Red Platoon, a book review.
By Clint Romesha
This riveting book likely would not have made it to my
bookshelf if I hadn’t known Mr. Romesha personally and that he won the Medal of
Honor for his actions depicted in the story.
The good news is, it’s all true. The bad news is it’s all true.
This omniscient story, told from multi-viewpoints
simultaneously revealed, the background, the minute-to-minute description and
the aftermath is more moving than a space saga or a one-dimension super-hero
epic. Characters’ motivations are
fleshed out individually, both those who lived through the horror and those who
died trying to save each other.
The story begins with a routine settling in of four platoons
of eighteen men each assigned to two outposts in the truly outback of
Afghanistan. Prayer would not be enough
to avoid serious conflict with the Taliban until the post could be closed down,
as was the primary goal they were given when they were sent to the post called
Keating. Prayer also would not be enough
to assure these some fighters that the fifty Afghan military that made up the
contingent from the indigenous army would actually fight alongside them if it
was required.
With no logic to the location of this post at the very
bottom of a ravine of three-thousand foot cliffs, no logic to how support staff
would be able to actually support and no logic to orders regarding cutting back
on everything from food supplies to security devices, these men were treated as
leftovers on a chessboard of the game called “chicken.”
Unsafe enough that any man walking about the post would be
shot at by snipers or missile cartridges on a daily basis, the prospect of a
six month tear down made anything outside the stifling buildings a run from
cover to cover, and anything inside the rude rock structures confined men who
lacked real food, water for bathing and room size essentially the same as a
submarine. From boredom to panic with
almost constant daily raids of shelling, sleep became an elusive commodity and
fear a constant companion both individually and unanimously.
And yet they persevered.
They all but thrived individually with the goal of keeping each other
whole. As with any group with the same
goal, some excelled at existing and a few were challenged.
Daily small raids aside, one day in October, 2007 from 6:00
a.m. until late into the evening, fifty some fighters held back four hundred
insurgents loaded with an inexhaustible supply of armaments to lob over the
cliffs from above. Every kind of
ordinance at the enemy’s disposal threatened to eliminate anything breathing
within Keating’s football size post surrounded with wire and four foot high
stacked walls of rock. Eight men died
that day, their deaths exacerbated because medical helicopters could not land
in the firefight. Approximately thirty others were wounded. Every step of the way is documented in this
amazing diary of the minutes of that day that depicts the most admirable
qualities in men and the most inhumane, barbaric traits from the other end of
the spectrum. Told from the perspective
of men in a man’s world, complete with the fun they could create, the misery
they could not tolerate but were forced to endure, the compassion and love that
overcomes all the shortcomings and impossibilities of war, the very best men
can compose, the true art form of battle lies exposed in detail in this one
isolated battle for freedom.
