****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
There is a big difference between 'at' and 'in,' and if you go into this book with the wrong expectation, maybe you'd be disappointed. But that should not steer readers away. This is a compelling look at wartime soldier's hard days of work, and that often doesn't mean combat.Journalist Kevin Maurer presents arguably the truest embedded narrative since Ernie Pyle - because like Pyle, Maurer is actually doing stuff with and for the soldiers he's working alongside, like carrying extra ammo, gear, and helping out with maintenance tasks, etc. It might not seem like an interesting distinction, but it's a far cry from the often distant journalist accounts by reporters who hang around soldiers, write about them, but never seem to have much understanding (and it certainly goes both ways). Maurer's 'embedded' all the way. Is that good? Bad? The reader can decide - Maurer just tells it how it is.As an embedded photojournalist myself, I really appreciated Maurer's close-up look at this experience. I think readers of Afghanistan and Iraq narratives will enjoy it as well. And, this is one of the few (the only?) embedded accounts alongside the Special Forces soldiers that usually avoid any sort of publicity. Maurer earned that trust with more than half-dozen reporting trips to various war zones - though even still, the SF team didn't completely welcome right away.It is not a combat narrative. Rather it presents the 95 percent of wartime experience that is much more common - a daily, punishing grind that saps motivation and makes each day a little more tedious than the one that came before. There might be a few moments of holy terror, but for the most part - for most soldiers - it's a lot of time talking about those few moments. Even for Special Forces guys like these.The SF soldiers go into action a few times, but they don't take Maurer with them. He reports on the frustrating negotiations with Afghan soldiers and police, and occasional turf wars with fellow US soldiers jealous of SF freedom.The tensest moment in the book is a shouting match with an Afghan Army officer that very nearly blows up into the kind of full-scale insider attack we've seen a lot of lately. In the short scene that Maurer describes, I think readers will see the tension that's always underneath our relationships with our Afghan "allies."As an embedded reporter, my own experience with Special Forces were a few very casual guys who politely asked me not to take their picture, or who just shrugged and sneered and dripped sarcasm when they said "I have no idea," if I asked what they were up to. They were quiet, they were gentleman, and in the contemptously dismissive manner they treated me, I suppose they were bastards too. But from Maurer's well-described account, the reader sees these men as the kind of professionals that we can expect to do a really good job.At times, Maurer might err on the side of too much information. He has no shortage of anecdotes, and there are a few that go on too long, and a few details that don't add much. But he clearly decided to give as comprehensive an account as he could. I'll take that flaw, rather than the opposite.For those readers who want a demystifying look at the often mythologized Special Forces, this is a great read. I was in the Army, at Fort Bragg, and SF guys were almost like ghosts - you heard about them, but couldn't believe it if you actually saw one. They are egotistical, but deserve to be, and it's easy to see why they are so often at odds with the more straight-laced 'regular Army' soldiers. They play by 'big boy rules.'Ultimately, I think the SF team came across really well, and I hope they liked this account. It's warts and all, and the guys aren't always presented in the best light - but it seems honest and straightforward, and lacks any forced melodrama on unearned emotion.It's a fun book, though it might disappoint those expecting fire fights and lots of battles. This is the inside story of these guy's run-of-the-mill lives AT war, not in war. But to me, that was the rare, unexpected, and valuable part of the story.
