Brandon Friedman served as an infantry platoon leader and company executive officer with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division. He participated in both Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan and in the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent insurgency. He lives in Dallas, Texas.
Publishers Weekly, June 25, 2007 “This cynical but appealing memoir
by a lieutenant in the elite 101st Airborne recounts his unpleasant
times fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. After a quick review of his
youth (shy, smart, dreaming of glory), Friedman describes his
unit's deployment to Afghanistan after 9/11 to fight the Taliban.
Its mission turns out to be guarding an air base, four months of
demoralizing boredom followed by urgent orders into battle. The
result is an exhausting 11-hour march high into freezing mountains,
where the soldiers arrive as the fighting ends. A year later, as
American forces invade Iraq in March 2003, Friedman's unit advances
almost to Baghdad without encountering resistance but yearning to
fight. There follows three months of dull occupation duty until, to
everyone's horror, a grenade kills two soldiers on patrol, and the
insurgency begins. The author accepts that America needed to fight
in Afghanistan, but can't fathom why we invaded Iraq. He does not
re-enlist. Given the public's waning support for the war in Iraq,
Friedman's voice is likely to be heard by sympathetic ears.”
Dallas Morning News
Throughout this terse and emotionally honest memoir, Mr. Friedman
is equally introspective as he is descriptive. This allows readers
to experience things alongside him, rather than merely gasp in awe
at his heroics or sit clucking in judgment....This intimacy
differentiates his book from other fine, if partisan, war memoirs
that have come before it this summer: the wry and cynical Blood
Makes the Grass Grow Green by the pseudonymous Jonny Rico, and Navy
SEAL Marcus Luttrell's flag-waving Lone Survivor....No, Mr.
Friedman's wartime experience wasn't worthy of winning him a Medal
of Honor (he did earn two Bronze Stars) or even an option for a
Hollywood screenplay, but it did endow him with a wisdom beyond his
years. Surviving a war, it seems, takes a bit of luck; coping with
the memory and aftermath of one takes maturity.
Army/Navy/Marine Corps/Air Force Times, Nov. 3, 2007 “Friedman’s
take is vivid, frank, precise, and dramatic. Currently a
contributor to the Daily Kos blog, Friedman served as an officer in
Afghanistan and Iraq – but his being served ouzo in Greece is the
book’s dramatic zenith, a tense account in which he successfully
evokes feelings of being entrapped, of being duped, of being near
harm. These feelings illustrate the effect of war and politics on
one veteran fresh off the lines.”
The Viginian-Pilot, Dec. 2, 2007 “A candid, timely combat
memoir … Well-written by an intellectual man, this book recalls
classics such as Goodbye Darkness, The Coldest War, With the Old
Breed, and countless others. Friedman offers frank descriptions and
commentary about the incongruity of daily events, the deadly
cruelty of an implacable enemy, and the terrible accidents that
plague any large operation.”
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