Bad Soldiers in Black Hearts by Jim Frederick Essay

This cause the men to get a lot less time to relax, taking 8 or more hour guard shifts. The redundant, mundane task of manning the TCPs would make the soldiers restless, tired and complacent; an extremely dangerous combination when in a combat zone. The TCPs would cause a lot of problems throughout the entire deployment. The first catastrophe to hit Bravo Company, and 1st platoon in particular, was the deaths of SSG Nelson and SGT Casica from 3rd SQD. They were both shot point blank while trying to talk to a familiar civilian that they had spoken to previously while manning a TCP. This was the start of the downward spiral that 1st platoon went through during the deployment. Continuing after this incident, the company was still spread very thin, having too many tasks and not enough people. Having to go out on a 20-hour mission and then have to go back out right after you get to the FOB hoping for a bit of relaxing time was a serious moral killer. This didn’t not help the fact that 1st platoon already had been taking out bottled anger and remorse for their lost comrades out on insurgent and civilian alike. To them they were all the enemy. The next big blow the 1st platoon was the deaths of 1LT Britt and SPC Lopez. During a routine IED sweep of route sportster, 1LT Britt and his men were taking contact from mortar fire and one remotely launched RPG from across the canal the paralleled the road. Once the fire had stopped 1LT Britt

They found out they were going to one of the most if not the most dangerous place in Iraq South Baghdad also known as the Triangle of Death. October 2005 2nd Brigade started to arrive Kunk dispersed the Companies: Bravo-West, Charlie-South, Alpha-central, and Delta-North. Kunk assigned Bravo and Charlie who he believed to be his best companies the mission he judged to be the toughest. The relief in place and transfer of authority was quite displeasing many men said that the National Guard unit 48th were quite beaten up and done for. They claimed the men looked beat and scared letting the enemy dictate where they could and could not go and had very little intel on the AO and surrounding areas to pass along to them. As everyone started to settle in to their AO Kunk started focusing on the overall mission to fight the insurgency and support the people and train the IA. Now focusing in more on Bravo, Goodwin took over the Yusufiyah area and was very

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

Many people say that the metal of a man is found in his ability to keep his ideals in spite of anything that life can through at you. If a man is found to have done these things he can be called a hero. Through a lifelong need to accept responsibility for all living things, Robert Ross defines his heroism by keeping faith with his ideals despite the betrayal, despair and tragedy he suffers throughout the course of The Wars by Timothy Findley.

Frederick starts Black Hearts by showing the readers how there was bad tension between the soldiers and their higher leadership prior to their deployment. This internally means that there was no esprit de corps between the 1-502nd. If there is bad blood between the leadership and their men, it is extremely difficult to gain their trust or respect once you are on deployment. Although they are required to follow orders from their higher leadership, they will be obeying out of resentment instead of respect. A lot of the time, first platoon, Bravo Company, 1-502nd Regiment was respecting the rank and not the person. This is a common term in the military, which Frederick brings to light in the book.

War, the Ultimate Proving Ground: The black troops persevered in the face of hardship, prejudice, and discrimination. They fought in spite of atrocious treatment and in the face of bitter challenges, believing they could make a difference.

About 180,000 African American people comprised 163 units that served in the Union Army, during the time of the Civil War, and many more African American people had served in the Union Navy. Both the free African-Americans and the runaway slaves had joined the fight. On the date of July 17, in the year of 1862, the U. S. Congress had passed two very important acts that would allow the enlistment of many African Americans, but the official enrollment had occurred only after the September, 1862, issuance of the, Emancipation Proclamation. In general, most white soldiers and officers, had believed that most of the black men, who had served in the Civil War, lacked the courage, and the will to fight

First Platoon had many leaders brought in to try and fix the platoon. Sergeant First Class Fenlason was brought into the platoon as the new platoon sergeant on February 4th, 2006. He was not respected right away because he was one who did not have any combat experience. He was just a desk worker who got brought in to fix the platoon with a cocky attitude. From the Joes perspective he did nothing but “{sit} around smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, and that’s it. He would do patrols once a month to go and talk to some leaders.” They hated

     According to the author Tim O’Brien, people tend to readily accept the ‘facts’ presented of what happened during a war. People do not consider the existence of fallacies regarding the actual stories of what happens in wars, few consider that the ‘facts’ of an incident often change through people’s words. The film ‘Saving the Private Ryan’ by Steven Spielberg features both facts and seemingness part of the war story. Since it is so difficult to fully describe a war using human language, Spielberg ended up revising his stories to make sense out of it. Spielberg included parts that did not occur or exclude parts that did occur in order to make their stories seem more credible. According

Joseph Conrad once observed that “a belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” As a result of the violence that is necessary during wartime, soldiers are permitted to engage in savage behavior that is normally forbidden in society. In The Wars by Timothy Findley, however, soldiers act in violent ways even when they are not actively engaged in battle. The inherently savage nature of humankind is evident when Robert Ross kills the German soldier after the gas attack, when Robert is raped in the baths, and when Robert kills Captain Leather. These violent events that occur outside the direct action of the war demonstrate the evil inherent in

Not every man who 's fought in a war planned on doing so. In fact, not all of them even want to. It 's rare to find enough people voluntarily willing to lay down their lives for their country, so more often than not militaries used what we would call “citizen soldiers.” Citizen soldiers are exactly what they sound like, regular citizens taken from society and turned into people capable of serving in the military. Although it may seem obvious when plainly written out, citizen soldiers had vastly different experiences compared to career soldiers, and Stephen Ambrose attempted to pin down that specific experience in his book Citizen Soldier. Ambrose uses oral interviews from World War II veterans and other materials to explain the experiences of the common American soldier who served in WWII between D-Day and the eventual surrender of the German forces. However, when examining his book, it 's important to ask how successful Ambrose was in painting an accurate picture of this kind of soldier 's life during his service. Is the information he uses specific to the men who served in Europe, or can it also be linked back to the soldiers in the Pacific? This paper will evaluate his work by comparing it to oral interviews from WWII veterans both from the same areas that Ambrose 's veterans serve in and in locations not included in his work.

At dawn, the Marine 1st Battalion, 5th Marines—commanded by Major Julius Turrill—was to attack Hill 142, but only two companies were in position. The Marines advanced in waves with bayonets fixed across an open wheat field that was swept with German machine gun and artillery fire, and many Marines were cut down.[9][10] Captain Crowther commanding the 67th Company was killed almost immediately. Captain Hamilton and the 49th Company fought from wood to wood, fighting the entrenched Germans and overrunning their objective by 6 yards (5.5 m). At this point, Hamilton had lost all five junior officers, while the 67th had only one commissioned officer alive. Hamilton reorganized the two companies, establishing strong points and a defensive line.[11]

In the next part of the book Frederick talks about continued strife between all levels of leadership and the establishment of the TCPs. There were 6 TCPs, or tactical control points, in the AO. The TCPs went against mostly everything the army trains for by doctrine. They were sparsely manned, fixed positions that the men felt more vulnerable at than anything. They would continue to be the center of many issues that arise in the future of their deployment. With the TCPs adding more friction in the battalion relationship communication lines got more and more strained. Conflict between the company commanders and the battalion commander during garrison time was ten times as worse during wartime. Kunk and the company commanders continued to create a gap in their relationship that led to very unfavorable operating positions for future operations.

In the book, Bad Boys, Ann Arnett Ferguson goes on a three-year journey through Rosa Parks Elementary School to observe and research why it is that mostly black males are ending up in jail and are unsalvageable from such a young age. She interviews and observes daily interactions with the eleven and twelve year old students that have been labeled “at risk” by their teachers and peers. She wants to research how it is being in school when all of the educators have already labeled them as “unsalvagable, at risk, and bound for jail”. These kids pretty much act in the way that their teachers treat them. They get into trouble every single day and most of the times these boys provoke it because

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