In the Company of Soldiers: A Chronicle of Combat

The advent of embedded reporters in the opening days of the 2003 US war on Iraq meant a more direct and personal point of view than battlefield coverage has historically offered. Rick Atkinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for An Army at Dawn , an account of combat in North Africa during World War II, traveled with the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army from its deployment out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky through its entry into Baghdad. The result, In the Company of Soldiers , is a thoroughly engrossing look at the strategies, personalities, and struggles of waging modern warfare. Much of Atkinson's focus falls on the division's leader, the hugely competitive and charismatic Major General David Petraeus, who seems to guide his troops through Iraq by sheer force of will. Atkinson devotes most of his time to the senior commanders, but the loss of the G.I. perspective, while disappointing, is outweighed by Atkinson's access to the minds of the brass who must navigate an Iraq whose citizens were not nearly as happy as military planners had hoped and who offered resistance in ways other than what the Americans had prepared for. While plenty has been written about the American military effort in Iraq, Atkinson's perspective, combined with a direct, economical writing style, allows him to present sides to the war not often seen or considered: long periods of waiting punctuated with mad scrambles to apply gas masks, fretting over how to pack all necessary supplies into tiny kits, dealing with dust storms that can ground state of the art attack helicopters, and reading the irreverent yet shrewdly observant graffiti left by American soldiers. In the Company of Soldiers lionizes the American military officers but it neither condemns nor offers unqualified praise to the US effort in Iraq. Indeed, the disturbing omens of chaos hinted at soon after the invasion began in the spring of 2003 would come into sharper relief when the book was published a year later. --John Moe From Publishers Weekly A Pulitzer-winning Washington Post correspondent and military historian gives the best account yet to come out of the Iraq War, chronicling the unit in which the author was embedded, the 101st Airborne, or Screaming Eagles, and particularly its headquarters. This inevitably puts much emphasis on the division commander, the intense, competitive and thoroughly professional Maj. Gen. David Petraeus. But no one is left out, from General Wallace, the gifted corps commander, to a Muslim convert and the victims of his ghastly but little publicized fragging incident at the opening of the war. The narrative covers this large cast from the division's being called up for the war at Fort Campbell, Ky., through to the author's departure from the unit after the fall of Baghdad. Through the eyes of the men he associated with, we see excess loads of personal gear being lugged into Iraq and insufficient supplies of essentials like ammunition and water (the reason for the infamous "pause"). We see sandstorms and the limitations of the Apache attack helicopter, and understand the legal framework for avoiding civilian casualties and "collateral damage," and much else that went right or wrongx97in a manner that is antitriumphalist, but not antimilitary. The son of an army officer and thoroughly up to date on the modern American army, the author pays an eloquent and incisive tribute to how the men and women of the 101st won their part of the war in Iraq, in a manner that bears comparison to his Pulitzer-winning WWII volume, An Army at Dawn. Superb writing and balance make this the account to beat.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From School Library Journal Adult/High School–Atkinson takes the long view of history and blends it with a journalist's acuity for telling detail to create a narrative that is rich in immediacy, yet seasoned with thoughtful analysis. In the spring of 2003, the author accompanied combat units to Iraq. He spent two months embedded with the 101st Airborne Division's headquarters staff, sharing their daily experiences from initial deployment out of Fort Campbell, KY, to overseas staging areas in Kuwait, and ultimately bearing witness to the unit's march on Baghdad. His view of the war was from a vantage point that permitted scrutiny of strategy, planning, and decision making at the senior command level. Atkinson's portraits of military leadership are compelling, balanced, and nuanced; they reflect professionalism, a keen sense of responsibility for the 17,000 lives in the command, and constant reevaluation of optimal deployment of the unit's assets. The author draws upon his notes from the frequent battle update briefings he attended with the HQ staff, material from personal interviews conducted in the field, and supplementary data from "after action" reports to which he had access following his return to the States. This is a candid, well-paced work by a writer with an appreciation for the region's culture and geography, foreshadowing the challenges of U.S. presence "in a country with five thousand years' experience at resisting invaders." –Lynn Nutwell, Fairfax City Regional Library, VA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist When a war on Saddam Hussein's Iraq loomed last year, Atkinson took leave from his work-in-progress, a three-volume history of the U.S. Army's World War II campaigns in Europe (the first volume, An Army at Dawn , 2002, received a Pulitzer Prize). Reverting to his previous career as a Washington Post reporter, Atkinson filed stories about the army's historic 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. In this account of his experience from February to April 2003, Atkinson alludes to personal skepticism about the war but plays it professionally straight, telling what he and the soldiers saw--one soldier in particular. He is General David Petraeus, commander of the 101st. Atkinson was embedded with Petraeus' headquarters staff, and the reporter's viewpoint of the campaign is, therefore, that of Petraeus and his responsibilities for moving 17,000 men and women and their weapons from Kentucky to Kuwait and then into combat. Accompanying Petraeus to his briefings with his brigade colonels, and in his travels by helicopter and vehicle (coming under enemy fire on occasion), Atkinson chronicles the 101st's battles in Najaf, Hilla, and Karbala in vividly gritty detail that is factual and palpably admiring of Petraeus' leadership. As current history, Atkinson's excellent reportage will be intently read, both as a tableau of contemporary martial argot and ethos, and for officers' thoughts about their assignment in Iraq. Expect heavy demand arising from the subject, the author, and multimedia publicity. Gilbert Taylor Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Rick Atkinson was a staff writer and senior editor at The Washington Post for twenty years. His most recent assignment was covering the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. He is the bestselling author of An Army at Dawn (0-8050-7448-1), The Long Gray Line (0-8050-6291-2), and Crusade . His many awards include Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and history. He lives in Washington, D.C. From The Washington Post Rick Atkinson's new book about the 101st Airborne during the first phase of the Iraq war might better have been titled "In the Company of Officers," for the enlisted men and women who fought are rarely shown. More ink is spent on generals, Other Government Agency (OGA) and Special Forces operatives than on the cannon cockers, infantry grunts and truck drivers. For writer and reader, the SF, OGA and general-grade officers' combat exploits offer more romance and less in-your-face violence than the daily grind of the frontline fighter. Atkinson reported for The Washington Post as an "embedded" journalist during the Iraq war. He spent most of his days within earshot of Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division. Atkinson deployed with the division from Kentucky to Kuwait, and after battles at Karbala, Najaf and Hilla, when the 101st moved to Mosul for precarious occupation duty, he returned to the United States to write his book. Upon departure, he writes, "I believed it possible to write about them [the 101st] with the requisite objectivity, and to bear witness with cool detachment." But prior to allowing us to experience the division-level operational battlefront, wrought with laptops and laser pointers, Atkinson gives the reader a ringside seat at the complex pre-war costume ball known as logistics. The cannon cockers, infantry grunts and truck drivers would be without guns, rifles, vehicles and fuel if not for this surprisingly engaging dance. And the price of tripping your partner is high. Up to the moment that George W. Bush informed the world that bombs were dropping on Baghdad, Petraeus and his officers were trying to get fit for combat. Atkinson writes, "since no one knew when the war would start, it remained uncertain whether the 101st would muster sufficient combat power in time to participate in the invasion." Bush's rush to war had forced the Army to abandon its traditional deployment rubric and funnel units into the theater in "force packages" that were less than totally combat capable. Atkinson brings to life such mundane seeming computations as fuel consumption: "The Army calculated that it alone would burn 40 million gallons in three weeks of combat in Iraq, an amount equivalent to the gasoline consumed by all Allied armies combined during the four years of World War I." He also offers a complex operational narrative of the division's fights. Unfortunately, however, the men of this book don't come fully alive. Atkinson usually introduces each officer with an adjectival bath fit for a prince or a singles ad. Petraeus is "intense, good-humored and driven." And his aide, Capt. David G. Fivecoat, "was a smart, curious, sinewy towhead." Atkinson does the men and his book a better service when he creates a scene, such as when Brig. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, under small arms fire at Hilla, was unafraid to offer his silhouette to the enemy: "Freakley strode past a truck ahead of us, yelling at soldiers to disperse. 'Sir, are you crazy?' someone called. 'You don't belong up here.' Fivecoat put a hand on his shoulder, urging him to lower his profile." Atkinson also excels when he eavesdrops on soldiers or describes the graffito on the walls of a latrine: "Who's your Baghdaddy?" And he makes precise but not excessive use of the ever-present coarse and violent language, the warrior's private, specialized profanity, that is unprintable here. Atkinson's early assertion that "embedding was a fair effort by the Pentagon to allow a greater transparency to military operations" is foolish but certain to get him invited back next time. And his editor should instruct him that the bio page is the best place to mention one's prior books. More than once, such asides ruin his narrative drive. But this is still a perceptive, exciting and engaging book. The battle scenes are heart-pounding narratives of officers directing combat. Largely, the war on offer here is the one available over command post radio frequencies and in after-action reports, but Atkinson does a fine job of re-creating the division's battles from various threads of information, including the Army's own history of the conflict, written by the Operation Iraqi Freedom Study Group. Atkinson is wise to offer an occasional view of the wider war. A few days into combat he lets us know that "the 3rd Infantry Division had traveled roughly three hundred miles . . . But twenty-nine Americans had been killed near Nasiriyah. . . seven others remained missing. Contrary to expectations, the mass capitulation of Iraqi units had not occurred. Bitter fighting persisted on a stretch of the Nasiriyah roadway known as Ambush Alley, and a half dozen Marines had been killed by friendly fire from an Air Force A-10." He also creates a war costs calendar, noting for example that two crashed helicopters "turned out to be total losses, at $20 million each." More important, he is keenly aware of the human wreckage that warfare leaves in its wake: Of the soldiers of the 101st, he writes, "They were better than the cause they served." Reviewed by Anthony Swofford Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. From In the Company of Soldiers :We turned around. Najaf was pacified, at least for today. Back at the middle school where No Slack had its battalion command post, Hodges told Petraeus that he had declared Ali's shrine to be a demilitarized zone, "so there's no military presence west of Highway 9." He also had issued edicts outlawing revenge killings, but allowing the looting of Baath Party or Fedayeen properties. "You see guys walking down the street with desks, office chairs, lights, curtains," Hodges said, and I wondered whether authorized pilfering was a slippery slope toward anarchy. Before we walked back outside, Chris Hughes showed me a terrain model that had been discovered in a bathroom stall in a Baathist headquarters. Built on a sheet of plywood, roughly five feet by three feet, it depicted the Iraqi plan for Najaf's defense. Green toy soldiers, representing the Americans, stood below the escarpment on the southwestern approach to the city. Red toy soldiers, representing the Iraqis, occupied revetments along the perimeter avenues, with fallback positions designated in the city center. The model included little plastic cars, plastic palm trees, even plastic donkeys. Nowhere did I see JDAMs, Apaches, Kiowas, Hellfires, or signs of reality. Read more