Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground

AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is the first volume of a series of books about traveling with the American military. Less than a quarter of the material in this volume has been excerpted in The Atlantic Monthly magazine, and never more than half of any individual chapter.

My exposure to the American military began in the early 1990s at the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. I went there at the suggestion of Army Col. (now Lt. Gen.) Jim Dubik, Col. (now retired Lt. Gen.) Randy House, and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Gordon Sullivan. At Fort Leavenworth I formed a friendship with Professor Robert Berlin. A year did not pass when I did not return there. The contacts I made at Fort Leavenworth would lead me eventually to this project.

I have been lucky with my long-term relationships, without which this undertaking would not have been possible. Literary agents Carl D. Brandt and Marianne Merola have been with me from the germination of this project, as they have for all my others for the past seventeen years. Random House has been the hardcover publisher of the last seven of my eleven books. I will always be grateful to Jason Epstein for beginning that association, just as I am grateful to William Whitworth for bringing me to The Atlantic Monthly in 1985.

Joy de Menil, my longtime editor at Random House, and Ann Godoff were generous boosters of this idea at its inception. Afterwards I was lucky in the extreme to fall into the hands of Kate Medina and Gina Centrello. Kate’s cool encouragement never ceased. She helped me shape the manuscript without intruding upon it, thus allowing me to relax mentally to a degree I never have with an editor while writing a book. Charlotte Gross did a painstaking job of copyediting. I also appreciate advice and help from Frankie Jones, Jonathan Karp, Danielle Posen, and Robin Rolewicz at Random House.

Cullen Murphy of The Atlantic Monthly has edited my magazine articles for twenty years. He has nurtured and advised me on every book that I have ever written. It was Cullen and the late Michael Kelly, killed while covering the war in Iraq in 2003, who commissioned the series of articles that began this initial volume of military books. At The Atlantic, Yvonne Rolzhausen’s research was indispensable. Help also came from Toby Lester, Emerson Hilton, and Sue Parilla.

Long periods of travel devour money in direct and indirect ways. The Smith Richardson and John M. Olin foundations provided generous amounts of it, as they have for previous projects going back to 1986. I thank their staffs, especially Nadia Shadlow and James Piereson, who never ceased in attempts to get me extra funding. Grant funds were administered by the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in Philadelphia, which made few demands on me for this service. My relationship with FPRI and its directors, Harvey Sicherman and Alan Luxenberg, has also been a fruitful and long-standing one. At FPRI, I thank Michael Noonan for his military expertise and other help.

Though my agent, Carl Brandt, first gave me the idea for a book about “traveling with the military,” it was Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (ret.) who got me started. Ralph burst into my room at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, one morning and said: “This is what you should do, and here is how you should do it.”

Unwilling to be interrupted, Ralph proceeded to outline an editorial structure that would organize my work for years to come. While Ralph is known to op-ed–page readers and talk show audiences for his strong and spicy opinions, it is his literary faculties that I have always admired most.

James P. Thomas, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for resources and plans, is the kind of young civil servant of whom the taxpayer can be proud: self-effacing, exceptionally analytical, tempermentally nonpartisan, supremely pragmatic, and particularly helpful in the early phases of this volume. Any administration, Republican or Democratic, would be the poorer without him. As Jim himself once told me—only somewhat in jest—having worked in the Pentagon for both the Clinton and younger Bush administrations: “I come with the building, like the furniture.”

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey C. Lambert, commander of Army Special Forces (Airborne), trusted me without guarantees on my part, and broke down bureaucratic barriers to get me to many places around the world. He was truly a godsend. The same goes for Marine Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division. If Homer were alive today, he’d be writing odes about Jim Mattis.

Army Majors Rob Gowan and Cynthia Teramae, as well as Marine Capt. Dan McSweeney, were not there to share in my experiences, but they all did so much to get me overseas, and were delightful to work with in the process. I have Cynthia and her husband, Army Chief Warrant Officer Jerry Teramae, to thank for a memorable few days in Honolulu. As I write, Marine Maj. Tim Keefe and Army Maj. Gen. Karl Eikenberry are working their hearts out, trying to put together journeys for me to Sahelian Africa and Pacific military bases for the early chapters of volume two in this series. I thank Army Maj. Don Bridgers for being a hidden hand in facilitating my visits to the Philippines, in order to explore an operation that he played a significant role in designing.

Because so many officers and grunts of the 1st Battalion of the 5th Marine Regiment were so helpful to me, I simply cannot name some without slighting others, or naming every marine of 1/5. Thus I thank them all as a group, particularly the Renegades. It was one of the great honors of my life to share their trials and tribulations in Iraq.

Indeed, rarely have I so thoroughly enjoyed the company of a group of people as much as I have Americans in uniform. They showered me with large and small kindnesses: an extra blanket or sleeping bag, the last seat on a C-130, a flashlight, a glass of vodka hidden under the floor when the regulations forbade it. Many a name below is associated with an overseas memory for which I am the richer, or with logistical and bureaucratic help back in the U.S. Their ranks are those at the time I met them. I have left out those mentioned more than briefly in the book:

Army Lt. Col. Mark Beattie, Army Lt. Col. Curtis Boyd, Army Maj. Gen. Jerry Boykin, Marine First Sgt. Donald Brazeal, Marine Col. Brooks Brewington, Army Gen. Doug Brown, Marine Staff Sgt. Matthew Butler, Army Maj. Roger Carstens, Army Lt. Col. Rick Choppa, Army Lt. Col. Ken Comer, Army Maj. Dan Cullison, Army Col. Rodney Davis, Marine Col. Stephen Davis, Air Force Maj. Gen. David Deptula, Army Col. Peter J. Dillon, Air Force Master Sgt. Carlos Duenas Jr., Army Maj. Fred Dummar, Army Maj. Mitchell Edgar, Army Sgt. Eric Jose Estrada, Army Col. Stan Florer, Army Sgt. First Class Jim Gentry, Army Sgt. Maj. Steven Gregurek, Army Col. Timothy Heinemann, Army Col. Kevin Higgins, Marine Lt. Gen. Jan Huly, Army Lt. Col. Ferdinand Irizarry, Army Cpl. Dan Johnston, Army Master Sgt. Doug Kealoha, Marine Lt. Eric Knapp, Army Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Army Lt. Col. Thor McNevin, Army Lt. Col. Dave Maxwell, Air Force Maj. Todd Miller, Army Lt. Col. Sean Mulholland, Army Lt. Col. John Murphy, Army Lt. Col. Kevin Murphy, Army Maj. Trip Narrow, Marine Brig. Gen. Robert Neller, Marine Capt. David Nevers, Naval Vice Adm. Eric Olson, Army Chief Warrant Officer Keith Pang, Army Maj. Rick Reese, Air Force 2nd Lt. Eric Saks, Air Force Lt. Anna Siegel, Marine Lt. Col. M. A. Singleton, Army Chief Warrant Officer Mike Stewart, Army Col. Sam Taylor III, Army Maj. Paul Warren, and Army Sgt. Maj. Jeff Wright.

Additional help came from Marshall Adair, Tiffany Bartish, Anthony Dolan, Randy Gangle, Kathy Gannon, Georje Jacob, Chet Justice, Andrew Krepinevich, Chuck Melson, Robert A. Putz Jr., Ambassador Francis Ricciardone, Mike Vickers, Peter Willems, and Robert Work.

My assistant, Elizabeth Lockyer, has organized my working life to such an extent that—up to a point—she has become a second me, allowing me to travel for months at a time, unimpeded by messages and mail piling up, making me as free as I was decades ago when the phone rarely rang and faxes and e-mail did not exist.

My wife, Maria Cabral, and my son, Michael, have put up with my long absences for twenty years, providing a sense of love and stability for which I am truly grateful.