David Finkel - The Good Soldiers

The

GOOD SOLDIERS

David Finkel is the National Enterprise Editor of the Washington Post. He was awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for his series of stories about U.S.-funded democracy efforts in Yemen. Finkel lives with his wife and two daughters in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Outstanding... The best work of reportage to emerge from the Iraq war to date... Everyone should read it. Sunday Business Post

[A] riveting story of the surge the blood and guts; the frantic pace; the gallows humour and macho banter, but also the fear and fatigue. Scotsman

Heart-stopping... harrowing... immediate and visceral... The Good Soldiers captures the surreal horror of war: the experience of blood and violence and occasional moments of humanity that soldiers witness firsthand. New York Times

Unsparing... This wrenching account brings alive not only the horror of roadside bombs and mortar blasts, but the oft ignored aftermath of grief and suffering. Boston Globe

This is the finest book yet written on the platoon-level combat of the Iraq war... Unforgettable raw, moving, and rendered with literary control... No one who reads this book will soon forget its imagery, words, or characters. Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars

This is the best account I have read of the life of one unit in the Iraq war. It is closely observed, carefully recorded and beautifully written. David Finkel doesnt just take you into the lives of our soldiers, he takes you deep into their nightmares. Thomas E. Ricks, author of Fiasco and The Gamble

Brilliant, heartbreaking, deeply true. The Good Soldiers offers the most intimate view of life and death in a twenty-first-century combat unit I have ever read. Unsparing, unflinching, and, at times, unbearable. Rick Atkinson, author of In the Company of Soldiers

The
GOOD SOLDIERS

David Finkel

Atlantic Books
L ONDON

First published in America in 2009 by Sarah Crichton Books, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 18 West 18th Street, New York, 10011, USA.

First published in Great Britain in trade paperback in 2010 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

This paperback edition published in 2011 by Atlantic Books.

Copyright David Finkel, 2009

The moral right of David Finkel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

Portions of this book originally appeared, in different form, in The Washington Post.

Top photograph on page 108 courtesy of the U.S. Army.

All other photographs courtesy of the author.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978 1 84887 327 8
eBook ISBN: 978 1 84887 759 7

Designed by Abby Kagan
Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books
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www.atlantic-books.co.uk

To Lisa, Julia, and Lauren

CONTENTS

The
GOOD SOLDIERS

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

H is soldiers werent 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, hadnt yet written of the war in a letter to a friend, Ive had enough of this bullshit. Another soldier, one of his best, hadnt yet written in the journal he kept hidden, Ive lost all hope. I feel the end is near for me, very, very near. Another hadnt 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 battalions most decorated soldier, hadnt 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 hadnt 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 hadnt started yet, either, at least the ones that he would rememberthe 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. Bushs surge, was still finding a reason every day to say, Its all good.

Ralph Kauzlarich, Fort Riley, Kansas

He would wake up in eastern Baghdad, inhale its bitter, burning air, and say it. Its all good. He would look around at the fundamentals of what his life had becomehis 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. Its time to start the noodles. I love you. Everybody up. Hut hutand say it. Its 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 mornings e-mails. From his wife: I love you so much! I wish we could lay naked in each others 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. Its 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.