Monday, August 8, 2011

Fired Up: The Lonely Soldier

The Lonely Soldier
In The Lonely Soldier, Benedict tells the stories of five women who fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2006.
 
This is a great novel, in addition to a book like this there is a need for another "War Novel," based on non fiction that demonstrates a single woman's perspective or continuous perspective of women in a unit that has seen combat.
The reason I was spurred into action was an article that popped up on Twitter from a magazine called On the Issues.  While I was a Cadet at West Point we had a Book Club for books on leadership in combat and under stress. While the books were those like "Black Hearts" or "War" by Sebastian Junger or "Matterhorn" none of them had a woman officer or NCO I could relate to. All of them made me feel frustrated and inadequate for being a woman and not being able to be the embodiment of what the Army considers the best of the best or the absolute: Infantry.

I own Lonely Soldiers and I asked the Commandant if we could read something like that in the book club as well and his response was politely that he didn't think that book or any other existing book written by a woman or featuring women fit the description he was looking for in a "leadership" book. He said they were too much like "memoirs."
Yes, I thought a war story told from the perspective of those in a unit was sort of like a memoir also... but now I want to know what book could be recommended and how can we get the whole Corps to read it, to understand that women leaders are an important part of today's Army?

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