We March at Midnight: A War Memoir

Novelist and former U.S. Army Ranger McPadden (And the Whole Mountain Burned) delivers a raw and intimate memoir of his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and his struggles with PTSD. The son of a career naval officer, McPadden “burn[ed] to do something noble” and, after “graduat[ing] from a handful of the army’s elite schools and Texas A&M university,” he was sent in 2005 to Kunar province in Afghanistan, where he led his 43-man platoon on “hunting missions” against tribal fighters allied with the Taliban. He describes the deaths and woundings of comrades in stark detail, and the “grave undertow” of guilt he felt when his squad failed to prevent an ambush on a supply convoy. Eventually, he began to “despise this war and the boyish reveries of manhood that brought me here.” After returning to the U.S., McPadden joined the Rangers and was sent to Iraq to target terrorist cells in nighttime raids. Back home in the U.S. on leave, he suffered from “spells of melancholy” and fits of rage that put a strain on his marriage. He did another tour in Afghanistan in 2009, before finally leaving the Rangers and spending the next 10 years “demilitarizing.” McPadden describes firefights and psychological traumas with equal precision, and makes a devastating case that the cost of America’s “forever wars” on its soldiers is too high. This visceral story leaves a mark. (Aug.)