In a Time of War: The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point's Class of 2002 (Hardcover)

by Bill Murphy Jr. (Author)
Key Phrases: old grad, sewing circle, firstie year, West Point, Fort Riley, Tim Moshier (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The West Point cadets Murphy follows through their baptism by fire are an admirable sample of young American men and women: intelligent, ambitious and intensely patriotic. Most come from career military families and hold conservative opinions. Murphy describes their four years at West Point with respect even when discussing their love lives and marriages. All yearn for battle, and most get their wish. The book's best passages describe the confusion of moving to Iraq or Afghanistan and fighting insurgents, for which they lack both training and equipment. All feel something is not right but concentrate on the job at hand; some inevitably die or are grievously wounded. In his classic, The Long Gray Line, Rick Atkinson followed West Point's 1966 class for 20 years. With only five years' perspective, Murphy lacks Atkinson's depth and epic scope, but his work stands out from much current military reporting by avoiding editorializing about war. He confines himself to a skillful journalistic narrative of events that are gripping enough to hold any reader's attention. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Andrew Exum One of the demographic curiosities of recent years is that, despite the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the percentage of veterans in the U.S. population has dropped precipitously. In 1980, 28.5 million veterans lived in the United States. But as the population increased to more than 300 million people, the number of veterans declined to 23.7 million by 2005. The reason for the drop is obvious: Veterans of World War II are dying at the rate of 1,000 per day. And as those veterans die, something dies with them: a memory of a time when war and loss was, for Americans, a shared experience. The nearly 300,000 U.S. servicemen who were killed in combat in World War II came from a broad cross-section of society, and their loss was felt by the entire country. By contrast, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are being fought not by a conscripted force but by a very small professional military. Most young Americans feel no need to serve their country in uniform. In my graduating class at the University of Pennsylvania in 2000, for example, just two of us -- out of a class of over 2,000 -- were commissioned as officers in the Army. One constant through the years, however, has been the unique fraternity of officers produced by our nation's military academies. Each summer, some 1,200 cadets enter the U.S. Military Academy at West Point; after four years of arduous training, about 1,000 graduate and are commissioned as junior officers in the army. Amid this perpetual rhythm, the graduating class of 2002 stood out in two ways: Its graduation coincided with the 200th anniversary of West Point's founding, ensuring extra attention for its members, nicknamed the "golden children." And the class of 2002 was the first since Vietnam to emerge, as President Bush noted in his commencement address, "in a time of war." Bill Murphy Jr. takes that phrase as the title for his group portrait, which he assembled from hundreds of interviews with members of the class and those with whom they served in combat. The story Murphy has written is alternately inspiring and heartbreaking. It's inspiring because the U.S. military continues to attract some of the nation's brightest talent, accomplished young men and women who yearn to serve their country in difficult circumstances. (If the class of 2002 was valorous for leaving West Point at a time of war, one wonders, what about the class of 2006, which entered at a time of war?) But In a Time of War is also heartbreaking because, inevitably, some of the golden children are now dying in combat, and their deaths ripple through close-knit networks of friends and family. When the second of her close friends from West Point died in Iraq, one young officer broke down. "I lost my brother today," she cried. "I'm losing them one at a time." Another officer was in a hospital bed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center when he learned of his best friend's death in Iraq. His wife, watching him shake with tears, could not reach through all the wires and tubes to comfort him. "He just had to lie there and take it," Murphy writes, "alone." Grief, however, is a luxury some of the officers cannot afford. With jobs to do and soldiers to lead, they must wait until they are alone or on the phone with one another to shed tears. Still, the deaths take a toll. "I have no faith anymore," one officer said at the funeral of a friend. Visiting West Point afterward, he turned to his wife and said, "The last time I was here, I had more friends." Murphy's prose does not dazzle, nor should it. Drawing attention to one's own writing with a story this powerful would be the worst kind of vanity. There is also no need to worry that Murphy's book will contribute to the public romanticism of our military that has grown in inverse proportion to the percentage of Americans actually serving in uniform. War, as it is experienced by the officers Murphy profiles, is horrific. Soldiers kill and see friends killed and maimed for 12 months and then return to the United States to try to start families before they are called back to combat a year later. A former Army officer (though not a West Point graduate), Murphy can seem a little cynical about the Bush administration, which should not surprise us; he began his book while serving as Bob Woodward's research assistant on State of Denial. Still, Murphy gamely highlights both President Bush's charming playfulness (he agreed to chest-butt a cadet at graduation, telling him to "bring it") as well as his inability to communicate meaningfully with the horribly wounded soldiers who return from Iraq to Walter Reed. ("Well, it looks like you lost a leg," the president told one soldier. "But you've still got another one. Hopefully you'll keep that one and things will get better.") Presidents and their advisers don't personally fight wars, though, and this book isn't about them. At the ground level, wars are fought by painfully young men and women -- and by the junior officers who lead them. In a Time of War movingly profiles some of those officers, and as combat veterans grow more rare in American society, books like Murphy's become more important.
Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (September 16, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080508679X
• ISBN-13: 978-0805086799
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #125,317 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Five long years later.., September 21, 2008

By	R. Renken (Reno, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

West Point's Class of 2002 spent a majority of their time training in a time of peace. By the time graduation came around, we were in a war and the President announced his doctrine of preemption. We graduated in a time of war.

For me, the memories came rushing back. Bill Murphy Jr described and detailed he lives of a few cadets and their families to achieve something that hasn't been done before. Bill took an in-depth and intimate approach dealing with the choices the cadets made from their personal relationships, them choosing their branches, them choosing their first duty stations, all the other choices that came with being leaders of America's sons and daughters in a war, and them choosing to stay in the Army at the end of their five year commitment or not. Their choices will lead them apart and together throughout their careers. For training. For weddings. For funerals. (Be thou at peace.) For Reunions. In A Time Of War is an emotional roller coaster.

Those serving in the military have similar stories to Todd Bryant, Drew Sloan, Tricia LeRouc Birdsell, Tim Moshier, Will Tucker, Dave Swanson, Joe Dasilva, and the other Soldiers' stories told inside. These are not characters in a book, these are real Soldiers serving their country and doing what they think is right. You will laugh, cry, get angry, laugh again, cry again, and smile at times. This is the story about their lives, the lives they touched, and the lives they continue to touch.

Bill Murphy Jr's book answers the question the Pentagon and "the higher ups" have been so confused about: "Why are the young combat experienced leaders getting out?" Well general, this book has the answer to the question the military keeps spending money trying to get. Give it a read.

Recently one night, I started my 12 hour shift in our battalion's TOC and mail (this book) had been delivered. Thankfully it was a quiet night and I had a chance to read. After my shift, I grabbed my laundry and hurried back to finish the best book about the long war. I couldn't put it down. Maybe I'm biased having also graduated West Point in 2002. Maybe I'm not. Regardless, Bill Murphy Jr's book is an unbiased matter of fact explanation of the extraordinary years in the lives of those who have been, done, and served. It's not just for West Pointers, this is for everyone.

CPT Ryan R. Renken
Class of 2002, F2
Camp Slayer, Iraq

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read - a heart-rending and gut-wrenching account , October 1, 2008

By	Alan L. Chase "Al Chase" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have just completed Bill Murphy's moving book, "In a Time of War - The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point's Class of 2002." The book is both gut-wrenching and heart-rending, yet it also leaves the reader inspired and proud of the young men and women who left West Point in the summer of 2002 to answer the call to fight the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The title of the book is drawn from the speech that President Bush gave to the West Point Class of 2002 as they graduated and were commissioned as 2nd Lieutenants in the U.S. Army. I was in the audience that summer day and heard him utter those words. I also have personal relationships with several dozens members of the West Point Class of 2002, so for me the book was particularly poignant. I have followed several of these soldiers through their multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. This book added to the depth of my understanding of the challenges they have faced as they lived and fought, sweated and bled, in those far off places.

Bill Murphy describes himself, in essence, as someone who has served in the military (as an Army Reserve officer), but without great distinction. He has, without question, distinguished himself in his ability to grasp the essence of the West Point experience for a representative sampling of graduates of the Class of 2002, and to bring the reader inside their lives as they took their West Point training and became officers serving our nation in a time of war.

"This, for Todd [Bryant], was the essence of West Point. `Duty, honor, country' was the academy's motto, and everyone talked constantly about honor and commitment, loyalty and patriotism. All that was true and good, but stripped of its pomp and circumstance, the place was really about love. Love of your country, love of your classmates and friends, and love of the future officers you'd someday serve with. Most of all, West Point was about learning to love the soldiers you would someday lead, the privates and sergeants, knuckleheads and heroes alike, who might, just once, in a life-justifying moment, look to you for leadership in some great battle on a distant shore." (Pages 11-12)

I have never read a more concise or accurate summation of the West Point ethos as I have come to understand it through the eyes of my many friends who proudly stand as part of the Long Gray Line.

These newly-minted lieutenants faced the classic dilemma of what kind of leader to be, deciding where their ultimate loyal should lie:

"A new lieutenant had to choose between two leadership styles. He was obliged to follow his commander's orders, of course. But he also had to decide whether, at his core, he was going to be his platoon's envoy to the higher brass, or the higher brass's man embedded with the soldiers. Todd chose the former style, and most of his soldiers considered him one of them. He was their guy, advocating on their behalf to the people making the decisions that controlled their lives." (Page 117)

Along the same lines, Murphy does a nice job of painting a clear picture of the complex relationships that exist in an Army aviation unit among the three types of personnel found there:

"The majority of their soldiers were warrant officers, pilots with college degrees and ten or more years in the Army. Most important, they had many thousands of hours of flight time under their belts. Although he's been out of West Point for almost two years, this was Tim's [Mosier] first real opportunity to lead other soldiers, and he got off to a rough start. One day early on, they went to the rifle range for an annual qualification on M-16 rifles. Tim was nervous. He started checking his soldier's canteens to make sure they were full, as if he were still a West Point firstie looking out for a platoon of clueless plebes. He reached out to grab the canteen belonging to one of the most experienced aviators, a chief warrant officer with eighteen years in the Army. The chief turned away with his mouth open, shocked that some brand-new lieutenant had the gall to touch him.

Another of his pilots realized that Tim was making the classic new lieutenant's mistake, letting his anxiousness get the best of him.

`Your enlisted soldiers need leadership,' the pilot told Tim. `Your warrant officers need information.' Tim didn't need to be told twice." (Pages 177-178)

Tricia LeRoux Birdsall followed her mother into the military. The journal she kept while serving in Iraq gives a rare look inside the mind, the perspective and the world view of one serving in the "sand box":

"In one of the last entries in her war journal, Tricia wrote: `It is such a great feeling to see an end in sight. There are very few things that I will miss about this place, but there are several things I can't wait for once we leave.

I can't wait to . ..

Fall asleep at night and not wonder if I'll make it through the night;

Go through an entire day and not worry about whether or not my husband is safe;

Hear a door slam and not jump because it sounds like an explosion;

Not have a radio next to me at night;

Fall asleep in my husband's arms and know it is not a dream and that we are really at home;

Not have nightmares about what I've seen here;

Grieve for those we've lost;

Celebrate our return;

Not be afraid anymore;

Carry a purse instead of my machine gun;

Wear anything other than desert colored uniforms;

Be truly happy away from here with my husband for the rest of my life."

(Pages 244-245)

This book is tough to read, because not all the endings are happy endings; not all the main characters of this true life drama are able to experience living "happily ever after." Yet this is a book that needs to be read by as wide an audience as possible. For those who have served and for their families, the book offers understanding and catharsis. For those of us who have not served in the military, it is instructive and challenging.

"Jimmy Mitchell returned to Fort Stewart a few days later, escorted by another soldier from the unit. `Mrs. Tucker, you should have seen Will.' the other soldier told Sallie when she visited. `He was covered in blood from head to toe. It was awful.'

He paused, as if asking permission to tell her more. This was what a psychiatric nurse did for a living, counsel people; but never did Sallie's work get this personal. That little detail - her husband, covered in someone else's blood - hadn't been part of her mental picture before. And as hard as it was to hear the details, she wanted to know. She needed the connection, needed as much understanding as she could get about what her Will and his soldiers were going through.

She let the soldier go on, taking in the whole account, even though every instinct of self-preservation told her to cover her ears and run from the room.

No, she told herself. Listen to the story." (Pages 276-277)

Bill Murphy has done a masterful job of listening to many stories and weaving them together into a compelling narrative that is a tapestry of the lives of the West Point Class of 2002 living and dying in a time of war. The book is apolitical. The closest that Murphy comes to making a political statement about the war is when he quotes from a speech by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Secretary of State Colin Powell:

"What we're worried the most about is our best and brightest young officers - I'm speaking of our West Point graduates - who are resigning at extremely high rates when their duty is done. Now let me emphasize that their duty is indeed done. In fact, it is done and then some, so I don't blame them. . . We have to recognize that we have a group of young officers in particular who are carrying the lion's share of the hardship with this war and an unsustainable deployment schedule. For good reason, they're saying, `Okay, I signed up to serve my country and have made enormous personal sacrifices, but other people need to step up to the plate as well.'" (Page 305)

I invite you to step up to the plate by reading this book and by giving away multiple copies - and by making yourself available to hear the stories of those who have fought.

West Point is about love. This book is about love - and loss.

Listen to the story.

Al

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply excellent, September 19, 2008

By	Caleb S. Cage (Reno, Nevada) - See all my reviews

The West Point class of 2002 graduated to the words of President George W. Bush sending them to war. It was not the first time that a major foreign policy speech coincided with an academy graduation, but it was certainly the first one that mattered on such a personal level to the roughly 1,000 members of West Point's Bicentennial class.

The first book detailing the experiences of this class, David Lipsky's _Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point_, captured the carefree nature of a class consumed with its own day-to-day survival. It accurately depicted the innocence of the 20-somethings focusing on what they believed to be the biggest challenge in their lives: graduation. Bill Murphy Jr.'s book, _In a Time of War: The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point' Class of 2002_, captures the essence of the class after the reality of its future in combat zones has set in.

Murphy applies his remarkable journalistic talent to the stories of several classmates whose stories manage to be both extraordinary and representative of the whole at the same time. Murphy clearly gained the trust of his subjects in the interviewing process, and he did them justice by telling a story of which they can be proud.

His narrative plumbs the depths of the disparate personal histories that led to the choice of a career in the military, the emotions evoked from multiple deployments, and in its most powerful moments, the stories of those left behind by the fallen. His style, vivid and powerful, often leaves the reader on a hillside in Afghanistan, or on an Army base in Kansas.

This book will leave the reader hoping for a second volume. I cannot endorse it heartily enough.