Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

The Good Soldiers
The Good Soldiers
The Good Soldiers
Ebook369 pages6 hours

The Good Soldiers

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

()

Read preview

About this ebook

The Prequel to the Bestselling Thank You for Your Service, Now a Major Motion Picture

With The Good Soldiers, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Finkel has produced an eternal story — not just of the Iraq War, but of all wars, for all time.


It was the last-chance moment of the war. In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced a new strategy for Iraq. It became known as "the surge." Among those called to carry it out were the young, optimistic army infantry soldiers of the 2-16, the battalion nicknamed the Rangers. About to head to a vicious area of Baghdad, they decided the difference would be them.

Fifteen months later, the soldiers returned home — forever changed. The chronicle of their tour is gripping, devastating, and deeply illuminating for anyone with an interest in human conflict.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 15, 2009
ISBN9781429952712
The Good Soldiers
Author

David Finkel

David Finkel is the author of The Good Soldiers, the bestselling, critically acclaimed account of the US ‘surge’ during the Iraq War and a New York Times Best Book of the Year. An editor and writer for The Washington Post, Finkel has reported from Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe, and across the United States, and has covered wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Among Finkel’s honours are a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 and a MacArthur Foundation ‘genius’ grant in 2012. He lives in the Washington, DC, area.

Read more from David Finkel

Related to The Good Soldiers

Related ebooks

Military Biographies For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for The Good Soldiers

Rating: 4.393939393939394 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

33 ratings29 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A grueling, depressing book about the 2007 “surge” in Iraq from the perspective of a group of American soldiers. Finkel is at his most harrowing when describing the physical wounds inflicted by modern combat, though the psychic damage also comes through as well. They’re very good soldiers, but there is a hollowness at the core of the fight, and that matters—to them and to us.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I cannot think of a book that has delivered more powerful prose. "An EFP exploding from a trash pile is nothing like an EFP exploding from a water buffalo carcass." That's an example of the more mundane, matter-of-fact narrative. Powerful narrative comes like storm waves throughout the book. It certainly has its share of Rambo-like scenarios, but it is not a "shoot 'em up" war story, but an extremely personal accounting of a single U.S. Army platoon during the "surge" in Iraq. And a word of warning to those with a particular sensitivity to profanity...this book has its share, but if the profanity is what disturbs you most about this book, I suggest you go back to the store and buy yourself a new soul.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the first book since The Things They Carried that made war uncomfortably--palpably & emotionally--present for me. Not having personal experience of war, I cannot judge if this is an accurate portrayal. What I can say is that the vision of young men in combat that Finkel offers is powerfully evocative, complex & devastating.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Reading this felt like sitting in the dark and having a ten-ton weight slowly crush my chest. This account of soldiers during the surge in Iraq is forceful, beautifully written, and will make you break down into tears several times (at least). You want a modern day nonfictional account of wartime that doesn't take sides or pull punches? You've found it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    “As of today, 6,845 Americans have died in Iraq and Afghanistan and over 900,000 Americans have been injured in both wars…According to the Pentagon, more than half to two-thirds of Americans killed or wounded in combat in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been victims of IED explosions. As stated in The International Business Times, we’ve reached a ‘grim milestone’ after two failed wars…” – H.A. Goodman, The Huffington PostA few days ago, I was keyed up to finally start reading Thank You for Your Service by David Finkel, only to read in the forward that it’s actually a sequel to the book The Good Soldiers. I did what any ordinary reader would do: I slammed the book shut and immediately purchased the latter book. It was imperative that I start at the beginning.Finkel, a reporter for The Washington Post, deploys with the Second Battalion, Sixteenth Infantry regiment of eight hundred soldiers out of Fort Riley, Kansas under the leadership of U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, Ralph Kauzlarich, in early April of 2007. Their assignment: be the face of the new direction the Bush administration was taking with the “war on terror,” by counterinsurgency tactics that would help the Iraqi people become independent, and stand on their own two feet.“The thing is, he and his battalion weren’t even supposed to be here, and that’s one way to consider everything that was about to happen…”This book was amazing! No lie. I feel ashamed to admit that although I am a WWI and WWII walking encyclopedia, I know virtually nothing about many of the wars following that, especially the one that began my senior year in high school. Many of my classmates enlisted, and two months after graduation, a guy from our graduating class was one of the first group of casualties in Afghanistan. His picture was all over the national news; it was eerie. To think of it now, it seems so long ago. He was only eighteen, and that’s what was so heartbreaking. I don’t think he realized what he’d gotten himself into.“What about the youngest soldier in the battalion, who was only seventeen? ‘Roger that,’ he said, whenever he was asked if he was ready, but when rumors about the deployment first began to circulate, he had taken aside his platoon sergeant, a staff sergeant named Frank Gietz, to ask how he’d be able to handle killing someone. ‘Put it in a dark place while you’re there,’ Gietz had said. So was a seventeen-year-old ready?”The same can be said of the majority of the soldiers rounding out the 2-16 battalion–most were between the ages of nineteen and twenty, not even old enough to legally drink. Some had hurriedly married girlfriends a few days before deployment, while other tenured family men said goodbye to wives and children and headed back to second or third tours. Sent to eastern Iraq where Shia militants were running rampant, they had their work cut out for them from the get go.As Finkel ran through each month of the fifteen month deployment, my heart would race like crazy. Each patrol run, explosion, death, injury, and house search had me biting my nails and nearly pulling my hair out. Who would be the next casualty? Who would be injured by an IED? Would the mortar attacks on the base ever stop? I really felt like I was there with these men. Dusty, tired, scared, suffering shock, and the loss of friends and “brothers in arms.” It was such an emotional read. Clearly the war we hear about on the news is a whole other war for those actually fighting it. It’s not entirely black and white, and throughout the year, each soldier’s optimism and endurance is tested. None of them would return as they’d left.“Is war supposed to be linear? The movement from point A to point B? The odyssey from there to here? Because this wasn’t any of that anymore. The blur was the linear becoming the circular.”There was one injured soldier’s story that just made me bawl. I was heaving, it was such an emotional passage. What’s interesting is at the war front, although missing many limbs and being burned throughout most of his body, he manages to survive long enough to be air transported back to the States for treatment. His survival seems like a success–he didn’t die. Back home at a state of the art hospital for “Wounded Warriors,” Kauzlarich has a chance to visit with the soldier and his family four months after the attack. What he witnesses is the reality of life after the war. The final words of the book were so perfect, and a natural introduction to the sequel:“’The war’s over for you, my friend,’ Kauzlarich said now to Showman, and of all the things he had ever said, nothing had ever seemed less true.”
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Read from December 19, 2013 to February 10, 2014This book is solidly written, but it's not for the faint of heart. While I was very interested in reading more, the library copy had to be returned and I'm not sure I'm up for more atrocities of war.GraphReading Progress12/19marked as: currently-reading02/10page 191 56.0%"I need to find some happier books to read."05/07marked as: read
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I first heard about this book on This America Life where actors read excerpts from the book. Based on these excerpts I had thought the structure would be similar to “Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam” which I had really liked. I downloaded the audio version and found that it was not written in this fashion at all, but in more of a linear narrative, focusing basically on one main character, Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich.

    The narrative follows one battalion, the 2-16, during the surge in Iraq. Finkel covers a lot of ground: operations, strategy, politics, the home front, causalities, the wounded and their post care, and even gives background on an Iraqi National who is an interpreter for them. While he does touch on all of these subjects and more, he doesn’t focus on any one thing, other than the causalities, and since he didn’t spend a lot of time telling you about these individual soldiers they all become a blur.

    I have to say that when I found out early in the book that Colonel Kauzlarich had been one of the investigators into the death of Pat Tillman (ex-football star killed by friendly fire), my whole attitude about him changed. While Finkel makes him a three dimensional character (shows us his good side, his blunt side, his frustrated side, his family side etc.), I couldn’t help thinking throughout the book that he knew about the massive cover-up of Pat Tillman’s death, but still went on a radio talk show after Tillman’s death and said that Tillman’s family couldn’t get over it because of their religious beliefs (they were atheists) and therefore couldn’t handle that he would just be worm dirt. Is that what a “Good Soldier” says about a family whose son’s death he knew to have been part of a massive cover-up? While I’m not saying he had to be PC about it (soldiers usually aren’t), why did he have to say anything at all which just added fuel to the fire when he very well knew why this family couldn’t get it over it; it makes me question his good judgment, and how much more he knew about the cover-up. Needless to say because Kauzlarich was such a major part of the storyline the whole book was a bit tainted for me.

    The Tillman situation aside, I have to say I was not “blown away” by this book. For those who were, I must assume this is the first book about war they have ever read. War is War. There are some wars that have clearly defined Good Guys and Bad Guys (WWII), Winners and Losers (WWII), and then there are other wars like Vietnam where the objectives and enemies are less clearly defined. When I was reading this I felt like I was reading about the Vietnam war only set in the dessert. People lose their lives in wars, they lose body parts, they lose friends, they lose their sanity, and they lose their innocence. All of these things happened in this book, as it has in all of the wars we have been in--this is not new. The soldiers questioning “Why are we here?,” is not new (Vietnam all over again). The real question is, “Did we not learn anything from Vietnam?”

    What this book does do, is it brings this war to the forefront of your conscious. It makes you think about it, instead of it just being another small news story that is quickly forgotten. And for that I would actually give it 3.5 stars.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Good Soldiers by Pulitzer Prize journalist David Finkel was a difficult read. He describes the horror of the American war experience in Iraq with an unflinching eye and it was unbearably sad to read of incidents that left young Americans dead or changed for life. Set in 2007, it is also unbearably sad to know that these kind of things are still happening in the Middle East today as the death and suffering continues.This author brings both the war and the men who fought it to life on these pages as he describes their day-to-day activities, both in combat and in general duties. This is not a book about the political manoeuvrings of Washington, instead it follows one battalion throughout its 15 month deployment and allows the reader to feel a part of their experience. David Finkel spent 8 months with the 2-16 in Iraq and in telling of this units’ operations, he clearly shows the what the cost was:“in the final minutes of a month in which four soldiers died, one lost a hand, one lost an arm, one lost an eye, one was shot in the head, one was shot in the throat, eight were injured by shrapnel, eighty IEDs or EFPs detonated on passing convoys, soldiers were targeted by gunfire or rocket-propelled grenades fifty-two times …”And he humanizes this cost.Yes, a difficult read, but presented in a moving and unforgettable manner which will make The Good Soldiers a hard book to forget.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Brutal. Stunning. I can't rave about it enough.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An extraordinary view of the American soldier in Iraq during the surge. Finkel captures the war in vivid colors--its strains, pressures and depressions. The young turn old; the strong, painfully resigned to inevitable defeat. His is the single best book that has come out of the war to date. Required reading if we hope to begin to understand the consequences of our middle eastern strategy.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I want the President and every elected federal official, as well as the Secretaries of State and Defense to read this book. Finkel simply portrays the reality of war from the place of the soldiers who fight it and their families. Devastating, and the best argument against war I have read in a long time.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Journalist David Finkel spent eight of the fifteen months during which the 2-16 Infantry Batallion were deployed in Baghdad. This was January 2007 through April 2008, the Surge. The writing reminds me a lot of Tom Wolfe's nonfiction, particularly in "The Right Stuff". Looking at the events chronicled here, it's hard to see this as a "war" in the way most of us understand the concept. The assignment is basically to tame and reclaim a rundown neighborhood on the eastern wing of the city. On the sides of the roads are sewage trenches wide and deep enough to swallow a humvee. (And they do). The soldiers are set to restore order and morale to a place that has become lawless. Fourteen American deaths occur during the deployment, and numerous grisly injuries that would leave a lot of folks wishing for death. The soldiers are decent Americans who have a hard time understanding why the improvements they try to build (schools, sewage systems, swimming pools) keep getting sabotaged by the insurgent element. You can almost hear the voice of a parent saying, "This is why we can't have nice things". If this book makes one point, it is that, whether or not you agree with the United States being in Iraq at all, our troops are representing us humanely and well.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Again, another war story that had me smiling and tearing up the whole way through. This book brings home the reality of what our soldiers are putting on the line everyday for us, and the reality of what they have to live with when they come home. It makes me want to thank every soldier every time I see one!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    If you care about anyone who puts their lives, not only on hold, but, on the line in defense of this nation and her people, continue reading. The book, The Good Soldiers written by David Finkel, a staff writer for The Washington Post, is a gritty, in your face look at current warfare.In the book Finkel follows the 2-16 IN BN, from Ft. Riley, Kansas through their deployment to Iraq, where, instead of escorting convoys and securing roads in the western part of the country, they become part of The Surge to increase security in Baghdad. The view is very direct and forward. There is no sugar coating to be had, just ass deep in the shit, not only, with the troops on the ground but, also the aftermath of IEDs and EFPs sent home to the families.You get a first hand look at not just the external face of war, but the internal face as well. While the external face is gritty and sometimes gory to the point of destroying the prospective of the bigger picture; the internal face is raw and tormenting, struggling in a life and death battle that pits compassion against sheer existence. Finkel does a copious accounting of warfare on the people right in the middle of the blast crater. The journey that starts with honor and motivation ends with acceptance and resignation, yet hope while metamorphosed manages to survive in some corners.While, this read is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, if you can handle it, it should be a must read for ALL Americans.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Through this first-rate and appropriately devastating journalistic account of the experiences of the members one U.S. Army battalion deployed to serve in Baghdad during 2007-2008, Finkel chronicles what New York Times reviewer Doug Stanton describes as "ordinary men enduring extraordinary circumstances." Finkel pulls few punches in describing U.S. soldiers' ambivalent understanding of the U.S. mission in the Middle East, soldiers' harrowing injuries and deaths via roadside bombs, and the war at home as families struggle to hold it together during family members' deployments. Written with admirable journalistic neutrality, this book is a must read for anyone with an opinion on the war in the Middle East, and for anyone who knows or loves a soldier.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really didn't think I would like this book, but I did. It was not exactly an enjoyable read, although there were a couple of humorous parts. If you wanted to know what things were like on the ground in Baghdad at the start of the Surge in early 2007, this book might be what you're looking for. Following a single battalion that worked in Baghdad for 15 months during 2007 and 2008, the book gives one a sense of the horror and fear of being there. Soldiers die, projects get blown up, people get on with their lives the best they can. It's not pretty.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Journalist David Finkel’s account of his eight months in Iraq from 2007-2008 with the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division. David Finkel set out with the purpose of documenting this particular battalion’s part of the Iraq War during what was known as “the surge”. It is not a book on the strategy of the war or the politics of whether or not we should have gone into Iraq, but rather a harrowing, unbiased, and honest account of the soldiers of the 2-16. To his credit, I think that Finkel does an excellent job with depicting life in an infantry battalion on the ground. That being said, it’s written from the perspective of a journalist, not a soldier, with central focus around the battalion commander, LTC Ralph Kauzlarich. There are no defining battles or Medal of Honor heroics here, just the constant convoys, IEDs, rocket attacks, gunfire, trash, dust, and general paranoia of fighting an insurgency in 2007 Iraq. The words that come to mind after reading this book are raw, brutal, graphic, horrific, futile, surreal, sad, thoughtful, simple, honest, obscene, and moving. Bottom line, this is one of the most moving accounts of war I’ve read thus far.Each chapter of the book is preceded by a quote from President Bush concerning the strategy and goals of the surge. Throughout the book, Finkel throws the realities of the war right in your face. It’s not super-subtle, but it works. I conjecture that his intent was to demonstrate the difference in realities between the war on the ground, and the war as they saw it in Washington D.C. To the politicians and some generals, the surge was a winning move based on what statistics and reports showed. To the soldiers of the 2-16, their tour in Iraq was anything but simple numbers and theory. It was real and it was grinding on the nerves. As the book progresses, we see the attitudes of many of the soldiers begin to degrade as they take casualties. Finkel also juxtaposes the opinions of the enlisted men and junior officers, with that of those in higher command. What we see is, the higher up the chain of command you go, the more optimism replaces reality. From President Bush saying, “We’re kicking ass”, to Colonel Kauzlarich continually saying, “It’s all good”, to the once morally upbeat Major Cummings eventually saying, “Stupid fucking scumbags”, success at this point, seems all relevant. Finkel also tells the soldiers’ opinions of those generals and reporters who get the “windshield tour”, that is, they come in and stay a few hours or days, and then go home and report to the “experts” who give their “assessment” on the war. This contrasted with Finkel’s eight months on the ground with these men, and you have a radically different view. In a way, it’s very powerful. Finkel’s writes extremely well, and as a result, it makes you feel for the soldiers who were lost and the ones who were severely wounded. You see them not as statistics or a blurb in the papers, but as people. It’s written in a way that’s not overly maudlin and Finkel avoids using cheap tricks to try and tug at your heartstrings. Instead, the honesty of the writing becomes the drama and truly makes you sympathize with these soldiers. If you read lots of war memoirs, you’ll immediately notice a difference in the style of writing. Most soldiers (the ones who write memoirs anyway) are not exactly Shakespearean in their prose, but Finkel’s writing is much more fluid and has an air of eloquence to it. This is what differentiates The Good Soldiers from any other run-of-the-mill war memoir…the writing. Put simply, it’s good. Finkel does a pretty good job of remaining neutral on his views throughout the book. That being said, I can’t help but feel that by putting a quote from Bush at the start of every chapter, he was trying to make some kind of political message. One thing he does exceptionally well is tell an honest story. Parts of the book are filled with obscene language, but that’s how soldiers talk. Parts of the book are extremely graphic in terms of the violence being described, but that’s the kind of war these men fought. It’s journalism done right in my opinion. It doesn’t try to overtly spin a sob story for you, nor does it try to cram politics down your throat with heavy-handed didacticism. It’s just this battalion’s little piece of the war. There is no happy ending to this book or even a triumphant victory. Furthermore, there is no ground-breaking message or theme to this book. It’s the old, war is bad, and people get hurt and die message.To sum things up, I’d give David Finkel’s The Good Soldiers an excellent 5 out of 5 stars. Finkel’s clear and honest telling of the experiences of these men paint a moving picture of life on the ground in Iraq. It’s an example of fine-tuned journalism that is well-written, but without resorting to cheap sentimentality or spin-doctored political nonsense. If you want a macro analysis of the counterinsurgency strategy, this book is not for you. If you want a well-written, honest and heartfelt account of the life of an infantry battalion, along with all their triumphs, defeats, and everything in between, then check out The Good Soldiers by David Finkel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Such a brutal book - an account of an army Battalion in Iraq. As little as I understood the war before, I understand it even less now.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    When Americans obtain there knowledge of history from books instead of the cable news shows, the world is a better place. This work gives the grim reality of brave soldiers fighting a war. The results of this action ultimately resulted in victory, but you wouldn't know it from the time frame in which this investigatory work was written. Grim reality.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is an account of the a year (from April 2007 to April 2008) of a Ranger battalion in Iraq. It is a searing and distressful account, certainly the most vivid I have read of the Iraq War and on a par with Vietnam books such as We Were Soldiers Once...and Young. It spends more time on the wounded than is usual for this type of book, and one is appalled at the price those who fight pay physically and mentally. Since I have never believed the Iraq War should have been commenced this book reinforced that belief, even though its message is not blatant in regard to the war, and the officer who is the central person in the account vigorously believed in the war, at least in the beginning.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I was very unsatisfied with this book. When I heard the author on NPR I was excited to read this because I wanted to see the war through the experiences of the soldiers. The author tells the stories, but he tries so hard to manipulate how you feel about these experiences, and he does it through such cheesy writing that it detracts from the power the stories should have. I agree with the Washington Post review in this regard.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is an excellent account of one battalion's 15-month tour of ground work (called "the surge") in some of the most war blighted areas of Iraq. The interesting thing about the reporting is that while the entire mission is an implosion of politics gone horribly awry, this is not a "political" book, per se. It is merely one man's [very intimate] observations of this group of soldiers, in this time, in this place. It is a VERY graphic book, not only in description of injuries and killings but what mental/emotional torture and severe anxiety do to the soldiers who for the most part, are still kids in many ways. It is nightmare producing to say the least. I do not have any better understanding of what is going on in Iraq (it just seems aimless, fruitless and neverending), but what I did take away from this is an enduring amount of compassion and sadness for any of the human beings who must go there. Highly recommended, but not for the faint of heart.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Best account of the military operations in Iraq by an embedded journalist that I've read this far. In less that 300 pages Mr. Finkel shows, what seemingly is, every single aspect of US soldiers on deployment during the surge. The faith in the mission, the despair as casualties mount, the ever so tenuous link with those back home, the twisted relationship of the soldiers with the only locals they really interact with (their translators), the struggle of those injured and their families, the effort towards keeping the regular military life going amidst the conflict (that's to say promotion boards, re-enlistments, ...) and all of this punctuated by lines of sheer literary brilliance.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Though I rarely read history, and almost never have read books on current events or nonfiction books about war, something in a review I read made me think I would enjoy this one. Well, "enjoy" is not the right word. It is a difficult book to read. Finkel is very graphic in his descriptions of battle, and of soldiers wounded or killed in action. It would be foolish to say the book makes you realize what the Iraqi war is like. What the book makes you realize, is that if you are at home, hearing the news on television and reading about the war in books and newspapers, you can not possibly have any idea what it is like for either the American service people or the Iraqi people going through this war first hand.David Finkel spent a year with the soldiers and officers of the 2-16. "The Good Soldiers" tells what happened on the ground where they were at that time. The is not any discussion whatsoever of the reasons the war began, the politics behind the war, or how the war may end. There is virtually no discussion of what Americans at home think of the war. We only get the view of this one division of soldiers in the U. S. Army.The book is a quick read, but one you will likely find yourself mulling over long after you've read it. If you don't know anyone serving in the military overseas, I recommend this book to get a little understanding from a different viewpoint. If you do have loved ones serving overseas, you probably should not read this.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In January, 2007, U.S. Army infantry battalion 2-16 based in Fort Riley, Kansas, was deployed to Iraq as part of the Bush administration's new counterinsurgency strategy popularly known as "the surge." Fifteen months later, what was left of the 2-16 came home from what was originally supposed to be a 12-month deployment. Fourteen soldiers came home in body bags. The rest returned either horribly wounded in body(arms or legs blown off, and sometimes both; traumatic head injuries; serious neurological and brain damage, etc.) or emotionally and psychologically destroyed, or both. David Finkel -- a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Washington Post -- spent much of those 15 months in Iraq, with the 2-16. He was witness to what they saw and experienced. He wasn't there as an "embedded" reporter writing about the war. He was there as a journalistic observer, writing about what the war did to the soldiers in one battalion, how they experienced it, and what it meant to them.Not that he didn't have personal reactions to what was going on around him. But his reactions came out of the soldiers' own experiences and feelings, and their growing sense that the mission they had been given -- in the words of the sign that the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Kauzlarich, kept nailed to his office wall, "To create a balanced, secure, and self-sufficient environment for the Iraqi people" -- was futile.I came away from The Good Soldiers with an immense respect for the courage, intelligence, professionalism, and integrity of the soldiers who fought this war, and an even greater disgust for the war itself and the dishonesty of the politicians in Washington whose lies and greed are responsible for so many ruined lives.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An amazing portrait of what the war in Iraq is really look to those that are actually there on the front lines.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I read this book with a heavy heart. It's impossible not to grieve for the families shattered by war. As we take a step back in Iraq and move into Operation New Dawn, it's important to remember the soldiers who give so much and receive so little in return. Journalist David Finkel captures the horror and raw emotion of the Rangers of Battalion 2-16 as they gallantly try to fulfill the impossible mission "To create a balanced, secure, and self-sufficient environment for the Iraqi people."In a war where the front line is anywhere they happen to be and they live with "the thought that the bullet has already been fired at each of us and it's only a matter of time when it will hit," (Pg. 77), Finkel delivers keen insight into the travesty of war from a soldier's perspective. Each chapter begins with a quote from President Bush and then proceeds with the everyday impossibilities that the soldiers face. Every day. There are no political rants, just the accounts of the daily sacrifices of the soldiers and their families.History will have the final word on the Iraq War. No matter what you believe about America's involvement in Iraq (and Afghanistan), this book gives a true look into the heroism of our men and women in harm's way. The Good Soldiers who survive war do not remain the same, and neither will the reader leave this book unscathed. It should be required reading for members of Congress and all Americans who care enough to vote for the people who make decisions about war and peace.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Very absorbing. Very important historical record.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Journalist Finkel followed along with US Army Battalion 2-16 from the early days before it was shipped out to Baghdad--when the thought of going to war was eagerly anticipated both by the young soldiers and their leaders. --until the end of its tour of duty, 15 months later. By then the futility of the war efforts had filtered up from the enlisted men to the commanders.

Book preview

The Good Soldiers - David Finkel

1

APRIL 6, 2007

Many listening tonight will ask why this effort will succeed when previous

operations to secure Baghdad did not. Well, here are the differences . . .

—GEORGE W. BUSH, January 10, 2007, announcing the surge

His soldiers weren’t yet calling him the Lost Kauz behind his back, not when this began. The soldiers of his who would be injured were still perfectly healthy, and the soldiers of his who would die were still perfectly alive. A soldier who was a favorite of his, and who was often described as a younger version of him, hadn’t yet written of the war in a letter to a friend, I’ve had enough of this bullshit. Another soldier, one of his best, hadn’t yet written in the journal he kept hidden, I’ve lost all hope. I feel the end is near for me, very, very near. Another hadn’t yet gotten angry enough to shoot a thirsty dog that was lapping up a puddle of human blood. Another, who at the end of all this would become the battalion’s most decorated soldier, hadn’t yet started dreaming about the people he had killed and wondering if God was going to ask him about the two who had been climbing a ladder. Another hadn’t yet started seeing himself shooting a man in the head, and then seeing the little girl who had just watched him shoot the man in the head, every time he shut his eyes. For that matter, his own dreams hadn’t started yet, either, at least the ones that he would remember—the one in which his wife and friends were in a cemetery, surrounding a hole into which he was suddenly falling; or the one in which everything around him was exploding and he was trying to fight back with no weapon and no ammunition other than a bucket of old bullets. Those dreams would be along soon enough, but in early April 2007, Ralph Kauzlarich, a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who had led a battalion of some eight hundred soldiers into Baghdad as part of George W. Bush’s surge, was still finding a reason every day to say, It’s all good.

Ralph Kauzlarich, Fort Riley, Kansas

He would wake up in eastern Baghdad, inhale its bitter, burning air, and say it. It’s all good. He would look around at the fundamentals of what his life had become—his camouflage, his gun, his body armor, his gas mask in case of a chemical attack, his atropine injector in case of a nerve gas attack, his copy of The One Year Bible next to his neat bed, which he made first thing every morning out of a need for order, his photographs on the walls of his wife and children, who were home in Kansas in a house shaded by American elm trees and with a video in the VCR of him telling the children the night before he left, Okay. All right. It’s time to start the noodles. I love you. Everybody up. Hut hut—and say it. It’s all good. He would go outside and immediately become coated from hair to boots in dirt, unless the truck that sprayed sewage water to keep the dirt under control had been by, in which case he would walk through sewage-laden goop, and say it. He would go past the blast walls, the sandbags, the bunkers, the aid station where the wounded from other battalions were treated, the annex where they assembled the dead, and say it. He would say it in his little office, with its walls cracked from various explosions, while reading the morning’s e-mails. From his wife: I love you so much! I wish we could lay naked in each other’s arms . . . bodies meshing together, perhaps a little sweat :-). From his mother, in rural Washington state, after some surgery: I must say, the sleep was the best I have had in months. Everything turned out to be normal, goody, goody. Rosie picked me up and brought me back home because that was the morning our cows were butchered and your Dad had to be there to make sure things were done right. From his father: I have laid awake many nights since I last saw you, and have often wished I could be along side you to assist in some way. He would say it on his way to the chapel, where he would attend Catholic Mass conducted by a priest who had to be flown in by helicopter because a previous priest was blown up in a Humvee. He would say it in the dining facility, where he always had two servings of milk with his dinner. He would say it when he went in his Humvee into the neighborhoods of eastern Baghdad, where more and more roadside bombs were exploding now that the surge was under way, killing soldiers, taking off arms, taking off legs, causing concussions, exploding ear drums, leaving some soldiers angry and others vomiting and others in sudden tears. Not his soldiers, though. Other soldiers. From other battalions. It’s all good, he would say when he came back. It could seem like a nervous tic, this thing that he said, or a prayer of some sort. Or maybe it was a declaration of optimism, simply that, nothing more, because he was optimistic, even though he was in the midst of a war that to the American public, and the American media, and even to some in the American military, seemed all over in April 2007, except for the pessimism, the praying, and the nervous tics.

But not to him. Well, here are the differences, George W. Bush had said, announcing the surge, and Ralph Kauzlarich had thought: We’ll be the difference. My battalion. My soldiers. Me. And every day since then he had said it—It’s all good—after which he might say the other thing he often said, always without irony and utterly convinced: We’re winning. He liked to say that, too. Except now, on April 6, 2007, at 1:00 a.m., as someone banged on his door, waking him up, he said something different.

What the fuck? he said, opening his eyes.

The thing is, he and his battalion weren’t even supposed to be here, and that’s one way to consider everything that was about to happen as Kauzlarich, awake now, dressed now, made the short walk from his trailer to the battalion’s operations center. The March rains that had turned the place sloppy with mud were thankfully over. The mud had dried. The road was dusty. The air was cold. Whatever was happening was only a mile or so away, but there was nothing for Kauzlarich to see, and nothing for him to hear, other than his own thoughts.

Two months before, as he was about to leave for Iraq, he’d sat in his kitchen in Fort Riley, Kansas, after a dinner of ham and double-baked potatoes and milk and apple crisp for dessert, and said, We are America. I mean, we have all of the resources. We have a very intelligent population. If we decide, just like we did in World War Two, if we all said, ‘This is our focus, this is our priority, and we’re going to win it, we’re going to do everything that we have to do to win it,’ then we’d win it. This nation can do anything that it wants to do. The question is, does America have the will?

Now, as he entered the operations center a few minutes after 1:00 a.m., the war was in its 1,478th day, the number of dead American troops had surpassed 3,000, the number of injured troops was nearing 25,000, the American public’s early optimism was long gone, and the miscalculations and distortions that had preceded the war had been exposed in detail, as had the policy blunders that had been guiding it since it began. Four injured, he was told. One slightly. Three seriously. And one dead.

Statistically, there’s probably a pretty good chance I’m going to lose men. And I’m not quite sure how I’m going to deal with it, he had said at Fort Riley. In nineteen years as an army officer, he had never lost a soldier under his direct command.

Now he was being told that the dead soldier was Private First Class Jay Cajimat, who was twenty years and two months old and who might have died immediately from the blast of the explosion, or a little more slowly in the resulting fire.

This is probably going to change me, Kauzlarich had said at Fort Riley, and when he wasn’t around to overhear, a friend had predicted what the change was going to be: You’re going to see a good man disintegrate before your eyes.

Now he was being told that the soldiers at the Mortuary Affairs collection point were being alerted to get ready for remains, as were the soldiers at the collection point called Vehicle Sanitization.

I mean, bottom line, if we lose this war, Ralph Kauzlarich will have lost a war, Kauzlarich had said at Fort Riley.

Now, as more details came in, he tried to be analytical rather than emotional. Instead of thinking how Cajimat was one of the first soldiers he had been assigned when he was forming the battalion, he sifted through the sounds he had heard as he was going to sleep. At 12:35 there had been a boom in the distance. A soft boom. That must have been it.

_______

They were going to go to Afghanistan. That had been the first rumor. Then Iraq. Then nowhere at all. They were going to stay in Fort Riley and miss the war entirely. So many twists and turns had gotten the battalion that was going to win the war in the position to do it:

In 2003, when the war began, the battalion didn’t even exist, except on some chart somewhere that had to do with the army’s eternal reorganization of itself. In 2005, when it did come into existence, it didn’t even have a name. A unit of action—that’s how it was referred to. It was a brand-new battalion in a brand-new brigade that began with no equipment other than Kauzlarich’s and no soldiers other than him.

Worse, as far as Kauzlarich was concerned, was the place where the battalion was going to be based: Fort Riley, which unfairly or not suffered from a reputation as one of the armpits of the army. Kauzlarich, who was about to turn forty years old, had attended West Point. He had become an Army Ranger, perhaps the defining experience of his life as a soldier. He had fought in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. He had been in Afghanistan in the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom. He had been on a couple of missions in Iraq, had jumped out of airplanes eighty-one times onto mountains and into woods, and had lived in the wilderness for weeks at a stretch. But Fort Riley, to him, felt like the most remote place he had ever been. From the very first he felt like an outsider there, a feeling that only deepened in the days leading up to the surge, when reporters descended on Fort Riley looking for soldiers to talk to and were never directed to him. Even if they were looking for officers, his name wasn’t mentioned. Even if they were specifically looking for officers who were battalion commanders, his name wasn’t mentioned. Even if they were looking for infantry battalion commanders, of which there were only two.

There was just something about him that the army resisted even as it continued to promote him. He was not their smooth-edged, cookie-cutter officer. There was an underdog quality to him, which made him instantly likeable, and a high-beam intensity to him, which at times would emanate from him in waves. And if there were things the army resisted in him, there were things about the army that he resisted as well—insisting, for example, that he would never want a posting that would put him inside the Pentagon, because those postings often went to sycophants rather than to true soldiers, and he was a true soldier through and through. It was an insistence that struck some of his friends as noble and others as silly, both of which were part of his complicated soul. He was kind. He was egotistical. He was humane. He was self-absorbed. Growing up in Montana and the Pacific Northwest, he had been a skinny boy with jutting ears who had methodically re-created himself into a man who did the most push-ups, ran the fastest mile, and regarded life as a daily act of will. He took pride in his hard stomach and his pitch-perfect ability to recall names and dates and compliments and slights. He had precise and delicate handwriting, almost like calligraphy. He attended Mass every Sunday, prayed before eating, and crossed himself whenever he got on a helicopter. He liked to say, Let me tell you something, and then tell you something. He could be honest, which worked in his favor, and blunt, which sometimes didn’t. Once, when he was asked by a journalist about an investigation he had done into the death of Pat Tillman, the professional football player who became an Army Ranger in Kauzlarich’s regiment and was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, he suggested that the reason Tillman’s family was having difficulty finding closure might have to do with religious beliefs. When you die, I mean, there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you don’t believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt, he had said. So, blunt. And maybe insensitive, too. And crude on occasion. It’s hot as balls seemed to be his favorite weather report.

But beyond all of that was the fact that he was, at his core, a good leader. When people were around him, they wanted to know what he thought, and if he told them to do something, even if it was dangerous, they did it not out of intimidation but because they didn’t want to let him down. Ask anybody, his executive officer, Major Brent Cummings, said. He has this dynamic personality about himself that people want to be led by him. Or, as another of his soldiers put it, He’s the kind of guy you follow to hell and back. He’s that kind of leader. Even the big, bloated, political army could see this, and so, in 2005, Kauzlarich was made a battalion commander, and in 2006 he was notified that his unit was being given the dusted-off name of a dormant battalion called the 2-16, which was short for the Second Battalion, Sixteenth Infantry Regiment of the Fourth Infantry Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division.

Holy shit. You know what the nickname is? Brent Cummings said when Kauzlarich told him. The Rangers.

Kauzlarich laughed. He pretended to smoke a victory cigar. It’s destiny, he said.

He meant it, too. He believed in destiny, in God, in fate, in Jesus Christ, and in everything happening for a reason, although sometimes the meaning of something wasn’t immediately clear to him. That was the case at the end of 2006, when he was at last informed of his mission, that he and his battalion would be deploying to western Iraq to provide security for supply convoys. He was stunned by this. He was an infantry officer in charge of an infantry battalion, and the assignment he’d drawn in the decisive war of his lifetime was to guard trucks carrying fuel and food as they moved across the flat, boring lonesomeness of western Iraq for twelve boring months? What, Kauzlarich wondered, could be the meaning of this? Was it to humble him? Was it to make him feel like a loser? Because that was precisely how he was feeling on January 10, 2007, as he dutifully turned on the TV to watch George W. Bush, who was in the deepening sag of his presidency, announce his newest strategy for Iraq.

A loser watching a loser: On January 10, it was hard to see Bush any other way. At 33 percent, his approval rating was the lowest yet of his presidency, and as he began to speak that night, his voice, at least to the 67 percent who disapproved of him, might have sounded more desperate than resolute, because by just about any measure, his war was on the verge of failure. The strategy of winning an enduring peace had failed. The strategy of defeating terrorism had failed. The strategy of spreading democracy throughout the Middle East had failed. The strategy of at least bringing democracy to Iraq had failed. To most Americans, who polls showed were fed up and wanted the troops brought home, the moment at hand was of tragedy, beyond which would be only loss.

In that moment, what Bush then announced seemed an act of defiance, if not outright stupidity. Instead of reducing troop levels in Iraq, he was increasing them by what would eventually be thirty thousand. The vast majority of them—five brigades—will be deployed to Baghdad, he said, and continued: Our troops will have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs.

That was the heart of his new strategy. It was a counterinsurgency strategy that the White House initially called the New Way Forward, but that quickly became known as the surge.

The surge, then. As far as the majority of the American public was concerned, those additional troops would be surging straight into the tragic moment of the war, but as Bush finished speaking, and rumors about the identities of the five brigades began circulating, and their identities started becoming public, and the official announcement came that one would be a brigade that was about to deploy from Fort Riley, Kansas, Kauzlarich saw it differently.

A battalion commander in the thick of the war: that was who he was going to be. Because of strategic disasters, public revulsion, political consequences, and perfect timing, he and his soldiers weren’t going to be protecting supply convoys. They were going to Baghdad. Meaning restored, Kauzlarich closed his eyes and thanked God.

Three weeks later, his departure now a few days away, his hand a bit sore from being grabbed so many times by people shaking it and hanging on to it and looking in his eyes as if they were already trying to remember the last time they saw Ralph Kauzlarich, Kauzlarich sat down in his house to fill out a booklet called the Family Contingency Workbook.

I want to be buried/cremated.

Buried, he wrote.

Location of cemetery:

West Point, he wrote.

Personal effects I want buried with me:

Wedding band, he wrote.

In came his wife, Stephanie, who had been in another part of the house with their three young children. They had met twenty years before, when both were at West Point, and he had sensed immediately that this tall, athletic, chin-out woman suddenly in front of him was someone who would be able to hold her own against him. She was a catch, and he knew it. He considered himself one, too, and his very first words to her, spoken with utter confidence, were, You can call me The Kauz. The Kauz—to him, it sounded so much better than Ralph, and so much better than his full last name, which some people properly pronounced as KAUZ-la-rich, and some people mispronounced. Now, so many years later, years in which Stephanie had never, not even once, called him The Kauz, she looked at what he had written down and said, That’s all you want to be buried with?

Yes, he said, continuing.

Type of headstone:

Military, he wrote.

Scripture you want read:

Psalm 23, he wrote.

Music you want played:

Something upbeat, he wrote.

Ralph, upbeat music? Stephanie asked.

Meanwhile, in other parts of Fort Riley, the other soldiers were getting ready, too. Finishing wills. Designating powers of attorney. Working their way down final medical checklists. Hearing. Heart rate. Blood pressure. Blood type. They went to health briefings and were told: Wash your hands. Drink bottled water. Wear cotton underwear. Watch out for rats. They put on their body armor and stood outside in a zero-degree wind chill for inspection and were told that the straps weren’t tight enough, the ceramic plates intended to stop high-powered sniper bullets were an inch off, their compression bandages and tourniquets were stored in the wrong place, they were effectively dead men. They went to a briefing on stress management and suicide prevention and were told by a chaplain, This is important. If you are not ready to die, you need to get there. If you are not ready to die, you need to be. If you are not ready to see your friends die, you need to be.

And were they ready? Who knew? For most of them, this would be their first deployment, and for many it would be their first time away from the United States. The average age in the battalion was nineteen. Could a nineteen-year-old be ready? What about a nineteen-year-old soldier named Duncan Crookston, who was in his little apartment with his mother and father and new, nineteen-year-old wife, packing his things, when the phone rang? Buried, he said. Battle Hymn of the Republic, he said. Ten minutes later he hung up. Just planned my funeral, he nonchalantly told his curious parents and new wife, and was Duncan Crookston ready?

What about the youngest soldier in the battalion, who was only seventeen? Roger that, he said, whenever he was asked if he was ready, but when rumors about the deployment first began to circulate, he had taken aside his platoon sergeant, a staff sergeant named Frank Gietz, to ask how he’d be able to handle killing someone. Put it in a dark place while you’re there, Gietz had said.

So was a seventeen-year-old ready?

For that matter, was Gietz, who had been to Iraq twice, was one of the oldest soldiers in the battalion, and knew better than anyone the meaning of a dark place?

Was Jay Cajimat, who in ten weeks was going to be remembered by his mother in the local paper as a soft-hearted boy?

Didn’t matter. They were going.

They packed ammunition and photographs and first-aid kits and candy. They went into town for the last time and in a few cases drank too much, in a few other cases went AWOL to see girlfriends, and in at least one case got married. Five days before departure, Kauzlarich studied a list of soldiers who wouldn’t be able to go. Seven needed some sort of surgery. Two were about to become fathers. One had an infant in intensive care. Two were in jail. Nine were, for various reasons, as Kauzlarich put it, mentally incapable of doing what we’re about to do. But most were eager to do what they were about to do, were impatient, even, and said so with certainty. It’s the decisive point of the fight, one soldier explained, foot tapping, head nodding, practically vibrating. This is the chance to win it.

Four days until departure:

Kauzlarich gathered the battalion in a field behind headquarters to explain where in Baghdad they would be based. It had snowed, and it was cold, and the sun was going down as he said that they soon would be near Sadr City, Baghdad’s infamous slum and a center of the insurgency. The soldiers ringed him and pressed closer to hear, and as he raised his voice and said the words a nice, little, mean, nasty area, they echoed off the ice and the surrounding buildings, making this place feel even chillier than it was.

Now, it’s not a game, guys, he said. You are going to see some horrific things in the next year. You are going to see some things you are not going to understand . . . It’s down to nut-cutting time, and we’re going to get some, but we’re going to do it in a disciplined manner, like we do everything . . . I am absolutely confident in your abilities, absolutely confident . . . The bottom line is this weekend’s your last, okay? So call your parents, love your families, stay focused on them for this weekend. Not later than Tuesday night, as soon as you get on that airplane and that airplane takes off, your sole focus is going to be winning our nation’s war.

There was a pause, just long enough for the word war to finish echoing, and then the soldiers began to cheer, lustily and for a long while, after which they headed inside, filling the room with the wintry smell of boys who have been out in the snow.

One day until departure:

In the Kauzlarich house, the children were running around with stuffed animals purchased over the weekend, each with a memory chip containing a quick-recorded message from their father for them to play over the coming year. Hi Jacob. I love you. Hi Garrett. I sure do love you. I love you, Allie-gator. Allie was seven-year-old Alexandria Taylor Kauzlarich, a name chosen because the initials were ATK, which reminded her father of the word attack. The oldest of the three children, she was also the most sensitive to what was at hand. I don’t want you to leave, she said at one point, and when her father told her, I’ll be okay, and if I’m not okay, you’ll be okay, because I’ll be checking on you, she said, Then I’ll kill myself so I can be with you. She climbed onto his lap, and meanwhile, Jacob, five, and Garrett, three, both too young for such sensitivities, continued to run around the house clobbering each other with their stuffed animals, while Stephanie had her own images to contend with. Gray. Dismal. A very sad place to live, is how she envisioned the place her husband was going. She had done her time in the army after graduating from West Point and had learned to guard against too much sentimentality, but now came a new image, that of a freshly dead soldier. Meanwhile, Kauzlarich looked at his family and, giving into that sentimentality a bit, said, "I mean, this is a very complex war. The end state, in my opinion, the end state in Iraq would be that Iraqi children can go out on a soccer field and play safely. Parents can let their kids go out and play, and they don’t have a concern in the world. Just like us. Being able to go out and do what we want to do and not being concerned about being kidnapped, accosted, whatnot. I mean, that’s the way the whole world should be. Is that

Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1