The war memoir is a genre of literature that has been around since before Julius Caesar wrote about his adventures in Rome’s Gallic conquest. In the last century, the two world wars, Korea and Vietnam saw their share.
The 21st has not been around long enough to see that many volumes about war experiences, but there have been a few highlighting the exploits of men who have served in our forever wars.
Major Daniel A. Sjursen’s Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge is a departure in a way from the usual offering of heroic after story, if only because it has Ghost in the title and was definitely not ghost written.
Every page is heartfelt and you feel you are riding with his team as they patrol Salman Pak, south of Baghdad. The war still haunts him and your reviewer admits to being not a little affected by Ghost Riders.
Sjursen, a West Point grad and newly minted lieutenant was given command of a scout platoon. He would train them and get to know his men far more than any civilian employer or boss ever gets to know workers. As their tour progressed in Iraq, or didn’t progress, he and his men seemed a family. Maybe calling them a family would be too much. Tribe or clan would not be unwarranted.
There was New Bedford’s Alex Fuller. Fuller made sergeant before he could legally drink in the Bay State. The author called him “the heart of 2nd platoon.” The young man was a born leader who mentored the new troops. In the book, it became obvious that he did not suffer from a personality deficit. For all that, Fuller was not unserious and he and Sjursen had firmly bonded.
All death in war is cruel. Iraq saw some refinement in horror such as an EFP or an explosive formed penetrator. These were easy to manufacture, difficult to avoid, and brutally powerful. The vehicle Sgt. Fuller was riding in hit an EFP and the explosion left nothing of the soldier.
The author writes of how the death of Alex and another that night affected him, “Fuller and Balsey. Two young men, one my close friend-gone. Just like that. Life, extinguished. Unless you’ve seen it, it’s hard to explain the effect. They were there and then in a moment-they were gone. The randomness of death, the suddenness and finality still mess with my head. Some days I worry about living life to its fullest and on others I’m struck by the essential absurdity of it all. Nothing was ever the same.”
Some casualties did not take place on the battlefield. James Smith was driver for Sjursen and according to the author a certifiable lunatic. Young and crazy, a pre-deployment moving vehicle violation got him in jail and almost even bigger trouble with the army. He was able to get out of it, but Sjursen said of him, “Fast cars and a stint in jail made him who he was.”
He survived Iraq and carried on an online romance with a young lady stateside. They became engaged without ever meeting and planned a life together. Things looked promising, but his sister, Candace noticed changes in the fun-loving young man home from war. She saw him becoming jaded and cold.
A minor incident at a bar and Smith went to pieces and his new wife would find him in the closet hanging by his belt.
Of course, it hit the author hard. On a family vacation, he tried to explain what the young troop meant to him. All he got were blank stares. The divergence between the life of a combat soldier and the civilians who will never get anywhere near that situation is a sizeable chasm.
It is a theme he will develop further in the book. Our nation through its government sends young men and women to foreign countries to pursue a foreign policy that does not really do much for the American people. As the nation’s young have not been subject to a draft, there is little outcry or protest as happened with Vietnam. Other than an occasional “Thank you for your service” and the rare news item, the wars need not be thought about.
Congressmen and presidents send the young to die. Few of their children will go off to battle. The no skin off their noses situation makes it easy to have wars that little affect the governing class.
Except sometimes when it does. While the author was in Iraq, it had become obvious even to the sleeping public we were not winning. Something had to be done. Enter the “Surge” as mentioned in the title. It may be ancient history to most of us that in 2007 we sent over 20,000 additional men under the hero du jour, David Petraeus. His command of the troops would turn the tide of battle. Or so the headlines would have it.
In the words of Ira Gershwin, “It ain’t necessarily so.” In 2006, before the Surge, an armored brigade in western Anbar province exploited tension between Sunnis and Al Qaeda. The locals were not as fanatic as the Jihadis and resented the heavy hand.
This would be developed and we would pay the Sunnis to change sides and it worked far more than the surge of GIs. What red blooded American would want to admit that we had fought a war the old-fashioned way, with bribery.
Certainly not Lindsey Graham whom the author calls a “surge worshiper.” It was Graham’s claim that the surge had won the war, but Obama had lost it by withdrawing the troops. That the senator from South Carolina has it wrong infuriates Sjursen no end and he has a point. If after the troops left it fell apart so quickly, it probably wasn’t much of a victory.
Graham should be happy, we have troops back in theater. Anyway, we never won the war. The author is happy to point out Iran did. The government in Baghdad is much influenced by their fellow Shiites in Persia and also dependent on them. Sjursen doesn’t say it but his thoughts on the matter seem to be, what were we thinking?
It’s hard not to conclude that we weren’t thinking at all.
The tour of duty the author spent was not at all easy. If you are in another country as an occupier, there has to be much antipathy and worse on both sides. Still, Sjursen came away liking the Iraqi people and understanding of their plight.
The account of his interpreter with the nom de guerre of Mark is admiring and generous. Mark, a Shia, is devout, earnest and brave. He was the support of his family in a job that risked death. The young Muslim carried on against all odds with a good grace. All of Danny Sjursen’s men were sympathetic characters, not the least the young Iraqi.
No one can predict the future. Most books are forgotten soon after they are written. To suggest Ghost Riders of Baghdad will be remembered would be going out on a limb and the odds are not good. Yet, if there is one that should be read, this is it.
Oh, and we might take a lesson or two from it as well.
