GODS OF WAR

In this memoir, Troutman chronicles his service with the United States Army’s elite Blackhawk Company, focusing on his deployment to Iraq.

The author served with the Blackhawk Company 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. The battalion’s existence dates back to the War of 1812, but the brigade was born of out a need to transform a Cold War military into an “efficient, sustainable, and lethal fighting force against the future threats in the world.” Troutman furnishes a vivid portrayal of the brigade’s evolution from its early days as a “poetic, chaotic mess” to its emergence as a group that evinced “absolute commitment and professionalism.” The members were feared in Iraq, dubbed the “Ghost Soldiers” by the people of Samarra for their deadly stealthiness. The bulk of Troutman’s fascinating memoir is devoted to his deployment in Iraq in 2003, the culmination of which was an extraordinary battle in Mosul that lasted 10 hours against as many as 300 insurgents— a victorious engagement in which no American soldiers died. This is the heart of the memoir; the depiction of modern combat is thrillingly dramatic and thoroughly informative. Troutman’s prose is often clumsy and sentimental, and he tends to excessively valorize (sometimes to a hagiographic degree) the soldiers with whom he served. This passage doesn’t even pass muster grammatically: “Are fates are forever intertwined with one another. Our legacy is solid. We are forever family.” Additionally, the author seems to forget that civilians might read the book, too, and the text often becomes obscured by a fog of esoteric military acronyms. There are far too many sentences like this one: “The FIST section for a new FSO as 1LT Ortega left to go over to 1/37 Field Artillery for an Executive officer position.” Despite these flaws, the exceedingly realistic depiction of war so candidly provided by the author makes this a worthwhile read.

For all of its literary failings, this is a remarkable tour of contemporary combat.