In the Company of Soldiers: A Chronicle of Combat (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "The road to Baghdad began in the Shoney's restaurant parking lot at the Hopkinsville, Kentucky, mall at 8 A.M. on Wednesday, February 26, 2003..." (more)
Key Phrases: assault command post, combat patch, assistant division commander, New Jersey, Fort Campbell, Saddam Hussein (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The advent of embedded reporters in the opening days of the 2003 US war on Iraq meant a more direct and personal point of view than battlefield coverage has historically offered. Rick Atkinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for An Army at Dawn, an account of combat in North Africa during World War II, traveled with the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army from its deployment out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky through its entry into Baghdad. The result, In the Company of Soldiers, is a thoroughly engrossing look at the strategies, personalities, and struggles of waging modern warfare. Much of Atkinson's focus falls on the division's leader, the hugely competitive and charismatic Major General David Petraeus, who seems to guide his troops through Iraq by sheer force of will. Atkinson devotes most of his time to the senior commanders, but the loss of the G.I. perspective, while disappointing, is outweighed by Atkinson's access to the minds of the brass who must navigate an Iraq whose citizens were not nearly as happy as military planners had hoped and who offered resistance in ways other than what the Americans had prepared for. While plenty has been written about the American military effort in Iraq, Atkinson's perspective, combined with a direct, economical writing style, allows him to present sides to the war not often seen or considered: long periods of waiting punctuated with mad scrambles to apply gas masks, fretting over how to pack all necessary supplies into tiny kits, dealing with dust storms that can ground state of the art attack helicopters, and reading the irreverent yet shrewdly observant graffiti left by American soldiers. In the Company of Soldiers lionizes the American military officers but it neither condemns nor offers unqualified praise to the US effort in Iraq. Indeed, the disturbing omens of chaos hinted at soon after the invasion began in the spring of 2003 would come into sharper relief when the book was published a year later. --John Moe

From Publishers Weekly

A Pulitzer-winning Washington Post correspondent and military historian gives the best account yet to come out of the Iraq War, chronicling the unit in which the author was embedded, the 101st Airborne, or Screaming Eagles, and particularly its headquarters. This inevitably puts much emphasis on the division commander, the intense, competitive and thoroughly professional Maj. Gen. David Petraeus. But no one is left out, from General Wallace, the gifted corps commander, to a Muslim convert and the victims of his ghastly but little publicized fragging incident at the opening of the war. The narrative covers this large cast from the division's being called up for the war at Fort Campbell, Ky., through to the author's departure from the unit after the fall of Baghdad. Through the eyes of the men he associated with, we see excess loads of personal gear being lugged into Iraq and insufficient supplies of essentials like ammunition and water (the reason for the infamous "pause"). We see sandstorms and the limitations of the Apache attack helicopter, and understand the legal framework for avoiding civilian casualties and "collateral damage," and much else that went right or wrong—in a manner that is antitriumphalist, but not antimilitary. The son of an army officer and thoroughly up to date on the modern American army, the author pays an eloquent and incisive tribute to how the men and women of the 101st won their part of the war in Iraq, in a manner that bears comparison to his Pulitzer-winning WWII volume, An Army at Dawn. Superb writing and balance make this the account to beat.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; 1 edition (March 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805075615
• ISBN-13: 978-0805075618
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (85 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #67,320 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The story of a division at war, March 14, 2004

By	David Roy (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

No matter what your feelings are about the Iraq war, there's no doubt that the men who were on the ground (and still are, for the most part) conducted themselves with great elan. Rick Atkinson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of AN ARMY AT DAWN, took a break from writing the second book of the series to spend time with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq, embedded for the Washington Post. His new book, IN THE COMPANY OF SOLDIERS, chronicles his time with the division. While I found it an interesting book, I feel that it doesn't give what is promised. Along with that, Atkinson periodically throws out some personal opinions in the middle of his reporting that I thought didn't go with the aim of the book (the story of a division in combat).

Atkinson has shown that he is a great writer who can really put the reader at the center of the action. He doesn't pull any punches in this book either, vividly describing the dust and the blowing sand that literally covers everything. You can almost feel your own voice get raspy along with the soldiers as if you also suffer from the "Kuwait crud." Atkinson spent most of his time with General Patraeus, commander of the division, which allows him to show us all of the briefings and strategy sessions each day. He gives us a great picture of Patraeus, who is facing his first combat command, showing us his uncertainty and determination. When the first problems hit (mainly the weather, but also unforeseen Iraqi resistance, he begins to wonder at the estimate that this will be a quick war. We also see his exhilaration when Iraqi resistance collapses after a couple of weeks of hard fighting.

As good a job as Atkinson does in his portrait of Patraeus, it brings up the main problem with IN THE COMPANY OF SOLDIERS. It spends too much time with the higher-ups and not enough time with the men in the field. I understand that Atkinson had no real choice who he was embedded with, and that if he had been placed with the front-line troops, this book would have been about them. However, the title (IN THE COMPANY OF SOLDIERS) and the description of the book makes it out to be much more "on the ground" then it ends up being. Most of the time the war is told through a series of reports. It's interesting to see the agonizing in the control tent, but we don't get much of a feel for the men themselves. During the lead-up to the battle, we do get a bit more of this, but even then the book is lacking input from the men "down in the trenches." We hear of the logistical problems faced by trying to get the division ready for battle at much too short notice, but we feel removed even from those as we hear how they affected Atkinson and the commanders more than how they affected the men. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it isn't what I was sold when I saw it at the bookstore.

The value of the book is hearing some of the internal military opinions of what is going on, especially some of their thought processes as they are told some monumentally stupid things (like the fact that they'll be out of Iraq within 6 months). While much of the action in the book simply seems like a retread of newspaper articles during the war itself, it's this behind the scenes stuff that was neat. We hear about the logistics of helicopter rotor-blades and (potentially deadly) discussion of whether to use paint or tape to cover the ends in order to protect from the gritty sand. This is the kind of detail I loved about the book, and Atkinson does a good job of covering it all. We hear the soldiers' views on the whole thing, which is the usual cynical outlook that allows men to handle this sort of situation. No matter what they're feelings are about their circumstances, they are all determined to do their jobs to the best of their abilities.

This brings up my other small problem with the book. It is very easy to see that Atkinson was against this war. Every once in a while, he inserts his opinion into the narrative, either with a side remark or a few paragraphs of lecture. His Afterword is more of the same, written in January 2004 with a lot of hindsight. Some of his feeling in this section is understandable, because while only two 101st men died in the war itself, a great number of men who he had come to know (at least to have spoken to once or twice) have died since he left Iraq. He thinks it has all been for nothing. While the Afterword is acceptable to me, I felt that his editorial comments in the middle of the book were uncalled for. He is writing the story of this division in the battle for Iraq. He is not writing a history of the war itself. He is not writing a treatise about whether or not this war was a good thing. He's writing about men in battle. It's fine if he's reporting the feelings of the soldiers, but I felt that his comments again went against the spirit of the book that I was led to believe this was. I have nothing against what he said (whether or not I agree with them), but I don't think he chose the proper venue. Many books have been (and will be) written on the subject of whether or not this war was a good one. This was not such a book.

Overall, I did enjoy reading IN THE COMPANY OF SOLDIERS. I enjoyed reading the background to the war, something that I hadn't read before. I just wish that it had been what it advertised.

David Roy

76 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An extraordinary account of the Iraqi war, February 27, 2004

By	Dr. Jonathan Dolhenty (Port Orford, OR United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

If you are a military history buff, you will love this book. If not, it might be the right time to take a plunge into the subject. This account of military history is about Operation Iraqi Freedom. While justifications for the recent war between the American-British coalition forces and Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime are still being debated among politicos and the general public, the facts are that it did occur, American and British soldiers died and were wounded, a brutal dictator was toppled, and we watched the whole event play itself out on live television. Now the Iraqi people have been given the opportunity to rebuild a country in their own image and likeness.

Rick Atkinson, a former staff writer and senior editor at The Washington Post and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, has written a journal of his experiences in the Iraqi conflict, beginning on the morning of February 26, 2003 at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, home of the famous "Screaming Eagles," the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army. After a couple of days of orientation, Atkinson and dozens of other journalists were flown to the Middle East. Thereafter, he lived with the 101st Airborne Division from their preparations in Kuwait to the occupation of Baghdad -- a period of almost two months -- and was granted complete access to the commanders and troops.

"In the Company of Soldiers" is Atkinson's very up-close and personal story of the war, in which he details every aspect of the conflict from planning and debriefings with the commanders, to his accounts of the battles the soldiers fought, to his sometimes intimate stories about the soldiers involved. It is an eyewitness account, occasionally laced with sadness and disappointment, occasionally with joy and pride. But more than that, it is also the story of one man, Major General David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, a modern warrior who was described once by a colleague as "the most competitive man on the planet."

The author spent much of his time in Iraq alongside Petraeus, who finished near the top of his 1974 class at West Point, and was known then as a "striver to the max." No ordinary soldier by any means, Petraeus had received a doctorate in international relations from Princeton University and for twenty-five years had been through various command and staff assignments, including tours in Haiti and Bosnia. Now he was commanding the "Screaming Eagles," a force of 17,000 troops, in a war in a forlorn and desolate desert environment, testing both his physical and mental skills. Atkinson, sitting in on the daily briefings as the division's attacks were planned, watches as Petraeus wrestles with numerous tactical enigmas and observes as the general instructs, motivates, and leads his soldiers and subordinate commanders in several intense engagements.

While describing this stressful and anxious journey into and during war, Atkinson introduces the reader to many other heroes of the combat, from Lt. General William Wallace, commander of V Corps, to Brig. Generals Ben Freakley and Edward Sinclair, assistant division commanders respectively for operations and support, Col. Mike Linnington of the 3rd Brigade, a number of CWOs who pilot the helicopters used in the battles, and, of course, that ordinary brave soldier on the ground whose job it is to do the job and often be irreverent when speaking about it. Our nation should be proud of them.

Even though I was on a deadline to complete another project, I read the entire book in two days because I had difficulty putting it aside. This is a firsthand account of war. It is a vivid picture of a remarkable group of soldiers and commanders. It reads more like a suspense novel than a nonfiction work narrating actual events. Atkinson's writing-style is what I call "facile and friendly," that is, easy on the eye and the mind, so much so that the story stays in the forefront rather than the sentence structure. And yet the details he provides are worthy of a scholarly work. In fact, the writing is so well done it's like a "motion picture in the mind," something I don't say about many books.

There are other things I really like about the book besides the writing style. One is the presentation of two maps at the front of the book (The Iraqi Battleground and Route of the 101st Airborne Division) which allows the reader to follow the movements of the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq; the maps are particularly helpful for those of us unfamiliar with the geography of that part of the world. I found myself constantly referring to them as the story unfolded, in fact so much so that I finally put a paper clip on the page so I could access them faster. Also valuable are the schematic which helps to identify the command structure of V Corps and the glossary of military jargon. Without the latter, I wouldn't have known an OGA from a DCU from an ASR. Still another plus is that the index of topics is very detailed.

I highly recommend this book to you whether you are interested in military history or not. You will not be disappointed. This is still ongoing history and a knowledge of how we got to this point in the situation seems to me to be important. Many of us watched this story unfold on television. Now we have the chance to read the book. True, this is the reverse of the usual situation -- read the book, then see the movie -- but television coverage, in retrospect, did not really provide us with the up-close and personal experience that Rick Atkinson provides us in this superbly written account of a most significant contemporary military conflict.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars In the Company of . . . Generals, April 21, 2004

By	Paul Woodward (West Linn, OR, United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The title of the book fooled me, instead of the grunts on the ground and in the tanks, this book follows the commander of the 101st airborne, General Petraeus. Of course, generals are "soldiers" too, but the title is deceiving. The few comments from the common soldier are overheard in the chow hall or in the toilet line.

Atkinson is a great writer and was given unprecedented access to key leaders. He's in the command tent, flying around in the command helicopter, and sleeping in tents with other generals on the staff. The access did not taint Atkinson's coverage, as he doesn't pull any punches in his critique of the generals.

The book has 3 basic phases:
1. The build-up. The 101st airborne had to move from base to an airbase and across to Kuwait, and then had the agonizing wait for their equipment to arrive by sea. At times, despite Atkinson's great storytelling ability, this section drags, as he likely had lots of time to write but little of interest to write about. In every chapter, Atkinson weaves in his political perspective, which can get annoying.
2. The early drive/fly in. The 101st moves quickly to its bases deep inside Iraq, and everything goes well for a while. Unfortunately, at least for the story, the 101st is left out of most of the action, due to weather/wind and a setback by another helicopter unit that gets badly shot-up. However, the book picks up the pace, as Atkinson drops the political commentary and tells it like it was, with no hindsight. The generals are concerned that the war could last for months and question the usefulness of attack helicopters.
3. The attack towards Baghdad. The action picks up as the 101st is involved in clearing some towns, and there are interesting accounts of combined arms to clear streets without damaging historic monuments or injuring civilians. However, there is little explanation of how the general moved from "this could last for months" to being over in weeks. As in the first section, the political commentary appears again.

Overall, the book provides a fresh perspective from a few key generals without hindsight. However, the book is not up to Atkinson's lofty standard set by "An Army at Dawn". There are plenty of cliches, such as what the soldiers carried into battle. Even more annoying than the political commentary is the listing of the daily challenge/password, he must have mentioned at least 15. In the end, Atkinson's storytelling and access make the book worthwhile, but other books like "The March Up" provides a better feel for combat with the "soldiers" on the ground.