Review: Archie Henderson

In the Company of Soldiers: A Chronicle of Combat, by Rick Atkinson (Henry Holt & Co New York)

Rick Atkinson is no stranger to the military. The son of an infantry officer, he grew up an army brat and after entering journalism, he took time off from his day job to write the first of his World War 2 trilogy, An Army at Dawn, to be followed by The Day of Battle and The Guns at Last Light.

These tracked, with meticulous and engaging historiography, American involvement in that conflict.

So when the US military opened its ranks to “embedded” journalists for the idiocy of the second Gulf War in 2003, Atkinson’s employers, the Washington Post, decided he would be an ideal candidate.

It was no easy assignment: he would accompany the famous 101st Airborne Division, a unit first assembled in 1942, into a 21st century war. The division, with the D-Day Normandy invasion and the Battle of the Bulge among its early battle honours, was also the inspiration for the book and TV series Band of Brothers. 

The “Screaming Eagles”, with its 17,000 soldiers and 256 helicopters to carry today’s paratroopers, was among the first US divisions into Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and Atkinson was there for it, much of the time at the shoulder of its commander, Major-General David Petraeus.

For two months, Atkinson accompanied the division from its home base in Kentucky to Kuwait, then across the desert to its first objectives, the cities of Najaf, Hilla, Karbala and Iskandariyah before finally entering the capital of Baghdad in April in a modern-day blitzkrieg.

In the Company of Soldiers charts Atkinson’s journey with the 101st, filing copy in horrendous conditions: dealing with dust storms, dodgy comms, wonky laptops and satellite phones, all the while trying to keep up with timelines for deadlines half a world away. And he had to play by the army’s rules.

While these rules allowed reporters much latitude in what they could report, there were certain no-go areas like giving away early information on troop movements. One tabloid TV hack who broke that rule was immediately expelled, and had to ingratiate his way back into the ranks. 

Atkinson was in no danger of such disgrace but reading between the lines it would have been difficult to focus on the story with a totally objective eye. He seems to have succeeded because the officers and men in the 101st not only came to trust him, you get a sense that they liked him too. Petraeus especially.

The commander allowed him into briefings, took him along to meetings with the corps commander and provided him with solid background material even though they briefly got off on the wrong foot over a profile Atkinson wrote about the general before the conflict – a disagreement in which the reporter stood by his story and the general conceded to overreacting.

The difficulty for Atkinson was not so much on the ground, but back home in Washington where it was clear that President George W Bush’s decision to go to war with Saddam was flawed.

Atkinson suggests it might even have been fraudulent. It was based on the dubious evidence that Saddam was harbouring weapons of mass destruction, a claim later shown to be false, and which forever tarnished the good reputation of Colin Powell, an honourable former general and US secretary of state at the time, who was Bush’s point man at the UN on the question of WMD.

When it comes to the actual fighting, Atkinson is like a sniper. He is close to the story but, with exemplary dispassion, always manages not to be part of it.. His description of the 101st confronting a building where Saddam holdouts were proving hard to dislodge is among the best of his frontline copy.

That story involved a classic case of army-air force rivalry, where the 101st’s artillery pushes the case for shelling and the air force liaison insists that US jets can do the job more quickly and efficiently. Atkinson describes it in the language of an exciting sports fixture, but one where life and death are at stake.

When the time comes for him to leave the story, there are some touching moments as he bids farewell to men with whom he had shared tents, hardships, MREs (meals ready to eat), stories and friendships. Petraeus presents him with a Screaming Eagle combat patch, a badge that will distinguish many of the soldiers he reported on.

Atkinson leaves the front with ambivalence. By April 2003 the war aims had been accomplished quickly and relatively painlessly: only two soldiers in the 101st killed and 46 wounded.

But it’s the aftermath that worries him as he flies home. The Pentagon predicted that US troops levels in Iraq would be down to 30,000 later in the year. By Christmas 2003 there were still 130,000 Americans soldiers in Iraq and another 30,000 in Kuwait. By the time the 101st got home to their base in Kentucky in February 2004, they had lost 60 with 500 wounded.