The Good Soldiers
the must read one
“The front-line soldier I knew lived for months like an animal, and was a veteran in the cruel, fierce world of death. Fast-forward 64 years to 2007, the year the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter David Finkel brings to astonishing life in his chronicle of modern combat, “The Good Soldiers.” Like Pyle, Finkel brilliantly captures the terrors of ordinary men enduring extraordinary circumstances.
Between January 2007 and June 2008, Finkel spent eight months with a battalion of 800 United States Army soldiers from Fort Riley, Kan., known for short as the 2-16 (Second Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment of the Fourth Infantry Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division).
From a cramped, lousy office - big enough for just three folding chairs and a desk - the young men were led by a gung-ho yet thoroughly likable 40-year-old lieutenant colonel named Ralph Kauzlarich. A sign on the head-quarters wall read, “Mission: to create a balanced, secure and self-sufficient environment for the Iraqi people.”
We pick up with the action in Iraq after approximately 3,000 soldiers have been killed and some 25,000 wounded. The numbers are a backdrop to Finkel’s real drama, which by the book’s end rises to fever pitch. Had they made a difference, the men of the 2-16 begin to wonder. Were they still “good soldiers”?
As Finkel describes it, the men of the 2-16 struggled to be decent in a terrifying environment. In one early scene, an Iraqi interpreter “led Kauzlarich past his surprised-looking family and motioned him toward a chair in a spotlessly clean living room.
When America came, I put flowers out front,’ the man said. But at this point, ‘If I put them out, they will kill me.’ His perspiration stains were huge now. Twenty minutes. House searches didn’t take 20 minutes.
Finkel’s central organizing idea is this: War is hell, decent men are often called to fight it, and their story is intrinsically worth telling. In this way, he is cousin to writers like John Hersey or Tim O’Brien who grapple with the raw subject of violence in war. You could have the book here.
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