Between January 2007 and June 2008, US reporter David Finkel spent eight months with a battalion of 800 United States Army soldiers from Fort Riley. From a cramped, lousy office — big enough for just three folding chairs and a desk — the young men were led by a gung-ho yet thoroughly likable 40-year-old lieutenant colonel named Ralph Kauzlarich. A sign on the head-quarters wall read, “Mission: to create a balanced, secure and self-sufficient environment for the Iraqi people.”
By the end of their 15-month deployment, 14 soldiers would be dead. Another 75 would receive the Purple Heart. These boys, average age 19, did not live in the more secure confines of Baghdad’s Green Zone, but in Rustamiya, on the eastern edge of the city, a violent place where 350,000 Iraqis were hanging on as the war ground ahead. Rustamiya, Finkel explains, is a place where few diplomats or politicians chose to venture.
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