The Chosen Few: A Company of
Paratroopers and Its Heroic Struggle to Survive in the Mountains of
Afghanistan. By Gregg Zoroya. Da Capo. $27.
It is as certain that there
will be heroes in war as that there will be cowards. The political rationales
for war are many: expanding or protecting territory, imposing ideology or
religion, obtaining resources or preventing others from using them, and more.
But the methods of war are singular: send people, mostly young and mostly men,
to kill other people, mostly young and mostly men, using whatever forms of
death-dealing are most efficient in a given age. War is thus an ultimate crucible of personality,
with the absolute certainty that some of those on the front line will die – and
the equally absolute certainty that some will prove cowardly in the face of
imminent death, while others will prove valorous. Therefore, as long as there
are wars – and there is little evidence that there will ever not be wars – there will be fodder for
books such as Gregg Zoroya’s The Chosen
Few. The specifics chronicled will differ from book to book, but the form
of the storytelling – indeed, the transformation of chaos and terror into
narrative – will remain essentially the same.
Zoroya, a specialist in war
coverage for USA Today, gets the
formula right and employs it with skill in his story of paratroopers who moved
into a remote and largely lawless part of eastern Afghanistan in May 2007 for
what seemed a fairly routine mission to support the shaky Afghan government –
but who ended up trapped almost from the start, and had to fight their way
through three significant battles and substantial loss of life before some of
them, the survivors, could leave the area safely. The story is a complicated
one that will mainly interest those who find the minutiae of war enthralling. The
men’s final battle, at Wanat, was extensively reported, but it may be
little-remembered today, since it happened in July 2008 and there has been so
very much more that has occurred in the world, and in wars, since then. The two
earlier battles, one at an outpost called Ranch House and the other involving
an ambush, received little to no media coverage, even though, in the second of
them, every single member of the patrol was either wounded or killed. Zoroya,
certainly an expert on digging out information on these obscure parts of a war
of which most Americans are at best dimly aware in the first place, plays up
the heroism of the paratroopers (who really did nickname themselves the Chosen
Few) and certainly explains why so many were killed or wounded in action: of
the 75 or so members of the group, 56 received Purple Hearts.
Zoroya also does a fine job
of humanizing the men, his contrast between the two Medal of Honor winners,
Ryan Pitts and Kyle White, coming across especially well. In all, Zoroya
interviewed 42 members of the Chosen Few for this book, and his sympathy and
empathy and understanding of them – along with his ability to get to the heart
of the grinding everyday reality of men under near-constant bombardment, sniper
fire and the ever-present threat of death – are everywhere apparent. It is
clear that Zoroya admires the men and is glad to have the opportunity to rescue
their heroism from obscurity. But it is worth pointing out that it is an
everyday sort of heroism during warfare – to a greater degree than is typical,
for sure, and with more casualties and more honors handed out to survivors than
usual, but nevertheless the same circumstances that members of the United
States’ all-volunteer army face every single day, somewhere in the world. This
sort of story should by all rights be exceptional, and certainly Zoroya
indicates that there is much
exceptional about the Chosen Few and the combat they endured. What is missing
here, though, and is missing from so many other books that explore wars and the
people who fight them, is any sense that this horrible everyday reality is
exactly what war is about – it is what war is supposed to be. The enemy – the
Taliban, in this case – has its own good reasons for trying to exterminate the
heathen foreigners from the land that the Taliban is meant by Allah to rule;
this is never stated, but surely it is essentially the rationale of those who
tried for 15 months to destroy all the Americans in this one part of the Afghan
mountains. For their part, the Americans have every reason to back and try to
strengthen a non-Taliban government that, despite enormous corruption and
imperfections of all sorts, is at least something of a bulwark against
worldwide Islamic murder cults. But for those who chronicle the enormous
hardships and heroism of warriors, the rationale for putting them in constant
jeopardy, for demanding of them sacrifice after sacrifice – including the
ultimate one of their young lives – is almost beside the point.
The Chosen Few is not a geopolitical book or, indeed, a political
book at all. Its unerring focus on the enormous bravery of so many members
within a single company of paratroopers succeeds in establishing these men as
everyday, under-appreciated heroes of far, far greater value to their country
than, for example, entertainers and sports figures who receive constant
attention and huge amounts of money while denigrating the society that makes
their success possible and the people who literally die to maintain that
society’s integrity. In the long run, The
Chosen Few is an upbeat, even celebratory book, yet deeply depressing at
the same time – because the sad reality is that there are many, many, many more
stories like this out there at all times, and neither Zoroya nor others who
report on war will ever write the vast majority of them. And those responsible
for creating the circumstances faced by the Chosen Few are highly unlikely ever
to read about them, and even less likely to take their heroism and sacrifices
to heart.
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