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

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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

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.

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

One can expect that any book published today - either fiction or non-fiction - with the Iraq War as a backdrop will include the author's opinion regarding whether the U.S. should have invaded the country... or perhaps whether the war is even legitimate. Frankly, there are far too many of those on bookstore shelves today.

In A Time of War is refreshingly devoid of any opinion or overt criticism of the Bush Administration and its decision to go to war with Iraq. In fact, thankfully the author, Bill Murphy, Jr., spends very little time on the politics of the war or any of the more controversial aspects of how it has been fought. Instead, Murphy tells the moving story of young lives that are forever changed by war. Young men and women who manage to find their way to the tip of the spear and who in some cases return to our shores with their bodies and minds badly broken.

These are not average lives by any means - as if any life that is committed to the machinery of modern war could ever be called "average" - but they are the lives of recent West Point graduates from the Class of 2002 brimming with all the potential of youth and all the confidence of graduates of one of the country's premier leader development institutions.

These budding leaders represent our country's best and brightest, and as many members of the Long Gray Line have done for over two centuries before them, they embark on their military careers without an ounce of reluctance or regret... only a healthy idealism combined with an unshakable belief in a destiny that lies somewhere on the field of battle alongside that of Grant, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Patton, Schwarzkopf and other famous graduates before them.

Murphy chronicles the lives of these young West Pointers as they graduate from the academy, attend training on their way to becoming newly minted second lieutenant platoon leaders, and then assume their junior role in the ranks of the U.S. Army's professional officer corps.

Where the author really succeeds is in his description of their experiences leading soldiers on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. This is where the pace of the book really picks up. West Point's matchless leadership training and preparation is put to the test as these uncommon Americans confront half-crazed IED-embedding and RPG-wielding jihadists and insurgents.

How they fearlessly confront these threats while leading soldiers makes for some terrific reading. But there is quite a bit more to Murphy's book than emerging combat leaders plying their trade in the Global War on Terror. He illuminates challenges fighting in Iraq, for instance, that many Americans have read or heard about in the news but perhaps do not fully understand.

For instance, much has been made of how the U.S. Army, at the outset of the Iraq War, remained culturally and structurally better prepared to fight a Soviet era "linear battle" replete with state-of-the-art M1 tanks and lumbering B-52 bombers than a counterinsurgency. In In A Time of War, we are witness to the impact of an Army's need to shift gears to respond to a new, asymmetric threat and to begin counterinsurgency efforts on the young lives who are in the thick of the fight. Incredibly, one of the principal characters, Todd Bryant, leads his armor platoon of "thin-skinned" Humvees into battle with insurgents on the back roads of Iraq while his heavily armored M1 tanks remain secure at his unit's home station in Fort Riley, Kansas!

The most powerful element of Murphy's book is his depiction of the tragic toll war takes on young soldiers and their devoted families. Murphy's characters early on bring other lives into the tumult and inconstancy of their fledgling Army careers. The young officers' wives are without question some of the toughest, most inspiring characters in the book. Their husbands are poorly paid; their lives are interrupted by frequent moves from one isolated Army post to another; and, they live with constant worry while their husbands serve in some of the most inhospitable places on the planet. Yet, these remarkable women somehow endure. They are extraordinarily strong and resilient!

Perhaps most heart-wrenching are the stories of the wives who must pick up the pieces when their husbands do not return from the battlefield. Lives so full of promise reduced to a knock on the door and a flag-draped casket at a military funeral. As in wars past, these women experience great pain and anguish when notified of their husbands' deaths. They bear up to their grief, though, and remain stoic as their life partners are tragically taken from them.

Learning how one of these wives copes after the loss of her husband is deeply affecting... even troubling.

In In A Time of War we experience the senselessness of war and the toll it takes on those who are called to fight it. Exposed to horrors many of us cannot even comprehend at the tender age of 23 or 24, these young men and women return from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan with more questions than answers. We are reminded that it is these young Americans and their families who must live with the cost of our government's foreign policy decisions.

Youth sacrificed... lives interrupted... love lost...

This is the legacy of war.

While West Point perpetuates its proud tradition of turning out highly skilled leaders "for a lifetime of service to the nation", In A Time of War reminds us that war looms like a dark cloud over those young American lives bursting with potential and dreams of martial glory. Some will not live to see their 30th birthday. Indeed, the memories of those who do not return remain etched in the collective conscience of our society. Fortunately, for all who knew them, they are remembered in all their youth and vitality. As the author so poignantly describes, though, it is ultimately their loved ones left behind who struggle mightily with those memories... and who are forever left to contemplate what might have been.

We owe these families an enormous debt of gratitude... a debt that can never be repaid.

THIS BOOK SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING FOR ALL AMERICANS!

Several authors have written about the West Point experience, but this one goes further. The author shows West Pointers after graduation in the distinctly non-glamorous jobs they do as Second Lieutenants.

Murphy blends the human interest stories of selected West Point graduates with a sobering account of life in a war zone. I was surprised to to learn how much drudgery and boredom coexist with the very real dangers of war. Apparently officers do a lot of counting and inventorying.

For the most part, these officers seemed to experience good leadership. One becomes aide to a particularly humane general. Another gets a special x-rated assignment when his commander realizes he's growing bored.

It's very hard to read parts of this book because Murphy spares nothing when he describes the deaths of these brilliant, idealistic young officers who are also very decent human beings. Most of us view war as senseless and these particular casualties seem to have no purpose.

It's easy to get engrossed in this book and, like many readers, I find myself wishing for a sequel. Where are these brave officers now?

This is a simply amazing book. I have to say it's one of the best books I read in recent memory. The lives of the men and women of the West Point class of 2002 that are told in its pages makes you have a profound sense of gratitude towards not only our nation's officers but the military in general. I'm not the crying type by any stretch of the imagination but this book brought me to tears on multiple occasions. It makes you appreciate the sacrifices not only of those who serve but their families also. It reminds us that behind every one of the over 4,000 American deaths in Iraq there is the story of a broken family and broken dreams. This is a must read.

I enjoyed this book. I thought that the author could have integrated the various soldiers' stories more cleanly than he did. The story about Todd Bryant is just tragic. Such a promising young man cut down in the prime of his life. And the effect on his wife was just devastating. It's interesting that even among West Point officers there is mixed support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If nothing else, this book puts names and faces to headlines.

Of course, as for the West Point mystique, I did not really get that. The book focuses more on the war than on West Point. As someone from a non-military family, I do not understand why West Point is the place it is. But then again I am an outsider not part of the military culture.

Good book.

As a veteran of the Iraq War, this book was deeply personal for me. If you are a veteran who hasn't reflected on your service, then you should read this book. I didn't know any of the young officers in the book, but I felt their struggles and their friendships because the book does an amazing job of demonstrating what it is like to serve. I feel as if most books either talk of the evils of the war and paint soldiers as victims of an out of control administration or they are Candyland sugar coated stories about the glory of serving. This book does neither. It is the true story of young officers experiencing the war. You get a sense of their love of country and their love for each other, but you will also understand their frustrations and their sadness. Soldiers are not one dimensional and this book shows their inner turmoil. I thank Bill Murphy for writing the book, but my fear is that it will only be read by those who already understand what it is to serve.

This book was very personal for me as I knew the first soldier from the West Point Class of 2002 to be killed in Iraq. My family knew Todd Bryant since he was a young boy of about 10-years-old. Such a profound tragedy to lose him at the age of 23 and this book was fabulous in not only describing Todd, but his fellow West Point classmates who continue to fight this tragic war.

This book provides great insight to life as a cadet at West Point and as an officer in the years following graduation. For prospective cadets it shows the tangible sacrifices that must be made to attend West Point. While many focus on the prestige and "glamor" that is associated with the academy, Murphy's book depicts the reality. I would strongly recommend this book to any person who is debating whether or not to go to West Point. There are many great aspects about the academy itself, but the five year commitment after graduation should be what motivates someone to go to West Point.