The Fighters: Americans in Combat. C.J. Chivers. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2018.
"Never tell a soldier that he does not know the costs of war.”
—Lt. General Frank Benson, played by Alan Rickman, in Eye in the Sky
C.J. Chivers’ latest installment, The Fighters, is a book that provides a deep understanding of individual experiences in multi-domain warfare as well as the continued costs paid by individuals engaged in each aspect of combined operations. The book follows six service members from the Army, the Navy and the Marine Corps through their experiences in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom and in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom, pulling together a book for both the casual reader as well as serious scholars of military history. Chivers does not set out to provide deep insight into these campaigns, and the book is not intended to be a regurgitation of the reasons for the conflicts or the policy decisions behind them. Instead, Chivers masterfully takes the reader through the initial phases of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and illustrates the individual experiences of the respective strategies for each campaign through personal stories. While many other books have been written on the strategies for each campaign and the reasons for the shifting policies, this book provides an illustration of the day-to-day actions of individuals trying to implement those policies and engage in multi-domain battle before it was doctrine, and it documents the individual costs to be paid by service members and their families after returning from the battlefield.
The Fighters offers a deep insight into the recent conflicts through the eyes of a cross-section of individuals involved in combat and into overall strategy as implemented at the individual level. These stories take the reader through the first-person viewpoint of six separate individuals, each operating from one of the different multi-domain platforms of war. Each first-person perspective, from the stories told by the infantryman and medic in the dust and grit, to the helicopter pilot above the battlefield and the fighter pilot seeing the war from a fast-moving jet, all captivate the reader and illustrate the shifting strategies from conventional warfare to counter-insurgency operations.[1] The book does a superb job of walking the reader through the first stages of the initial and follow-on action in Iraq and Afghanistan through the stories of direct participants in all of the major phases of the campaigns. In addition, the selection of these stories provides a masterful, multi-tiered view of how each operational and tactical maneuver contributes to the collective effort and highlights their unique challenges. The stories contained in the book help illuminate the challenges faced at the inception of the multi-domain warfare doctrine before it was promulgated and expanded.
U.S. A-10s at Al Asad Air Base in Al Anbar province, Iraq. (Capt Ken Hall/USAF Photo)
The new Multi-Domain Operations concept anticipates fighting with “echeloned formations that conduct intelligence, maneuver, and strike activities across all five domains (air, land, maritime, space, and cyberspace) as well as the information environment and the EMS spectrum.”[2] The multi-platform perspective was already being tested in Iraq and Afghanistan, and formation members like Army special operator Sergeant First Class Leo Kryszewski and Marine Lieutenant Jarrod Neff were already being augmented with close air support via Kiowa pilots like Chief Warrant Officer Michael Slebodnik and fast movers like Navy Lieutenant Commander Layne McDowell to conduct activities. The inclusion of these platforms in this book provides a wider spectrum of experiences as each service member undergoes different experiences based upon their individual circumstances within joint and combined operations.
Chivers does an exceptional job of ensuring the book contains a proper mixture of details and maps so the casual reader can orient themselves to the respective areas of operations. In addition, he ensures the stories track the focal points of each conflict, covering the initial bombing campaigns, the battle of Fallujah and Marjah, and the fights in Baghdad. The tactician will find plenty of details to understand the terrain and the narrative contains enough detail for the reader to understand the full dynamics of the various situations. The descriptions of the environment, the campaigns, and the operations do not devolve into minutiae, but are of sufficient detail that even the uninitiated will be able to track the service members in time and in space. Understanding the timing in relation to the events going on at home and in relation to each campaign is a critical element with which Chivers artfully pulls the reader through the multi-level hourglass and the shifting strategies from one type of campaign to the next. Each service member is a grain of sand flowing on their own unique path through the restraints placed upon them by the higher headquarters or by shifting doctrines.
The Fighters is not intended to be a lesson on leadership, but elements of leadership are woven throughout its stories. It does not purport to extol universal truths to be gleaned for the next generation of leaders, but the book does encapsulate the difficulties encountered and these stories can provide insight for future multi-domain warfare strategies. All of the examples of leadership woven through the stories show that leadership in combat and in a complex multi-domain battle is not just leading up or down—as with Chief Warrant Officer teaching a Specialist having a rough deployment to play guitar in between leading combat missions –– it is also leading across and beyond the normal confines of traditional leadership—as when a Navy corpsman and saves the lives of Marines.[3] The Fighters offers a gritty look at the lives of service members trying to implement their specific portion of multi-domain and joint operational actions as part of shifting strategies before this doctrine was fully developed and provides realism on the tactical level which Commanders should remember as they employ each type of warfare on every domain.
The multi-domain concept, specific to the Army, envisions four main ways to support the end goal of American superiority in combat. The first is by convincing the other side to not engage in the conflict. The other three means focus on combat operations. Once conflict breaks out, forces must 1) maximize shaping operations, 2) win in large scale operations, and 3) consolidate any gains achieved during the conflict.[4] In support of this goal, the Army anticipates that each formation “possess the combination of capacity, capability, and endurance which generates the resilience necessary to operate across multiple domains...Multi-domain formations can conduct independent maneuver, employ cross-domain fires, and maximize human potential.”[5] The service members in this book already have exhibited capacity, capability and endurance while conducting independent maneuvers and maximizing the human potential. Each story relays the capabilities and costs of maximizing the human potential.
U.S. Marines in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. (Reuters)
The book can be emotionally taxing, as there is a noticeable lack of good-news stories in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Neither is it a book that extols the virtues of the campaign, host country nationals, or individual service members. Instead, the book focuses on individual experiences and allows readers to draw their own impressions on the strategies. The lack of redeeming stories about the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially in engaging the local populations, may provide the reader with a skewed perspective, suggesting that inhabitants of both counties were hostile to the troops or treated them as if they were a presence to be ignored. In addition, a casual reader may not find this book as an objective overview of the respective campaigns. There is a prevailing theme throughout many of the stories of the drudgery and sameness of war combined with the sheer randomness and indiscriminate death and destruction. The author conveys the volatility of war and the drastic turn which can occur in a microsecond through the stories of those individuals unlucky enough to be the person shot in the face by a sniper when performing a punishment detail, or being struck by indirect fire while walking into the Post Exchange.[6] The stories of individual service members at each level of the fight included in the book illustrates that there is no reason why them just the reality of is, and this book does a masterful job of showing the individual reality of just is. However, while the stories are poignant and illustrate the randomness of war, readers may wish there were more details included about the importance and relevance of each of the service members’ missions and engagements.
The final chapters of the book are entitled “Part IV: Reckoning,” and this is an accurate description as they establish the reckoning which must be paid when service members leave the battlefield. While the last portion of the book may not feel as exciting to the reader given it does not contain action scenes about the conflicts, it does contain important truths about war and the aftermath for the returning warriors and their families. The final chapters focus on the struggles service members face when they return, including physical injuries, physiological issues, and emotional/mental instability. The final stories in the book suggest the long-lasting medical conditions each service member may encounter will be a hybrid of visible and invisible wounds. The wounds may be obvious, such as Doc Kirby’s wounds to his face and jaw or they may be the internal cycle of confusion of service members coming home when they feel like a headless horse on a decrepit carousel when they return home after their deployments. Those with internal wounds know that they are home and it should be a time of excitement and fun but it feels like the old life they knew has become rusted, tainted and pitted with each war memory. For some service members, the carousel no longer functions and they are pierced with the memories which connect them to the platform of that life. For others, the carousel still revolves—jarringly, haltingly, and sporadically—and they feel like they are being carried in an endless circle of the memory of what once was. They are no longer the shiny steed painted with bright colors. Instead, they have lost their head, their coats and outside surface have dulled, and they have become mere shadows of themselves, their head and mind are lost somewhere between the location where the carousel is rooted and the space of their deployment.
The Fighters is much more illustrative of various reasons for post-traumatic stress and the moral struggles service members face during combat and then in dealing with those choices when they return home than other early books, such as Nancy Sherman’s The Untold War.[7] The stories contained in The Fighters are derived from personal engagement in intensive combat experiences unlike some illustrations in The Untold War where the stories were derived from service members who were prepared for and close to potentially dangerous situations. For example, in Nancy Sherman’s book, one of the individuals suffered from post traumatic stress due to his deployment to Kuwait, especially from an incident which could have put his life in danger but was averted when a scud missile was shot down 7 miles from Camp Doha. The stories in The Untold War help illustrate the moral questions which may lead some soldiers to have post traumatic stress. The Fighters instead illustrates that each service member has a varying capacity to deal with their experiences and personal involvement in higher intensity combat situations can lead to greater issues for veterans and their families, such as lingering and life-altering medical conditions and attempts at self-medication for emotional or mental trauma, as well as dealing with the aftermath of choices made during combat.[8] Despite illustrating the brutal reality of individual post-conflict trauma, the final chapters and epilogue also contain hope and stories of success by service members who have overcome their physical, emotional and mental challenges, either by waging individual battles or through the support of their loved ones.[9]
The Fighters is a masterful rendition of first-hand experiences of service members in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Their stories help the reader understand the perspectives from the individual as well as from each line of effort in joint operations. The book further illustrates what each service member and their families went through before, during, and after their active service and the price paid. For the individual service member, the costs of war is paid not only with blood while engaged in the conflict but it is paid over the course of a lifetime in thousands of installments of varying expenses. The Fighters should be read, immediately reread, and then read again after a long introspection as readers will find it hauntingly illustrative of the installments in blood, innocence, tears, family heartache, and hardship, as well as time, peace of mind, and family harmony which will also be due in future conventional or in multi-domain conflicts.
William M. Stephens is a Judge Advocate and has deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. He recently left active duty to join the United States Army Reserves. The views expressed in this article are the author’s alone and do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Army Reserve, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
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Header Image: U.S. Army soldiers on security duty in Paktīkā province, Afghanistan, 2010 (SGT Derec Pierson/DOD Photo)
Notes:
[1] C.J. Chivers, The Fighters, New York, Simon and Shuster, 2018. Part I: Storm, 3, Part II: Bad Hand, 54, Part III:Counterinsurgency 125.
[2] The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations in 2028, TRADOC, Pamphlet 525-3-1, Executive Summary. X
[3] C.J. Chivers, The Fighters, 166. For an insightful discussion on this second type of leadership, see Marcus, Leonard; Dorn, Barry; Henderson, Joseph; McNulty, Eric, “Meta-leadership: A Framework for Building Leadership Effectiveness,” National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, Harvard School of Public Health, 2015, found at: https://npli.sph.harvard.edu/resources/.
[4] The four main ways to support the end goal of American superiority in combat are: prevent conflict, shape the security environment, prevail in large-scale ground combat operations, and consolidate gains.The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations in 2028, TRADOC, Pamphlet 525-3-1, 53, 6 December 2018
[5] Id, p. 18.
[6] C.J. Chivers, The Fighters, New York, Simon and Shuster, 2018. Part I: Storm, 3, Part II: Bad Hand, 54, Part III:Counterinsurgency, 151-152; Id, p. 61.
[7] Nancy Sherman, The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of Our Soldiers, W. W. Norton & Company, (March 1, 2010).
[8] Doc Kirby’s (and his mother’s story) of attempting to deal with post-traumatic stress one drink at a time until finally attempting to kill himself in his truck illustrates the physical and psychological injuries the service member returned with will affect the entire family. See The Fighters, pages, 319-320 and continuing through the chapter.
[9] Id, p. 346.