And as I sat in the room that day holding my son, hearing about these eight other sons taken from their parents, from their wives, I wanted to know why. Why would anyone put an outpost in a such a dangerous place? And more importantly, who were these people that were risking so much and sacrificing everything – people to whom I really didn’t pay all that much attention, to be honest. Sure, I covered debates over troop levels – ten thousand, forty thousand – but those were statistics; those weren’t people.
So, against the advice of a lot of people I knew, I decided to write a book about the men who fought and suffered and prevailed and died in that battle, about Combat Outpost Keating.
Writing that book was a long slog. Many doubters; many skeptics. And yet I felt compelled to tell the story of these troops and their families, people part of a world unfamiliar to me at the time, the world of the US military, of duty and sacrifice. In some cases, the ultimate sacrifice.
And hearing these stories firsthand of these men and women made me realize how little I had accomplished in the service of anyone other than myself.
“My God,” I told my wife one afternoon after I had been visiting with two Cavalry officers, Dave and Alex. “My God, these guys are amazing, and I am nothing. I have risked nothing and sacrificed nothing, compared with these men.”
“But honey,” she said, “you can tell their stories. You can tell their stories.”
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