As You Were: To War and Back with the Black Hawk Battalion of the Virginia National Guard - Hardcover

Davenport, Christian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 047037361X ISBN 13: 9780470373613

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2009

Synopsis

As You Were Washington Post reporter Christian Davenport chronicles a National Guard unit as they deploy to Iraq, survive combat, and come home to lost jobs, broken lives, and a system that wasn't created to help them.

About this title

Review

Following the experiences of five members of 2–224th Aviation Regiment, Virginia Army National Guard, from federal activation through a one–year deployment in Iraq and back again, Washington Post reporter Davenport reveals the heroism and sacrifice of citizen–soldiers across the country. Like thousands across the country, these five find their lives violently shaken by notice of activation, pulled from families, careers and, for Miranda Summers, a senior year at William and Mary. In Iraq, they found a war zone waiting encountering insurgent gunfire flying into Baghdad, Fallujah and Ramadi; on rescue missions; or flying an “angel flight”, the first leg escorting a fallen soldier home. Davenport, embedded with the regiment on their 2005–06 deployment, follows up on his story with accounts of home–side challenges. This book honors well the citizen–soldiers of the National Guard and the Army, Navy and Marine Corps Reserves, while giving readers a vivid sense of life before, during and after engagement in a far–off war. (May) ( Publishers Weekly , April 20, 2009)

From the Back Cover

"A powerful, enraging, tear–jerking reminder of how so few Americans have sacrificed so much during the so–called′ war on terror′. the best kind of war book." – Alex Kershaw, author of  The Bedford Boys and Escape from the Deep   "Through the voices and experiences of five very diverse members of the Virginia National Guard, As You Were gives the great majority of Americans who have not been sent to war a sense of the experiences of our citizen–soldiers and the family, employment, and health problems they face reentering American society after experiencing combat." – David R. Segal, Drector, Center for Research on Military Organization, University of Maryland "A sad, stirring, sometimes maddening story. Christian Davenport writes not so much about combat, but rather the home front–the struggles of the families left behind while their providers go off to war and of the solders themselves as they stagger back to a civilian world that declines to reward, or even betrays, their sacrifice." – Fred Kaplan, "War Stories" columist, Slate ; author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Powe r 

Edition details

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Ltd
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 047037361X
• ISBN 13: 9780470373613
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272