“S*** rolls downward” an old army phrase is what exactly happened to 1st platoon of the 101st Airborne Division. Black Hearts is a fictional book on soldiers in the 101st Airborne division in the 502 Infantry Regiment during deployment to Iraq in 2005. Black Hearts is a book which gives the reader the point of views the different types of stress a soldier goes through during a deployment both physically and especially mentally. The book goes in depth and paints realistic events throughout the deployment and the impact it had one specific company. In 2005, the Iraqi war was one of the worst times to be in Iraq for the United States Military. The number of IEDS have increased and become more dangerous as the Iraqi insurgents started to …show more content…
“His large, shiny hairless dome earned him the unit appropriate nickname the bald eagle.” LTC was harsh and sometimes demoralizing to the leaders under him and the leadership did affect his subordinates under him. He was incompetent of the company commanders was after them every chance he had. His leadership style tends to put a lot of stress on his company commanders and the COs feared Kunk forcing them to be timid. “Kunk had reputation for being demanding and having a volcanic temper”. This put a lot of stress on the company commander which shows throughout the book. From the battalion level to the company level the leadership from the top started to makes its way the individual squad members. As 1st platoon continue to have their struggles with the leadership they begin to also have them with the battlefield. The constant stress from the leadership began to build up and continued to build up with the environment they were set in. A lot of the company commanders became passive leader not knowing what to or did not want to do anything that would get on LTC Kunk’s bad side. CPT good did show signs of stress in some of his decision making one in particular cost him the lives of his men. The platoon leader of first platoon LT Britt was an enthusiastic leader who everyone in his platoon respected but later feared for his life before dying to IED. The platoon sergeant seemed to take everything well even with the lack of sleep and supply. The squad leaders
Black Hearts was about the 2005-2006 deployment of the 101st‘s second brigade‘s 1-502nd (First Strike) to Iraq. The book more specifically honed in on Bravo Company and their first platoon’s decent into complete madness throughout the deployment. The 1-502nd and its commander Lt Col Kunk, was tasked with the mission of getting control of and hold the land in-between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Kunk was a particularly difficult man to get along with. He would explode and go on a tirade over just about anything, big or small. This caused serious problems at meetings when he only wanted things his way and would personally attack his commanders who he thought he could not trust. This area had been recently dubbed as the “Triangle of
Dystopian Literature seems to run along the same guidelines in terms of how the novels are set, and follow a similar chain of events leading to a great bittersweet climactic event. I will detail the similarities between the two novels Fahrenheit 451 and The Hunger Games. There is a reason behind the similarities of these two novels, and other dystopian literature. “The merits of dystopian literature are many.” (Erlich)
James R. McDonough sets a spectacular example of what it is to be a second lieutenant in the United States Army and what it is truly like to lead a group of enlisted soldiers for the first time. Lieutenant McDonough, a graduate of West Point, was deployed as a platoon leader in a small fort with the mission of holding a Vietnamese village out of the hands of the Viet Cong. When he arrived, Lieutenant McDonough discovered that the former Lieutenant and platoon leader of the 2d Platoon, Bravo Company, 4th Battalion, 503d Infantry (Airborne) hardly ever left his
The 2nd Brigade of 101st Airborne Division found out in the summer of 2004 that they had to prepare for the war in the Middle East more particularly for Iraq. With Colonel Todd Ebel in Command of the 2nd Division with a year to prepare over 3,400 men and woman he got right to work. Colonel Ebel started by choosing his staff and who he thought was fit to take charge and lead this ever more complicated war. It was a huge religious civil war taking place in Iraq at the time with the Sunnis at war against the Shi’ite and after the capture of Saddam insurgency started uprising immediately. This uprising along with the uprising of Muqtada al-Sadr a key leader that had lots of violent followers that soon grew into a form of a militia called
Among these leaders was Bravo Company’s 1st platoon’s SFC Robert Gallagher. The platoon endured terrible living conditions including no running water and filthy living space. These inadequate living conditions must be met with some relaxation on the standards they were expected to follow. Company leadership viewed this as a bribe to keep the soldiers in high spirits. In reality, they set the stage for the erosion of the morals the enlisted soldiers are supposed to possess. While the morals were being chipped away, so was the original plan the battalion had hoped to follow. Fragmentation orders became a pseudo-standard for the boys of Bravo Company. What had originally started as short-term overnight patrol bases turned into fortified traffic control points with the exception of any form of fortification other than in notion only. Despite the fact that platoon-level leadership requested for supplies they were repeatedly turned down. A major breakdown in the communication between the leadership created a loss in faith in the higher leadership for the lower-enlisted soldiers on the ground. Very soon into deployment, Bravo Company began to experience contact with unseen enemy forces. The enemy was able to engage and plant IED’s and cause casualties while remaining elusive. After the first few casualties within the company, the mission to start set up traffic control points was to begin. While conducting patrols down the road time and time
Black Hearts tells the story of a few bad soldiers from 1st platoon, Bravo company of the 1-502nd Infantry Battalion of the 101st Airborne Division, that was plagued with toxic leadership and lack of control over soldiers. The book documents the events that led to the ultimate demise of the soldiers involved in the horrific incident that occurred on March 12, 2006. Four soldiers were arrested in the brutal murder of an Iraqi family, which was a result of the lack of leadership and structure these soldiers received. Black Hearts takes a deep look into what happened to this troubled platoon and what unfortunate events occurred during their deployment.
Reading this book I found it to be very intriguing. It is a story about men from the 101st Airborne Division’s legendary 502nd Infantry Regiment known as “the Black Heart Brigade. These men were deployed to the country’s worst and most unfavorable location at the most dangerous time. The platoon the book talks about the most would be the Bravo Company First Platoon. They were constantly in a rough patch throughout the entire book, facing constant leadership changed and trying to survive the Triangle of Death. Being in this hostile environment caused many of the soldiers to lose discipline and not even care about life or death for their own sake. Their mentalities were at an all-time low, causing them to do crazy things like rape a fourteen year old Iraqi girl and murdering her and her family cold blooded. It was a tragic deployment and we can clearly see and feel the motions they had during their time in Iraq.
The story of the Black Hearts Brigade, told by Jim Frederick, starts out with the 1st Battalion of the 502nd Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division in the summer of 2005. The author starts with a brief chapter of the events that unfolded when four soldiers of this battalion went to a house, raped a girl and killed her and her family. In the first part of the book Frederick explains the grand strategy the US was taking in Iraq at the time, the history of the area named the triangle of death, and how the 1-502nd did in their pre-deployment training. The main focus in Iraq at the time was getting south Baghdad under control. South Baghdad, otherwise known as the triangle of death, had a very rich history due to its location (right
Dustin McKinney Amy Bowen English 10 29 June 2016 Style Analysis Essay Fahrenheit 451 a well known book written by the one and only Ray Bradbury, this is a story of a fireman set in a time well into the future, so far into the future that firemen don’t put out fires, they start them. This is when people don’t even remember what fire fighters use to do before they started to burn. A big part about the story is the style it was written in by Ray Bradbury, the way he writes the text makes everything come alive in your mind by opening up your imagination.
Fiction books have helped me know why people are so worried about bullying. I have read a book called The Brave when I was in eleventh grade for a free read that showed me how common and serous bullying can be. It has also showed me that our generation needs to learn to have respect for each other in and outside of school so bullying will start to go away. In books that I have read in school in the past that dealt with bullying were far worse than what people consider bullying today. In most cases the bullying is on a very serious level in books now a days and could cause the victim a lot of physical, mental, and emotional harm from what the characters say and do. Bullying inside and outside of school is very serious in this generation both
The bus drops Randy off next to an ice cream stand he used to buy neapolitan cones from in the summer. He 's surprised it still exists, the stand now covered in a tarp, looking to survive the New York winter.
When soldiers are deployed and fighting in conflict, they do not know which day could potentially be there last and will invest many emotions into what they are doing and the people that surround them. These emotions create strong bonds between soldiers and can also lead to toxic environments if the soldier’s emotions are targeted in a negative way. Every day that a unit is deployed they are engaging the enemy through direct contact or indirect fires that are coming from an unspecified location. The book Black Hearts perfectly describes how emotional a platoon of soldiers become while watching their leaders and friends die due to terrorist attacks. The men feel that every mission they go on is a death sentence and that their higher chain of command does not
In life, each person, book, movie, and much more contains a worldview or outlook on life as a whole. Lao Tzu states that a worldview is, “When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad.” Despite the fact that most people, movies, books, and other components in life do not realize that they have a worldview, in reality, they actually do. One specific example of an element in society that contains a worldview, is the action-filled and world-renowned book entitled Divergent. This specific element contains a striking plotline, worldview, and purpose in order to catch the attention of people around the world.
This realization lead to the “Surge” strategy developed in late 2006 . The tactical implications of the surge in a COIN focused execution resulted in risking significantly greater numbers of soldiers to IED attacks. Two critical vulnerabilities of US forces were the insufficient protection platforms for transportation and limited road network available to move troops rapidly. The insurgent’s ability in 2006 to attack US ground forces with IEDs was a critical capability which compromised US forces combat mobility and effectiveness. In June 2006, IED incidents reached more than 2,000 per month. At one point in 2006, coalition forces in Iraq were experiencing almost 100 IEDs per day .
Sitting back in his chair Yi Xing took a deep breath and stared at his monitor with a smile on his face happy with the work he had done. Today, Yi Xing finished memorizing everything in Naruto going from jutsus to character descriptions, bloodlines and so on.