Greetings From Afghanistan, Send More Ammo
Dispatches from Taliban Country
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4.4 • 83 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
"Raw, direct, and powerful...This work is vitally important."—Ken Stern, former CEO of National Public Radio
As a captain in the Army National Guard, Benjamin Tupper spent a year in Afghanistan. Separated from most of his unit, Ben, along with his partner Corporal Radoslaw “Ski” Polanski, served in an Embedded Training Team, teaching, training, and leading into combat the green Afghan troops. But what they experienced went well beyond the assigned mission, and the war proved to be a mix of drudgery, absurdity, and ever-present dangers.
Writing and recording from a remote outpost, Tupper began to share his stories with Americans back home. His boots-on-the-ground dispatches were broadcast on NPR’s Morning Edition and published on Slate.com’s military blog, The Sandbox.
In Greetings from Afghanistan: Send More Ammo, Benjamin Tupper’s chronicling of life under fire pulls the reader into the realities of war with poignancy, humor, and vivid reality, offering a unique and compelling firsthand view of the Afghan people, their culture, and a battle for survival that began long before the Americans arrived.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This collection of blog entries that Captain Tupper wrote during his year-long deployment offers a scattershot view of the minutia of being deployed in Afghanistan rather than the munitions. In these short entries, Tupper covers such unexpected terrain as the importance of Pop-tarts (as a reward to local children for information), the value of a good haircut (which offers a rare female touch), and the differences between summer and winter warfare. He shares the many nicknames he's earned, such as Captain Prozac, Captain Care Bear, and Ring (short for ringworm), and jokes that importing Italian and Brazilian women to the country would cure sexually-frustrated Taliban soldiers, liberate repressed Afghani women, and ultimately end the war. Tupper hits a somewhat more resonant note when he ponders the careless but successful command mission that made him a hero, compared to his friend "Deg," who followed the rules and died anyway, leaving him with "a sense of remorse that maybe the wrong guy made it home." Once home, Tupper continues his blog, relaying the dissolution of his marriage with sobering tones and touches of the jargon ("We had to embrace the suck") that lends so much personality to this timely chronicle.
Customer Reviews
Good, Sincere War Blog
Before I realized this Afghan memoir was originally written as a war blog it seemed disjointed, fragmentary and at times disorienting. Perhaps, though, that's just the right tone for the "Good War" that has confounded America for a decade. Seen from the seat of his Humvee bouncing high over rugged terrain, blasting through regular ambushes and IEDs with his surprisingly eager and brave, yet still ragtag and unpredictable ANA (Afghan National Army) pupils and comrades in arms, Captain Tupper's war blog is a self-effacing yet swashbuckling portrayal of his tour as an ETT (Embedded Training Team) leader, with indeed a pirate's spirit, detached from the usual comfort, support and protection, but also much of the restrictive oversight from chain of command, of regular US combat troops in that war. This book apparently covers a more innocent period in Afghanistan, before ANA soldiers increasingly began turning their weapons treacherously upon their NATO comrades; possibly because the war was at that time being lost by NATO due to reckless neglect by the Bush administration, the Taliban felt no need for such desperate measures, so relationships between Americans and Afghans, both ANA and villagers, seemed to be amicable. Captain Tupper's modesty is disarming, and the final entries dealing with readjustment to civilian life leave us with the reminder that our returning vets have desperate needs that will demand our support for decades to come.
Outstanding
A frank and honest look at a controversial war that seems to never end. Well worth the read!
Mr
An excellent writing of personal war experiences by someone who volunteered to be "in the arena." Exactly the kind of person this country needs to maintain our integrity and direction. A true leader.