The Unknown Soldier

Soldier X is a 25-year-old U.S. Army officer who has fought in the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. His real name will remain under wraps until his memoir, This Man's Army (Gotham; reviewed above) is published in April, at which time he will give up his commission with the military and reenter civilian life. Dressed in khakis and a fleece jacket, X met PW at a bar in Brooklyn while on leave this past January to talk about his book. The only outward sign he is a soldier is his shaved head, which he covered with a black baseball cap featuring a discreet U.S. Army Rangers logo.

PW: Your memoir makes much of the fact that you have an Ivy League college degree and served as an infantry platoon leader—a "trigger puller." On returning from the wars, do you find a social gap between yourself and your college friends who are a couple of years into their first jobs on Wall Street and elsewhere?

X: There is a huge gap when I try to talk and interact with friends. I killed a man in Afghanistan during a battle, which is something I describe in the book. My friends can try to understand what that's like, but ultimately, they can't. Not a lot of people understand what we do. Most of the U.S. has not served in the military and with the abolition of the draft, most people just don't know what it's like to wear muddy boots. It's one of the reasons I wrote the book, so people can try and understand what it's like to get shot at.

PW: Did you at any time regret or reconsider your enlistment?

X: I come from a family where every generation of men have fought for the United States. When I was growing up, a lot of my friends, these big tough Southern guys, were always talking about what they would do if we went into war. Well, now we are in a war. Some are serving, some are not. I think it's either put up or shut up. You have to explain your own actions to your own kids in 20 or 30 years. No matter how they think about how things are going in the U.S. today, people who choose not to serve have to understand that they are making a decision for somebody else. The U.S. will go to fight wars, and they must know that somebody else served in their place. I don't wish war on anybody, but when you don't go, you are wishing it on somebody, you just don't know who they are.

PW: You write of the differences you found between the way the military presents itself as an institution and what you do as an individual on the battlefield.

X: The old dilemma for army officers is the men versus the mission. We are taught that there is no decision: you always choose the mission. But you learn that you have to balance that against the men you've lived with, sweated with and are now asking to throw themselves into dangerous situations. Putting your men first is the only way you can sleep at night.

PW: The book is confined to your experience in Afghanistan, which you feel was underreported.

X: Yes, so far we've seen a lot of third-person narratives from embedded reporters, but not from shooters. That's like comparing secondary sources and primary sources. I want people to have a first-person perspective of the first pitched battle that included Americans, in the "great war against terror," which took place in the Shah-e-kot Valley in March 2002 in Afghanistan, not in Iraq. Seven Americans were killed in a fight against several hundred Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists. It's frustrating to know that in the 2002 end of the year roundup in the New York Times, the battle was not even mentioned. This was a mistake: it was historically significant because it was the first time in history that any foreign power had ever won in that valley.