Review by Booklist Review
The trauma of war often does terrible damage to a soldier's mental and emotional well-being, and the culture within the military often exacerbates the problem. In 2020, two bodies were found near Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Harp's chronicle of a group of soldiers, all of whom were damaged by their experiences in the Middle East, is a tale of drugs and murder and illustrates how such emotional damage can lead to tragic consequences. Harp, an Iraq War veteran and investigative reporter, also shows how colleagues seeking to protect their "brothers in arms" only made matters worse. Poignantly, many of these soldiers were members of the special forces; they were supposed to be the best, the toughest, the closest thing to genuine superheroes the military could produce. But in the end, they are as flawed and as weak as mere mortals. The story also shows that the military needs to redouble its efforts to help those damaged soldiers heal from the traumas of war, to save them and their loved ones from pain and tragedy.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this unsettling debut investigation, journalist and Iraq War veteran Harp delivers a blistering exposé of criminality within the U.S. Army's Special Forces. Focusing on Fort Bragg, N.C., home to Delta Force and other elite military units, Harp uncovers a culture steeped in drug trafficking, weapons theft, and cover-ups. Drawing on extensive interviews and documentation, Harp alleges that soldiers returning to Fort Bragg from Afghanistan smuggled opioids and other narcotics into the U.S., sometimes in collaboration with Mexican cartels, and engaged in reckless, often violent behavior on the base--much of it fueled by substance abuse--that the military swept under the rug. A detailed history of the Army's entanglement with Afghanistan's opium trade and harrowing accounts of drug-fueled parties at Fort Bragg full of racist behavior frame Harp's discovery of a shocking number of deaths on the base: 109 from 2020 to 2021 alone, many of them unexplained. Harp's investigative rigor and visceral storytelling make this a disturbing must-read for anyone seeking to understand the full cost of America's overseas conflicts. Agent: Rafe Sagalyn, CAA. (Aug.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The dark side of one of the nation's top military bases. Harp, an investigative reporter, focuses on Fort Bragg, the North Carolina installation that is home to the Joint Special Operations Command, which the author calls a "secret killing machine" at the center of U.S. counterterrorism efforts. Troops stationed at Fort Bragg, he says, have shown a disproportionate rate of deaths by drug overdose, suicide, and homicide. The book examines several cases involving Special Forces soldiers based at Fort Bragg, veterans living in the nearby community, and civilians in the drug trade. One case involved the off-base shooting of one soldier by another following a drug-fueled weekend. Both the local police and military authorities accepted the shooter's claim of self-defense and, the author says, kept the victim's family and outside investigators in the dark--a pattern he says is typical of cases involving Fort Bragg troops. The high rate of drug use, Harp notes, is in part caused by the reliance of combat troops on painkillers and stimulants to get them through the stress of life in a war zone. When the war zone was Afghanistan--a center of opium production--heroin became more prevalent. Drug dependency continued when troops were rotated home, and a supply network (predictably) arose. The book unflinchingly faults presidential administrations that have ignored the PTSD and devaluing of human life that the "targeted assassination" operations create among troops caught up in a "forever-war paradigm." An unsettling read, the book will nevertheless enlighten anyone concerned about U.S. foreign policy and the role of the military in it. A scathing exposé of drug trafficking, homicide, and suicide in the U.S. military. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
