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Crime in Black Hearts by Jim Frederick Essay

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The book Black Hearts begins by painting an awful picture of a crime scene that was reported to 1st platoon Bravo Company of the 1-502nd 101st Airborne Division. The soldiers that are sent to investigate find that an entire family has been murdered, the daughter had been raped, and someone attempted to set the house ablaze, the family had all been killed in a seemingly brutal execution, while investigating one of the NCOs found a shotgun shell which he thought was strange because most Iraqis do not use shotguns. He compiled the evidence to be sent up to higher and they chalked it up as another Iraqi on Iraqi sectarian execution. Then the book takes us to before any of that happened, the book focuses on a battalion in the 101st Airborne …show more content…

The conditions they took over from where atrocious, the unit closed many of the roads to military units because they had taken to many IEDs on them, they had rats in their living quarters, garbage all over the place, and they couldn’t wait to get out, they had a rough time in the triangle and it left a bad first impression on the men of the 1-502nd that they were in for a rough deployment. Going into the deployment Goodwin was still one of Kunk’s favored commanders and was assigned to one of the tougher sectors. Kunk thought that Goodwin would be able to wrest control of the “wild west”. The Bravo Company AO had three main tasks, to secure the Jurf Al-sukr Bridge, man 6 traffic control points, and patrol and maintain quick reaction force should anything go wrong at any of those points. Bravo Company had 3 rifle platoons to get all of these tasks done, each platoon would take control of one of these tasks and rotate between them. First platoon was led by Lt. Britt who was liked by his men and had good control over them. He had strong squad leaders that ran their squads well. 1st squad would be the most trouble, it was led by Staff Sergeant Nelson. 1st platoon was tasked with manning the traffic control points when the first blow to their leadership would happen. There was one soldier who had to accidental shootings within a week of each other but both where cleared as

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