Taliban Safari: One Day in the Surkhagan Valley

Taliban Safari: One Day in the Surkhagan Valley

ï¿½We arenâ€™t home yet,ï¿½ Major Paul Darling reminds his team at the end of a sixteen-hour day. â€œTwo more miles and we are done. We have pissed off a lot of Taliban today, and they are going to want payback.â€ Shortly, the major will find himself sitting on a concrete basketball court next to the bunker where the day started so long ago, talking by satellite phone to his wife on the other side of the world. When she asks, â€œWhat happened?â€ there is too much to say. But one day, he promises himself, he will put into words what it was likeâ€“one day in the life of a combat soldier in Afghanistan in 2009.

This is the story of that day. In crisp prose and sharp detail Darling offers a moment-by-moment account of a one-day mission to track down and kill Taliban insurgents in the Zabul Province of southeastern Afghanistan. A rare day-in-the-life narrative that is also a page-turner, his story captures the mundane realities of deploymentâ€”the waiting, the heat, the heavy gear, the 0345 wake-upâ€”along with the high-octane experience of crossing foreign terrain where every turn, every decision might have life or death consequences. The living accommodations, reporting up the chain of command, the bureaucracy, and the almost insurmountable challenges of functioning effectively in two culturesâ€”all become intimately real in Darlingâ€™s telling as he balances the imperatives of his mission and the skills of his men against the ever-multiplying unknowns, the unpredictable and dangerous Afghan â€œallies,â€ and the elusive enemy: the unseen IED and the possibility of fatal miscalculation.

In the midst of the soldierâ€™s everyday drama of never quite knowing what comes next, Darlingâ€™s moments of humor and reflection put the chaos and uncertainties of combat into a larger perspective. The story is about one man and the ethical choices and compromises he has to make as a leaderâ€”a man who has promises to keep: to family; to country; to his soldiers, both Afghan and American; and, ultimately, to himself.

Country	USA
Author	Paul Darling
Binding	Hardcover
Brand	University Press of Kansas
EAN	9780700627844
Genre	HISTORY
ISBN	0700627847
Label	University Press of Kansas
Manufacturer	University Press of Kansas
NumberOfItems	1
NumberOfPages	190
PublicationDate	2019-04-17
Publisher	University Press of Kansas
ReleaseDate	2019-04-17
Studio	University Press of Kansas

Taliban Safari: One Day in the Surkhagan Valley

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