BiblioVault - Books about Personal narratives, American

Ghost Riders of Baghdad

Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge

Daniel A. Sjursen

University Press of New England, 2015

From October 2006 to December 2007, Daniel A. Sjursen—then a U.S. Army lieutenant—led a light scout platoon across Baghdad. The experiences of Ghost Rider platoon provide a soldier’s-eye view of the incredible complexities of warfare, peacekeeping, and counterinsurgency in one of the world’s most ancient cities. Sjursen reflects broadly and critically on the prevailing narrative of the surge as savior of America’s longest war, on the overall military strategy in Iraq, and on U.S. relations with ordinary Iraqis. At a time when just a handful of U.S. senators and representatives have a family member in combat, Sjursen also writes movingly on questions of America’s patterns of national service. Who now serves and why? What connection does America’s professional army have to the broader society and culture? What is the price we pay for abandoning the model of the citizen soldier? With the bloody emergence of ISIS in 2014, Iraq and its beleaguered, battle-scarred people are again much in the news. Unlike other books on the U.S. war in Iraq, Ghost Riders of Baghdad is part battlefield chronicle, part critique of American military strategy and policy, and part appreciation of Iraq and its people. At once a military memoir, history, and cultural commentary, Ghost Riders of Bahdad delivers a compelling story and a deep appreciation of both those who serve and the civilians they strive to protect. Sjursen provides a riveting addition to our understanding of modern warfare and its human costs.

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Good Medicine, Hard Times

Memoir of a Combat Physician in Iraq

Edward P. Horvath, MD

The Ohio State University Press, 2022

Good Medicine, Hard Times is the moving memoir of one of the most senior-ranking combat physicians to have served on the battlefields of the second Iraq war. Former US Army Colonel Edward P. Horvath, MD, brings readers through the intricacies of war as he relates stories of working to save the lives of soldiers, enemies, and civilians alike and shares the moral dilemmas faced by medical professionals during war. Enlisting in the Army as a fifty-nine-year-old physician, Dr. Horvath knew that he had a greater calling in life: to save the “neighbor’s kid”—no matter who that neighbor or the kid might be. Over his three deployments, he strived to do that amid cultural clashes, insurgent attacks, military controversy, and the suffering of children caught in the crossfire. In his clear-eyed, empathetic, and unforgettable account, he shows what it means to provide compassionate care in the most trying of circumstances, always keeping in mind that every person he cares for is someone’s child.

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The Good Occupation

American Soldiers and the Hazards of Peace

Susan L. Carruthers

Harvard University Press, 2016

Waged for a just cause and culminating in total victory, World War II was America’s “good war.” Yet for millions of GIs overseas, the war did not end with Germany and Japan’s surrender. The Good Occupation chronicles America’s transition from wartime combatant to postwar occupier, by exploring the intimate thoughts and feelings of the ordinary servicemen and women who participated—often reluctantly—in the difficult project of rebuilding nations they had so recently worked to destroy.

When the war ended, most of the seven million Americans in uniform longed to return to civilian life. Yet many remained on active duty, becoming the “after-army” tasked with bringing order and justice to societies ravaged by war. Susan Carruthers shows how American soldiers struggled to deal with unprecedented catastrophe among millions of displaced refugees and concentration camp survivors while negotiating the inevitable tensions that arose between victors and the defeated enemy. Drawing on thousands of unpublished letters, diaries, and memoirs, she reveals the stories service personnel told themselves and their loved ones back home in order to make sense of their disorienting and challenging postwar mission.

The picture Carruthers paints is not the one most Americans recognize today. A venture undertaken by soldiers with little appetite for the task has crystallized, in the retelling, into the “good occupation” of national mythology: emblematic of the United States’ role as a bearer of democracy, progress, and prosperity. In real time, however, “winning the peace” proved a perilous business, fraught with temptation and hazard.

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Good-Bye to Old Peking

The Wartime Letters Of U.S. Marine Captain John Seymour Letcher, 1937-1939

John Seymour Letcher

Ohio University Press, 1998

For two and a half years (1937-1939), Captain John Seymour Letcher commanded a company of the U.S. Embassy Marine Guard in Peking. During that time, he wrote a series of letters to his parents in Virginia describing the life of a Westerner in the former imperial city. During that same time, China was invaded by Japan.

Captain Letcher describes the flavor of life in pre-Communist China — the food, servants, cold Peking winters and torrid summers, hunting, and excursions to the major tourist sites.

But his letters also tell of the Japanese slaughter of Chinese troops in the opening days of the Sino-Japanese War. He wrote about life in a city under Japanese occupation and the stirring story of the Chinese guerrillas rebounding from devastating defeat.

These letters and accompanying introduction, preface, and notes, draw attention to the Western experience in a place and time largely overlooked by military historians and modern China specialists.

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Ground Pounder

A Marine’s Journey through South Vietnam, 1968-1969

Gregory V. Short

University of North Texas Press, 2012