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In a Time of War: The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point's Class of 2002 | 
 enlarge | Author: Bill Murphy
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Category: Book
List Price: $27.50
Buy New: $13.75
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 5843
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 080508679X
Dewey Decimal Number: 355.0092273
EAN: 9780805086799
ASIN: 080508679X
Publication Date: September 16, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Condition: Brand New. 100% money back guarantee. All books shipped from Strand Bookstore, New York City, USA.
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Product Description
The dramatic story of West Point’s class of 2002, the first in a generation to graduate during wartime They came to West Point in a time of peace, but soon after the start of their senior year, their lives were transformed by September 11. The following June, when President George W. Bush spoke at their commencement and declared that America would “take the battle to the enemy,” the men and women in the class of 2002 understood that they would be fighting on the front lines. In this stirring account of the five years following their graduation from West Point, the class experiences firsthand both the rewards and the costs of leading soldiers in the war on terror. In a Time of War focuses on two members of the class of 2002 in particular: Todd Bryant, an amiable, funny Californian for whom military service was a family tradition; and Drew Sloan, the hardworking son of liberal parents from Arkansas who is determined to serve his country. On the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, Todd, Drew, and their classmates—the army’s newest and youngest officers—lead their troops into harm’s way again and again. Meticulously reported, sweeping in scope, Bill Murphy Jr.’s powerful book follows these brave and idealistic officers—and their families—as they experience the harrowing reality of the modern battlefield. In a Time of War tells a vivid and sometimes heartbreaking story about courage, honor, and what war really means to the soldiers whose lives it defines.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 THIS BOOK SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING FOR ALL AMERICANS! October 14, 2008
One can expect that any book published today - either fiction or non-fiction - with the Iraq War as a backdrop will include the author's opinion regarding whether the U.S. should have invaded the country... or perhaps whether the war is even legitimate. Frankly, there are far too many of those on bookstore shelves today.
In A Time of War is refreshingly devoid of any opinion or overt criticism of the Bush Administration and its decision to go to war with Iraq. In fact, thankfully the author, Bill Murphy, Jr., spends very little time on the politics of the war or any of the more controversial aspects of how it has been fought.
Instead, Murphy tells the moving story of young lives that are forever changed by war. Young men and women who manage to find their way to the tip of the spear and who in some cases return to our shores with their bodies and minds badly broken. These are not average lives by any means - as if any life that is committed to the machinery of modern war could ever be called "average" - but they are lives of recent West Point graduates from the Class of 2002 brimming with all the potential of youth and all the confidence of graduates of one of the country's premier leader development institutions.
These budding soldier-scholars represent the best and the brightest our country has to offer, and as many members of the Long Gray Line have done for over two centuries before them, they embark on their military careers without an ounce of reluctance or regret... only a healthy idealism combined with an unshakable belief in a destiny that lies somewhere on the field of battle alongside that of Grant, MacArthur, Patton, Schwarzkopf and other famous graduates before them.
Murphy chronicles the lives of these young West Pointers as they graduate from the academy, attend training on their way to becoming newly minted second lieutenant platoon leaders, and then assume their junior role in the ranks of the U.S. Army's professional officer corps.
Where the author really succeeds is in his description of their experiences leading soldiers on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. This is where the pace of the book really picks up. West Point's matchless leadership training and preparation is put to the test as these uncommon Americans confront half-crazed IED-embedding and RPG-wielding jihadists and insurgents.
How they fearlessly confront these challenges while leading soldiers makes for some terrific reading. But there is quite a bit more to Murphy's book than emerging combat leaders plying their trade in the heat of battle.
Much has been made of how the U.S. Army, at the outset of the Iraq War, remained culturally and structurally better prepared to fight a Soviet era "linear battle" complete with state-of-the-art M1 tanks and lumbering B-52 bombers than a counterinsurgency. In In A Time of War, we are witness to the impact of an Army's need to shift gears to respond to a new, asymmetric threat on the young lives who are in the thick of the fight. Incredibly, one of the principal characters, Todd Bryant, leads his armor platoon of "thin-skinned" Humvees into battle with insurgents on the back roads of Iraq while his heavily armored M1 tanks remain secure at his unit's home station in Fort Riley, Kansas!
The most powerful element of Murphy's book is his depiction of the tragic toll war takes on young soldiers and their devoted families. Murphy's characters early on bring other lives into the tumult and inconstancy of their incipient Army careers. The young officers' wives are without question some of the toughest, most inspiring characters in the book. Their husbands are poorly paid; their lives are interrupted by frequent moves from one isolated Army post to another; and, they live with constant worry while their husbands serve in some of the most inhospitable places on the planet. Yet, these remarkable women somehow endure. They are extraordinarily strong and resilient!
Perhaps most heart-wrenching are the stories of the wives who must pick up the pieces when their husbands do not return from the battlefield. Lives so full of promise reduced to a knock on the door and a flag-draped casket at a military funeral. As in wars past, these women experience great pain and anguish when notified of their husbands' deaths. They bear up to their grief, though, and remain stoic as their life partners are tragically taken from them.
Learning how one of these wives copes after the loss of her husband is deeply affecting.
In In A Time of War we are witness to the utter senselessness of war and the toll it takes on those who are called to fight it. Exposed to horrors many of us cannot even comprehend at the tender age of 23 or 24, these young men return from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan with more questions than answers. We are reminded that it is these young Americans and their families who must live with the cost of our government's foreign policy decisions.
Youth sacrificed... lives full of promise interrupted... love lost...
This is the legacy of war.
While West Point perpetuates its proud tradition of turning out highly skilled leaders "for a lifetime of service to the nation", In A Time of War reminds us that war looms like a dark cloud over those young American lives bursting with potential and dreams of martial glory. Some will not live to see their 30th birthday. Indeed, those who do not return remain etched in the collective conscience of our society. Fortunately, for all who knew them, they are remembered in all their youth and vitality. As the author ably points out, though, it is ultimately their loved ones left behind who struggle mightily with those memories... and who are forever left to contemplate what might have been.
We owe them an enormous debt of gratitude... a debt that can never be repaid.
THIS BOOK SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING FOR ALL AMERICANS!
 A Must Read for All Americans October 13, 2008
A truly insightful work of the heavy burden carried by so few in executing the Global War on Terror. While the focus is on a handful of West Point graduates, their stories are in many ways a reflection of the experiences for most of our service members of all ranks and backgrounds. Not only does the author bring the "soldier" to life, he also provides an inside perspective on the triumphs, the struggles and the impact of loss on the soldiers' families. Turn off CNN and Fox News --- read this book for a frontline view of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a Time of War Review October 6, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book was very personal for me as I knew the first soldier from the West Point Class of 2002 to be killed in Iraq. My family knew Todd Bryant since he was a young boy of about 10-years-old. Such a profound tragedy to lose him at the age of 23 and this book was fabulous in not only describing Todd, but his fellow West Point classmates who continue to fight this tragic war.
A must read - a heart-rending and gut-wrenching account October 1, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I have just completed Bill Murphy's moving book, "In a Time of War - The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point's Class of 2002." The book is both gut-wrenching and heart-rending, yet it also leaves the reader inspired and proud of the young men and women who left West Point in the summer of 2002 to answer the call to fight the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The title of the book is drawn from the speech that President Bush gave to the West Point Class of 2002 as they graduated and were commissioned as 2nd Lieutenants in the U.S. Army. I was in the audience that summer day and heard him utter those words. I also have personal relationships with several dozens members of the West Point Class of 2002, so for me the book was particularly poignant. I have followed several of these soldiers through their multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. This book added to the depth of my understanding of the challenges they have faced as they lived and fought, sweated and bled, in those far off places.
Bill Murphy describes himself, in essence, as someone who has served in the military (as an Army Reserve officer), but without great distinction. He has, without question, distinguished himself in his ability to grasp the essence of the West Point experience for a representative sampling of graduates of the Class of 2002, and to bring the reader inside their lives as they took their West Point training and became officers serving our nation in a time of war.
"This, for Todd [Bryant], was the essence of West Point. `Duty, honor, country' was the academy's motto, and everyone talked constantly about honor and commitment, loyalty and patriotism. All that was true and good, but stripped of its pomp and circumstance, the place was really about love. Love of your country, love of your classmates and friends, and love of the future officers you'd someday serve with. Most of all, West Point was about learning to love the soldiers you would someday lead, the privates and sergeants, knuckleheads and heroes alike, who might, just once, in a life-justifying moment, look to you for leadership in some great battle on a distant shore." (Pages 11-12)
I have never read a more concise or accurate summation of the West Point ethos as I have come to understand it through the eyes of my many friends who proudly stand as part of the Long Gray Line.
These newly-minted lieutenants faced the classic dilemma of what kind of leader to be, deciding where their ultimate loyal should lie:
"A new lieutenant had to choose between two leadership styles. He was obliged to follow his commander's orders, of course. But he also had to decide whether, at his core, he was going to be his platoon's envoy to the higher brass, or the higher brass's man embedded with the soldiers. Todd chose the former style, and most of his soldiers considered him one of them. He was their guy, advocating on their behalf to the people making the decisions that controlled their lives." (Page 117)
Along the same lines, Murphy does a nice job of painting a clear picture of the complex relationships that exist in an Army aviation unit among the three types of personnel found there:
"The majority of their soldiers were warrant officers, pilots with college degrees and ten or more years in the Army. Most important, they had many thousands of hours of flight time under their belts. Although he's been out of West Point for almost two years, this was Tim's [Mosier] first real opportunity to lead other soldiers, and he got off to a rough start. One day early on, they went to the rifle range for an annual qualification on M-16 rifles. Tim was nervous. He started checking his soldier's canteens to make sure they were full, as if he were still a West Point firstie looking out for a platoon of clueless plebes. He reached out to grab the canteen belonging to one of the most experienced aviators, a chief warrant officer with eighteen years in the Army. The chief turned away with his mouth open, shocked that some brand-new lieutenant had the gall to touch him.
Another of his pilots realized that Tim was making the classic new lieutenant's mistake, letting his anxiousness get the best of him.
`Your enlisted soldiers need leadership,' the pilot told Tim. `Your warrant officers need information.' Tim didn't need to be told twice." (Pages 177-178)
Tricia LeRoux Birdsall followed her mother into the military. The journal she kept while serving in Iraq gives a rare look inside the mind, the perspective and the world view of one serving in the "sand box":
"In one of the last entries in her war journal, Tricia wrote: `It is such a great feeling to see an end in sight. There are very few things that I will miss about this place, but there are several things I can't wait for once we leave.
I can't wait to . ..
Fall asleep at night and not wonder if I'll make it through the night;
Go through an entire day and not worry about whether or not my husband is safe;
Hear a door slam and not jump because it sounds like an explosion;
Not have a radio next to me at night;
Fall asleep in my husband's arms and know it is not a dream and that we are really at home;
Not have nightmares about what I've seen here;
Grieve for those we've lost;
Celebrate our return;
Not be afraid anymore;
Carry a purse instead of my machine gun;
Wear anything other than desert colored uniforms;
Be truly happy away from here with my husband for the rest of my life."
(Pages 244-245)
This book is tough to read, because not all the endings are happy endings; not all the main characters of this true life drama are able to experience living "happily ever after." Yet this is a book that needs to be read by as wide an audience as possible. For those who have served and for their families, the book offers understanding and catharsis. For those of us who have not served in the military, it is instructive and challenging.
"Jimmy Mitchell returned to Fort Stewart a few days later, escorted by another soldier from the unit. `Mrs. Tucker, you should have seen Will.' the other soldier told Sallie when she visited. `He was covered in blood from head to toe. It was awful.'
He paused, as if asking permission to tell her more. This was what a psychiatric nurse did for a living, counsel people; but never did Sallie's work get this personal. That little detail - her husband, covered in someone else's blood - hadn't been part of her mental picture before. And as hard as it was to hear the details, she wanted to know. She needed the connection, needed as much understanding as she could get about what her Will and his soldiers were going through.
She let the soldier go on, taking in the whole account, even though every instinct of self-preservation told her to cover her ears and run from the room.
No, she told herself. Listen to the story." (Pages 276-277)
Bill Murphy has done a masterful job of listening to many stories and weaving them together into a compelling narrative that is a tapestry of the lives of the West Point Class of 2002 living and dying in a time of war. The book is apolitical. The closest that Murphy comes to making a political statement about the war is when he quotes from a speech by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Secretary of State Colin Powell:
"What we're worried the most about is our best and brightest young officers - I'm speaking of our West Point graduates - who are resigning at extremely high rates when their duty is done. Now let me emphasize that their duty is indeed done. In fact, it is done and then some, so I don't blame them. . . We have to recognize that we have a group of young officers in particular who are carrying the lion's share of the hardship with this war and an unsustainable deployment schedule. For good reason, they're saying, `Okay, I signed up to serve my country and have made enormous personal sacrifices, but other people need to step up to the plate as well.'" (Page 305)
I invite you to step up to the plate by reading this book and by giving away multiple copies - and by making yourself available to hear the stories of those who have fought.
West Point is about love. This book is about love - and loss.
Listen to the story.
Al
a bit confusing but still worth it September 29, 2008
I found the book moving and read it straight through. The storyline is a bit difficult to follow at times as the author 's use of timeline is irregular. He contracts, expands and backtracks as he tells the story of each individual. I'm not sure how it could have been made better given the number of individuals followed in the book.
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