The Fighters: Americans In Combat in Afghanistan and Iraq

By C. J. Chivers

Reviewed by Jim Gallen

The Fighters” presents War History Network readers with a through the gunsights views.  This is “little history”, as seen through the eyes of individuals, rather than through the big picture of goals and strategies.  It consists of twelve chapters, each focusing on the Afghanistan and Iraqi War experiences of an American veteran.  They served as riflemen, pilots, corpsmen and air cavalrymen.

This is, in some ways, a depressing work.  It is not an uplifting tome replete with martial glory.  Most of the subjects are wounded or killed.  In most cases the figures “did not quite grasp the overall mission.”  Rockets plunged into refuges of women and children.  As a corpsman, Dustin Kirby treated combat casualties until he urinated in a water bottle, in violation of regulations, rather than using a portable toilet.  Assigned post duty for this infraction, he was soon picking up his jaw bones and teeth after being struck by a Taliban bullet.  Michael Slebodnik served air cavalry tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Nearing his second return home, he trained his replacement for the eventuality “assume I got shot in the head and you have to engage.”  Shortly thereafter, he was shot through the leg and his understudy did take over for a hasty, but unsuccessful, rush to medical treatment.  Promised new pages of Marine Corps glory, such as The Battle of Marja, the largest Marine helicopter assault since Vietnam, are unlikely to be chronicled along side Belleau Wood or Iwo Jima.

Author C. J. Chivers has assembled a collection of reasonably independent sagas depicting wars without meaning, patrols devoid of purpose, lives wasted and bodies mangled.  To the extent that his accounts are accurate, they are tragic.  For the most part, I did not enjoy this book, but it did challenge me to confront the question, “Is this what two presidents sent American forces into?”  Perhaps veterans would receive this anthology differently than I.  I am sure there are and will be other perspectives on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  “The Fighters” will take its place amidst them.

The Fighters: Americans In Combat In Afghanistan And Iraq by C. J. Chivers

Simon & Shuster, New York, 2018, ISBN, 978-1-4516-7664-8