop smoke.

According to an unclassified KAF fact sheet, Kandahar Airport "was severely damaged when it was captured by the US MArines 26th MEU in mid-December.... TLS still containts vivid reminders of the first minutes of that famous battle of the Taliban Last Stand."

So far as I can tell, there was never an engagement between US or NATO forces and the Taliban at this particular site. It seems the nickname was derived from the fact that the enemy used it as a base and it was near the area-- Kanadahar City and Airport-- that they gave up last.

Of course, it is evident that the building took heavy ordnance, though whether the enemy was stubborn, brave, or curious enough to see what Marines small arms fire was like after living through a JDAM blast is undocumented, as far as I have been able to tell.

At any rate, Karzai took Kandahar. He probably got to TLS and realized he didn't want it. The capital was promptly relocated to Kabul. 

Now we are here holding down the fort. This will be my last stand.

Note: this was updated 28 AUG to include the paragraph that cites the unclassified KAF fact sheet.

WAR: Review by SSG Stowell

A Soldier could not have written this book.

Sebastian Junger's WAR is the account of a company of Soldiers in the Korengal Valley, a place he describes as "sort of the Afghanistan of Afghanistan.

The book is authentic, "raw," "gritty," and all the other cliche words used to promote accounts of war. Trite or not, they all apply in this case. Though the author doesn't try to shoehorn the events into a single story. Rather, he just relays his best recollections and reflections as they came to him.

Junger is masterful at describing combat-related in creative, yet truthful ways:

Snipers have the power to make even silence unnerving, so their effectiveness is way out of proportion to the number of rounds they shoot.

Descriptions are often rich, but mostly just phrased in a way that makes you aapreciate his efficiency with words:

The sun sits low in the west and has laid planks of light across the valley from the western ridges to the dark slopes of the Abas Ghar. (p. 70)

And he invites you in to the scene, making you feel as if his reflections on the terribleness are naturally yours, too:

Snow is lying deep in the northern exposures and melting busily on the south facing slopes as if the winter weren't ahppening there and if you stopped to feel the sun on your face, you could imagine the war wasn't, either (p. 182).

With his light and innocent-sounding prose-- not quite conversational but definitely not stilted or academic-- he tells the story of small unit combat by noticing small things that congeal into three larger themes: Fear, Killing, and Love. While those themes provide him with an organizational structure for the book, each theme is merely a description of the relationships of the the soldiers, to themselves, each other, and the enemy.

The broader point hard to get at. It doesn't read like a story, but one side of a conversation over the dinner table with someone who just came back from some trauma. He does make a few nods to the broader policy implications of the war at times. For instance, he mentions a lieutenant colonel who was "fired up" about America "trying to put a country like this back together," then writes, "Not many nations have the resources to attempt a project on this scale nor the inclination to try." But such an observation is only meant to contrast the disinterest with which the Soldiers exhibit toward the policy.

I enjoyed the book immensely, and found it more nearly a philosophical work than a military one. It's also extremely frustrating as a public affairs Soldier to read something so authentic from a journalist.

I wish I could write like him, and I wish the Army would let me try.

Reading Army Books

Move over Oprah. Our unit has formed a book club.

"Soldiers? Reading?" you ask.

Yes, we are public affairs Soldiers, and must maintain the highest illusions of awareness.

Long before I joined the Army, I was a history student at Cal State Hayward. From that time until about a year ago, I'd have said that the best book I ever read was The Kings Depart: The Tragedy of Germany-- Versailles and the German Revolution. Ultimatley a war book, and almost totally unknown as popular history, it tells the story of politics and intrigue of Germany at the end of the First World War.

This is not a post about that book, but The Kings Depart tells beautifully how easily foreign politcal leaders can misread a political problem for a military one.

I think that risk is predominates in the case of US policy toward Afghanistan. Understanding both the military and political landscapes of OEF is a baseline requirement, especially for Soldiers operating here.

To me, there are three essential books for anyone interested in the Afghan war: Little America, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran; The Outpost, by Jake Tapper; and WAR, by Sebastian Junger. I had been reading the last one while we waited at Fort Dix, and found myself bothering my teammates incessantly about this passage and that. (I've heard of others, which are now on my list).

I eventually wore them down; we agreed to start the club, if for no other reason than their hope that I'd stop pestering them.

We chose WAR as our debut read.

And in the spirit of book clubbiness we actually meet and gossip about stuff, other than the book.

But we do talk about the book, which is a great book, by the way.

Stay tuned for our very special, exclusive-- three reviews from three different Soldiers on WAR.

And your welcome to join the club.