No Truer Story

“The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family,” published by Putman, is a book worth reading.

Written by Martha Raddatz, the book is a vivid and hard look at one battle in April 2004.  As chief White House correspondent for ABC News, she has traveled to Iraq a dozen times. 

The juxtaposition of a First Cavalry Division platoon which came under attack while on a routine patrol in Baghdad’s Sadr City, a Shiite neighborhood, with the lives of the soldier’s mothers, wives and children waiting for them at Fort Hood, Texas, draws a taunt and telling story of what soldiers and their families confront during deployments.

Raddatz is an excellent narrative writer, and in “The Long Road Home,” her first book, she weaves a tale of hope, fear, life and death in a manner that leaves the reader wanting to read more.

Raddatz learned about the ambush five months after it happened.  She has gone back, however, and carefully reconstructed the event to include the “he said/she said” reactions of soldiers and their wives, some of whom received the dreaded knock at the front door.

Not since the Vietnam War has the First Cavalry suffered so many casualties in one day.

In a murderous alley firefight which pitted a trapped platoon against hundreds of militiamen and residents loyal to Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, Raddatz uses simple, straightforward language to describe the confusion of the ambush and the difficulties faced by the soldiers who went out to rescue them.

The Alley:

“SSgt Trevor Davis put the heavy antitank weapon he’d been carrying to the back of SFC Swope’s Humvee and grabbed the M-240 machine gun.  His hands still tingled, streaked with blood from the round that had hit his M-16.  He braced himself against the Humvee.  Then, the instant the sniper came around the corner, Davis delivered a heavy stream of lead.  The Iraqi twirled right, then left, and fell, his rifle clattering beside him.”

At Home:

“In the small southern Illinois town of Albion, the army officer and the sheriff who came to Diane and Von Ibbotson’s door encountered an entirely different scene.

“Are you the mother of Corporal Forest Jostes?” the officer asked when Diane opened the door.

“Diane nodded and invited the men inside.  They all sat down, and then the officer began.

“I regret to inform you that your son ….”

Eight soldiers died on that Palm Sunday, and 60 more were wounded.   One of the killed soldiers was Spc. Casey Sheehan, the son of anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan.

“The Long Road Home” is a hauntingly beautiful yet ugly story, one that has not been told enough about the war and the soldiers involved.  It tells the truth; it is about soldiers and their families; it remains apolitical toward the war.

It’s worth the read.

J.M. Simpson