Mark Hertling was on his first combat deployment. Were he to die, he wanted to leave a behind a record of what he experienced.
In late 1990 the U.S. military awaited orders in the Middle East. What we know now -- that the ground phase of the Gulf War proved a 100-hour testament to American martial prowess -- was no foregone conclusion. Saddam Hussein commanded the world's fourth-largest army. He had invaded Kuwait because he both wanted and needed its oil. The Pentagon forecast heavy casualties and judged it possible that Saddam would use chemical weapons on U.S. troops, as he had done against thousands of Kurds during the Halabja massacre in 1988.
Among the U.S. servicemembers massed near the berm between Saudi Arabia and Iraq was Mark Hertling, a pensive Army major on his first combat deployment. Like many around him during those months of buildup and aerial bombardment, Mr. Hertling was keenly aware of the fact that he might die. To organize his thoughts, he started a journal. Its entries -- written before, during and after Operation Desert Storm -- now serve as the foundation of his terrific memoir, "If I Don't Return."
Mr. Hertling served as the operations officer of a cavalry squadron spearheading the advance into Iraq. Were he to die, he wanted to leave behind a record of what he valued and experienced for his two young sons back home. While Mr. Hertling believed "that what we're being asked to do is so important, so overwhelming, that if successful, peace will be with our country for some time," he also didn't want his sons to know "the fear I felt prior to coming here."
"If I Don't Return" has a simple but effective structure. Mr. Hertling shares his decades-old journal logs and then follows each with a contemporary reflection. The book's passages spiral out from the exhausted major's days in the Arabian Desert to traverse the duration of his lengthy and accomplished military career. (He retired from the Army in 2013 as a lieutenant general.) The wandering narrative works because Mr. Hertling's journal holds firm as the book's center and essence.
Mr. Hertling captures the on-the-ground reality of Operation Desert Storm. One evening, he and his team got in position to engage two enemy tanks: "We fired several 25mm rounds in the hull -- we thought that would scare the tankers into surrendering. Much to our surprise the 25mm rounds penetrated the tank turrets, and they began burning. We engaged the second tank in the same way and then shot High Explosive rounds at a nearby building that looked like some type of headquarters."
A few hours later, "all hell broke loose. Canisters began popping overhead, and hundreds of small bomblets were falling all over our position." It was an artillery attack, friendly fire, "a roar of sound and senses and light." Many soldiers suffered injuries from the incident but luckily none was killed.
"If I Don't Return" mostly steers clear of platitudes, a professional hazard for any career military officer. Nor does it offer the prescriptive guidance found in the ever-swelling genre of self-help books peddled by former special operators. The wisdom in Mr. Hertling's book is quiet, understated, intentionally crafted as paternal counsel.
Both of Mr. Hertling's sons grew up to become Army officers, deploying multiple times to Iraq and elsewhere. (I belonged to the same ROTC battalion as Mr. Hertling's eldest; he once spent a long afternoon teaching me how to march.) Military service in 21st-century America has increasingly become a family trade -- according to Pew, 70% of new recruits report a family member serving before them, one factor among many in a widening civilian-military divide.
Mr. Hertling would return to the Middle East repeatedly over the course of the terror wars, living firsthand the "pendulum swing between expeditionary and enduring" that would dog the U.S. armed forces across two decades. "From cavalry major to deputy commander to division general, I didn't just fight in Iraq -- I grew up there," he reflects.
In one of the book's most striking entries, Mr. Hertling admits to lying in his journal. Days after the friendly fire mishap, he and his unit were tasked with clearing bunkers on foot. They believed the war was over and got sloppy. Left by himself, Mr. Hertling stumbled across a forgotten enemy soldier in hiding. In the journal, Mr. Hertling was able to detain the man. In reality, he killed him as the Iraqi was raising his weapon. The lie about what happened was for his family and perhaps for himself as well.
"That single act," Mr. Hertling writes, "the only time I killed another human being at such close range -- haunted me in ways the destruction of Iraqi tanks, brigades, or divisions never did. . . . This was not distant. This was intimate, visceral, and undeniable."
Mr. Hertling didn't return home after Saddam's defeat in 1991. In the liminal space after combat, Mr. Hertling played volleyball with Iraqi deserters. A group of American soldiers found rotting corpses in the desert that had been left there for weeks. They buried them as no one else was around to do it. Returning from war is never clean nor quick.
Mr. Hertling hoped after the Gulf War "that Iraq was behind us." History unraveled otherwise, of course. Regardless, Operation Desert Storm was a decisive victory, in part thanks to resolute and thoughtful leaders such as Mr. Hertling. Such triumphs are rare in modern warfare. It is worth remembering that even victories come burdened with the drag of unforeseen consequences.