cover image THIS MAN'S ARMY: A Soldier's Story from the Front Lines of the War on Terrorism

THIS MAN'S ARMY: A Soldier's Story from the Front Lines of the War on Terrorism

Andrew Exum, . . Gotham, $25 (239pp) ISBN 978-1-59240-063-8

The American war in Afghanistan has been overshadowed by the war in Iraq. But since October 2001, American soldiers have been fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan under often brutal guerrilla war conditions. The author of this war memoir, an active-day army officer, has had his identity embargoed until the book's publication. The book is a fast-paced, first-person look at the war through the educated eyes of a 25-year-old Ivy League–schooled Army Ranger who fought with the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan in 2002 (and also in Iraq). The narrative, which confines its battle sequences to Afghanistan and contains a fair amount of reconstructed dialogue, follows the standard war memoir formula. It opens in the battlefield, then flashes back to a chronological rendering of the author's life, including the required depiction of the rigors of military training, complete with bellowing, sadistic drill instructors. Then comes the author's overseas deployment, beginning with a hurry-up-and-wait stint doing "long and boring" convoy escort work in Kuwait. X doesn't arrive in Afghanistan until nearly the exact half-way point of this not-long book. The narrative ends with his homecoming, his readjustment difficulties and his thoughts on the institution of war and the burdens of those who fight in wars. Along the way X provides an often perceptive, informed look at what it's like to be in today's military, as well as the experience of combat in southwest Asia. X also puts his education (a double major, English and Classics, he informs us) to good use, sprinkling references to Shakespeare, Graham Greene, Walker Percy, Don DeLillo, Joseph Heller and Reinhold Niebuhr, among others, throughout the narrative. (May 24)