Analysis of Fictional Book Black Hearts by Jim Frederick Essay examples

In the book this was a constant and consistent factor and an obvious hint as to what to expect further along in the chapters which was a vicious tailspin out of control. Chapter 8 talked about a series of communication break downs. LTC Tom Kunk, the commander of the 1-502nd infantry regiment, set the standard of how the communication was going to exist within the platoons. The book talked about how he would lose his temper at his soldiers regardless how minor the issue. You could leave your weapon unattended or leave trash on the ground either way he would confront you in the most unprofessional way about it. This made his whole leadership style completely ineffective. I personally understand how much this can influence a soldier especially those who are still trying to figure out their leadership styles. If this is the only leadership style you deal with on a regular bases after a while it will start to become the standard for you. LTC Kunk being the commander of the regiment should be demonstrating better discipline and restraint. Instead this makes him appear to have no self control. He should have been setting the standard in a more positive way on communicating with members of the platoons, and creating a more cohesive environment. There were many other leaders in the platoon who made similar mistakes. This example doesn’t just apply to this particular situation but can also result the same in a family. If your mom and dad are constantly bickering and your always

Among these leaders was Bravo Company’s 1st platoon’s SFC Robert Gallagher. The platoon endured terrible living conditions including no running water and filthy living space. These inadequate living conditions must be met with some relaxation on the standards they were expected to follow. Company leadership viewed this as a bribe to keep the soldiers in high spirits. In reality, they set the stage for the erosion of the morals the enlisted soldiers are supposed to possess. While the morals were being chipped away, so was the original plan the battalion had hoped to follow. Fragmentation orders became a pseudo-standard for the boys of Bravo Company. What had originally started as short-term overnight patrol bases turned into fortified traffic control points with the exception of any form of fortification other than in notion only. Despite the fact that platoon-level leadership requested for supplies they were repeatedly turned down. A major breakdown in the communication between the leadership created a loss in faith in the higher leadership for the lower-enlisted soldiers on the ground. Very soon into deployment, Bravo Company began to experience contact with unseen enemy forces. The enemy was able to engage and plant IED’s and cause casualties while remaining elusive. After the first few casualties within the company, the mission to start set up traffic control points was to begin. While conducting patrols down the road time and time

The book Black Hearts opened my eyes to how leadership from a single Officer can have a grappling effect on such a wide range of soldiers from the lowest of ranks. One of the best takeaways from Black Hearts is to never do anything: illegal, unethical, or immoral. Although this is a easy statement to repeat, Black Hearts demonstrates the difficulties that lie behind these words. It has also painted a picture of how leadership can topple extremely quickly from a top down view. The Army is portrayed in a bad light throughout the book relentlessly. This is due to the concentration of poor leadership of the 1-502nd Regiment (Referred to as “First Strike”), a battalion of the 101st Airborne Division.

Black Hearts was about the 2005-2006 deployment of the 101st‘s second brigade‘s 1-502nd (First Strike) to Iraq. The book more specifically honed in on Bravo Company and their first platoon’s decent into complete madness throughout the deployment. The 1-502nd and its commander Lt Col Kunk, was tasked with the mission of getting control of and hold the land in-between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Kunk was a particularly difficult man to get along with. He would explode and go on a tirade over just about anything, big or small. This caused serious problems at meetings when he only wanted things his way and would personally attack his commanders who he thought he could not trust. This area had been recently dubbed as the “Triangle of

The 2nd Brigade of 101st Airborne Division found out in the summer of 2004 that they had to prepare for the war in the Middle East more particularly for Iraq. With Colonel Todd Ebel in Command of the 2nd Division with a year to prepare over 3,400 men and woman he got right to work. Colonel Ebel started by choosing his staff and who he thought was fit to take charge and lead this ever more complicated war. It was a huge religious civil war taking place in Iraq at the time with the Sunnis at war against the Shi’ite and after the capture of Saddam insurgency started uprising immediately. This uprising along with the uprising of Muqtada al-Sadr a key leader that had lots of violent followers that soon grew into a form of a militia called

Arriving in October 2005, the entire campaign units were struggling throughout with being over-tasked and under-staffed, and 1st platoon was a major victim of this occurrence. Relieving the 48th Infantry Brigade, who had no relations with the locals and very little presence in the AO, they had to reestablish control of the area around FOB Yusufiyah. With terrible living conditions and little to no equipment, the platoon had to juggle improving their fighting positions while at the same time secure the JSB and the AVLB. The company TOC had no kitchen to cook food nor any running water. Soldiers would fill sand bags from sun up to sun down trying to provide themselves with some sort of cover against attacks. The PSG Miller would request supplies constantly, but it seemed a low priority of the the higher command. This was a common theme throughout the time they were in the triangle of death. It wasn't often that officers would visit the FOB or provide supplies to enhance their situation, but when they did it was not a welcomed response. Kunk would come by and tell the soldiers how undisciplined and how little work they had completed with little consideration of how hard the soldiers had been working with the limited resources.

First Platoon had many leaders brought in to try and fix the platoon. Sergeant First Class Fenlason was brought into the platoon as the new platoon sergeant on February 4th, 2006. He was not respected right away because he was one who did not have any combat experience. He was just a desk worker who got brought in to fix the platoon with a cocky attitude. From the Joes perspective he did nothing but “{sit} around smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, and that’s it. He would do patrols once a month to go and talk to some leaders.” They hated

In the next part of the book Frederick talks about continued strife between all levels of leadership and the establishment of the TCPs. There were 6 TCPs, or tactical control points, in the AO. The TCPs went against mostly everything the army trains for by doctrine. They were sparsely manned, fixed positions that the men felt more vulnerable at than anything. They would continue to be the center of many issues that arise in the future of their deployment. With the TCPs adding more friction in the battalion relationship communication lines got more and more strained. Conflict between the company commanders and the battalion commander during garrison time was ten times as worse during wartime. Kunk and the company commanders continued to create a gap in their relationship that led to very unfavorable operating positions for future operations.

Dystopian Literature seems to run along the same guidelines in terms of how the novels are set, and follow a similar chain of events leading to a great bittersweet climactic event. I will detail the similarities between the two novels Fahrenheit 451 and The Hunger Games. There is a reason behind the similarities of these two novels, and other dystopian literature. “The merits of dystopian literature are many.” (Erlich)

James R. McDonough sets a spectacular example of what it is to be a second lieutenant in the United States Army and what it is truly like to lead a group of enlisted soldiers for the first time. Lieutenant McDonough, a graduate of West Point, was deployed as a platoon leader in a small fort with the mission of holding a Vietnamese village out of the hands of the Viet Cong. When he arrived, Lieutenant McDonough discovered that the former Lieutenant and platoon leader of the 2d Platoon, Bravo Company, 4th Battalion, 503d Infantry (Airborne) hardly ever left his

As they began to clear the routes in the AO the casualties starting occurring. After some time had passed all the platoons had experienced many deaths and were starting to lose a lot of their platoon leadership. The mounting pressure of combat combined with the pressure coming down from LTC Kunk communication between the company and battalion level leadership began to digress. With morale lowering with every day and casualty that went by the men began to run the tactical checkpoints that they had set up ruthlessly. They weren’t treating civilian harshly and would even harass them physically. This gave them a notorious record among the Iraqi civilians. Going into December 2005 the men had begun to relax on their own standard operating procedures along the

Fiction books have helped me know why people are so worried about bullying. I have read a book called The Brave when I was in eleventh grade for a free read that showed me how common and serous bullying can be. It has also showed me that our generation needs to learn to have respect for each other in and outside of school so bullying will start to go away. In books that I have read in school in the past that dealt with bullying were far worse than what people consider bullying today. In most cases the bullying is on a very serious level in books now a days and could cause the victim a lot of physical, mental, and emotional harm from what the characters say and do. Bullying inside and outside of school is very serious in this generation both

The bus drops Randy off next to an ice cream stand he used to buy neapolitan cones from in the summer. He 's surprised it still exists, the stand now covered in a tarp, looking to survive the New York winter.

When soldiers are deployed and fighting in conflict, they do not know which day could potentially be there last and will invest many emotions into what they are doing and the people that surround them. These emotions create strong bonds between soldiers and can also lead to toxic environments if the soldier’s emotions are targeted in a negative way. Every day that a unit is deployed they are engaging the enemy through direct contact or indirect fires that are coming from an unspecified location. The book Black Hearts perfectly describes how emotional a platoon of soldiers become while watching their leaders and friends die due to terrorist attacks. The men feel that every mission they go on is a death sentence and that their higher chain of command does not

In life, each person, book, movie, and much more contains a worldview or outlook on life as a whole. Lao Tzu states that a worldview is, “When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad.” Despite the fact that most people, movies, books, and other components in life do not realize that they have a worldview, in reality, they actually do. One specific example of an element in society that contains a worldview, is the action-filled and world-renowned book entitled Divergent. This specific element contains a striking plotline, worldview, and purpose in order to catch the attention of people around the world.