Bravo Company in Black Hearts by Jim Frederick

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 death”. The cities that were in this area were Yusufiyah, Mahmudiyah, Lutufiyah, and notably a thermal power plant that was never finished that housed many insurgents almost like a FOB. Bravo Company was sent to take care of a particularly nasty part of the Battalion’s AO; The north-western-side that encompassed Yusufiyah and the unfinished thermal power plant. Upon arrival to Iraq and to their AO, Bravo Company was to take over the duties of the 48th infantry brigade who was there before them. After riding around with the 48th Brigade to learn how things were being run, Bravo Company started to realize how scared the 48th were to even leave the wire. Any patrols that needed to be done were done in a Humvee that just raced around the area and got back to the FOB ASAP. Once they fully took over their AO from the 48th they started on building up fortifications and doing patrols of the area. One road in particular, Route Sportster, had been giving patrols and Humvees trouble since it was always laden...

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...nd PFC Green is serving 5 consecutive life sentences without parole in Indiana.

Character is defined by the army as doing what is right, legally and morally. This can get to be a difficult thing when other factors come into play. For SPC Justin Watt this was very much the case. He wanted to tell his chain of command what he had learned but he also wanted to be loyal to his brothers in arms. He knew that if he were to speak about the incident, he would lose a lot of his close friends and be judged by a lot as a snitch, something that not easily forgotten. Watt negatively showed his character by waiting a month or so to tell anyone what he knew and when he did he told someone that was outside his PLT and not his own chain of command. Positively though, he did come forward and tell someone because he knew it was morally right to even though he knew the consequences.