The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family (Hardcover)

by Martha Raddatz (Author)
Key Phrases: stranded platoon, casualty collection point, aid station, Sadr City, Camp War Eagle, Fort Hood (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Violent resistance in post-invasion Iraq kicked into high gear on April 4, 2004, when American troops in Sadr City faced a massive assault that claimed eight soldiers' lives and wounded more than 70 others. Raddatz, an Emmy-winning correspondent for ABC News, clearly aims to equal the storytelling in Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down in her account of the battle, and hits the mark with distinction. Extensive interviews with the commanding officers of the army's 1st Cavalry division and the soldiers pinned down in the streets provide a clear narrative of how U.S. troops, prepared for "a babysitting mission," found themselves in a bloodbath, as efforts to rescue the first soldiers fired upon met with even greater resistance from Mahdi militiamen who did not hesitate to use small children as frontline attackers. Heroic moments abound, like Casey Sheehan's volunteering to take another man's place on the rescue team, which resulted in his death. Raddatz touches upon the reaction of his mother, noted antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, but this is just one of many perspectives from families on the home front. The gripping account eschews politics and focuses squarely on the soldiers and their sacrifices. (Mar. 1)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
The chief White House correspondent for ABC News, Raddatz was in Baghdad when she learned about a platoon of 1st Cavalry Division soldiers who had embarked in April 2004 on what they thought would be a routine community-outreach mission (they were assisting with sewage disposal, to put it delicately) in the massive Shiite slum of Sadr City. Without warning, the once pro-U.S., Saddam Hussein-hating enclave erupted into an anti-American shooting gallery. The 1st Cav platoon was pinned down by members of the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army -- hundreds of them. The Long Road Home details the increasingly desperate and unquestionably heroic attempts to save the troops and reclaim order in an impoverished district that's home to some 2.5 million Iraqis. There isn't a hint of political bias in the book, but by focusing on this pivotal firefight, Raddatz illuminates a key moment when Iraq's sectarian strife mutated into the ferocious, unrelenting insurgency it is now.

Fraught with life-and-death drama as combat intrinsically is, writing a compelling war story is actually quite difficult. The challenge is to capture the kaleidoscopic chaos of battle, keep the reader oriented and humanize the soldiers caught in the maelstrom. Raddatz does all of this impeccably well. The Long Road Home moves at a breathless pace, vividly conveying the suffocating terror of being surrounded in a maze of city streets by an enemy that is seemingly everywhere and nowhere at once.

Raddatz doesn't flinch at depicting the carnage of war; the book contains descriptions of violence so graphic they are literally gasp-inducing, but the bloodshed is not gratuitous. At one harrowing point, Raddatz relates how a young soldier was shot in the head with such force that the round slammed through his Kevlar helmet and ricocheted several times through his skull. The soldier, a devout Christian and Humvee mechanic named Casey who volunteered to help the trapped platoon, also happened to be Cindy Sheehan's son.

What distinguishes The Long Road Home from other war books is that Raddatz seamlessly shifts from the troops in the crossfire to the anxious souls who stand watch over the loneliest post in any conflict: the spouses, parents and children on the home front. (Cindy Sheehan makes a relatively brief appearance as Casey's grieving mother, but the future antiwar activist is hardly a central character.) Far from interrupting the flow of the story, the profiles of the loved ones back in the States give us a richer understanding of the soldiers in Iraq and infuse the narrative with greater tension.

Stephen "Dusty" Hiller, a 25-year-old specialist, had recently learned that his wife was pregnant with their first son. The night after he charged into Sadr City with one of the lead rescue teams, the doorbell rang at his home back in Fort Hood, Tex. His wife, Lesley, went to answer it, and the exchange that followed is as gut-wrenching as any battle account:

"She opened the door and saw an army chaplain. Another officer in uniform was with him. There wasn't a chance for either visitor to say a word.

" 'No!' Lesley yelled. She was frantic, panic-stricken. 'You all got the wrong house!'

"She slammed the door.

"The officers stayed outside and began calling her name softly.

"After a moment she opened the door a crack.

" 'Are you Mrs. Hiller?' one of them asked.

"She shook her head. 'You have the wrong house,' she insisted.

" 'Is your name Lesley?'

" 'No,' she said again. 'You got the wrong house!' Then she started to scream."

This is storytelling pared down to its essentials. To her great credit, Raddatz knows when a scene is potent enough to get out of the way and let it unfold without heavy-handed embellishment.

Which is not to suggest that Raddatz is simply a stenographer here, mechanically recording an inherently riveting story. Whether it's the image of an Iraqi family casually waving at a passing convoy of American troops dodging a torrent of bullets or a lone soldier drawn to the sight of a sparrow "arcing low and untouched beneath the gunfi