The Three Battles of Wanat

The title is somewhat misleading as I initially thought the book was solely about the Wanat battle. The book leads off and is dominated by the Wanat story but also includes several other long short stories
Bowden spares no effort in researching his stories and the end product is invariably balanced and well written
A wildly different story is the adventures of Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong ul. You may think reporters and analysts have examined and thoroughly reported about the No Korea dictator. Well they haven’t. First of all,Rodman’s inter action with the little fat guy as reported by Bowden it is hilarious. I rarely,rarely laugh out loud because of a story but this one had me in stitches. Bowman writes of one party that got so wild and out of control, including the little rocket man, that Rodman passed the word that everybody should probably cool it. A party-in North Korea-too wild for Dennis Rodman!!! I suppose you had to be there

Not every chapter is equally compelling, but the one on Wanat is as good as it gets, ever.

I had a similar experience in Vietnam where my battalion was ordered to attack an entrenched North Vietnamese Army regiment, three times our size, with air or artillery support. Why? Because our division commanding general believed the NVA would retreat into Laos once they spotted American uniforms. Overall, we had about 100 killed; and the general received a Distinguished Service Cross (next below the Medal of Honor) for his bravery, despite the fact he had a nervous breakdown in the middle of the battle.

The story told by Bowden rings true, stoking my anger that has never been extinguished. The survivors of Wanat must feel the same way. I salute them and the author for telling their story.

This is better than I expected. The lead off story is something I had seen in the past. Mark Bowden gives a good report of what happened and the follow up investigation. The other stories are about different people around the world including the North Korean dictator Kim III (Kim Un). If you liked Black Hawk Down and Hue 1968, this is more of his good writing. I highly recommend it.

I’m a big fan of Bowden’s war writing, but this book wasn’t what I signed up for. The Fighter Ace story was interesting as was the drone one, but then it lost me…I don’t care about sports or essays about politicians and farm animals. I guess I should have read the description a bit better. Save you money and get Hue, it’s a masterpiece.

The war story is fairly short then you get stories about Joe Biden and the owner of the NY Times. The cover makes you think this is another action story but it is not. I have read other Bowden books and enjoyed them, but this one – not so much.

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