Paul Mehlos

The Poor Bastard's Club: the U.s. Army in Afghanistan Paul Mehlos

This book chronicles my one year tour in Afghanistan as an infantry Non commissioned officer. I spent 12 months crisscrossing the country from Kabul to Herat and Shindand then found my way down south to Helmand province near Kandahar where the war was in full bloom. Afghanistan is a strange and mysterious place where a great deal of history has been made throughout the centuries, mostly bad. It has the dubious honor of being attacked but never conquered by none other than Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the Persians, Tamerlane, The Russians, the Taliban and now us. "Hello?" "Is anyone there?" War is a sad, horrible, tragic, display of man's inability to accept the premise that the subjugation of one by another will not be long tolerated. Someone somewhere will eventually pick up a rock or a stick and bash their oppressor's skull in. Sometimes though, it is in our own best interests to stop the carnage before we get our feet wet. We are here now. To pick up and leave without finishing or at least giving them a fighting chance at their freedom and pursuit of liberty is to tarnish and trample on all of the good men and women who have given so much in this effort. This is a very personal look from the foot soldier's point of view at a tactical level and does not try to explain the larger strategic/political ideals. Hot, dirty, and bloody it is an honest look at war and the changes war brings to the individual who wages it.