Walk in My Combat Boots

This narrative nonfiction work is an oral history composed of first-person accounts from dozens of American military veterans. The voices span every major branch of service, from Army Rangers and Marine infantrymen to Air Force combat controllers, who direct aircraft and airstrikes for ground troops, and Navy corpsmen, who serve as medical personnel alongside combat units. The accounts cover conflicts from Vietnam and Somalia through the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Each chapter is narrated by a different service member, whose biographical background is introduced before the account begins. The book is organized into four thematic parts and a closing coda, tracing the arc of military experience from enlistment through combat and the often difficult return to civilian life.

Part One, "A Call to Duty," opens with stories of service members confronting the chaos of war. Army National Guard medic Mike Levasseur arrived in Kuwait in 2004 to find every Humvee unarmored; his squad leader bartered liquor for welded-on armor. In Iraq, Levasseur treated a 22-year-old soldier who had lost a leg in a bombing; despite his efforts, the soldier died in the ER. Levasseur reflects on the long-term costs of his service: post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), permanent brain injury, and episodes of clearing his house in his sleep. Air Force flight nurse Jodi Michelle Pritchard describes corkscrew assault landings into Baghdad under antiaircraft fire and caring for 20 wounded soldiers on a transport plane. On a later mission, her crew found the front of their aircraft filled with flag-draped caskets; at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, a young girl tugged on Pritchard's flight suit and asked if she brought her daddy home. The girl's father was one of three patients flown back to die. Colonel Mario Costagliola recounts September 11, 2001, when his brother called from the World Trade Center saying they were being bombed. After learning his brother survived, Costagliola drove to his National Guard unit and found soldiers already assembled without orders. Senior leadership told them to stand down, but Costagliola and fellow commanders rolled into Manhattan on September 12 to find a burning crater, gray ash, and the devastating realization that no survivors remained.

Part Two, "In Training," focuses on the paths that bring individuals into service and the preparation for combat. Lisa Marie Bodenburg, an honor student from upstate New York, shocked her teachers by joining the Marine Corps, only to be told women were barred from infantry roles. She pursued the crew chief, or door gunner, position instead, earning top honors at every stage of training despite hostility from male peers. After deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan as a combat helicopter crew member, Bodenburg was diagnosed with heart damage from burn pit exposure and told she would never fly again. Years later, her medical records were cleared and she regained flight status; women began contacting her for advice, telling her she had paved the way. Nick Black, a Johns Hopkins University graduate who failed to qualify for Ranger school by three pull-ups, deployed to Afghanistan with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. After returning home, Black learned that a teammate had killed himself two weeks later, and that more service members had died by suicide than by enemy action; outraged, he founded the nonprofit Stop Soldier Suicide. Special Forces medic Greg Stube volunteered for Operation Medusa in Afghanistan's Panjwayi Valley, the birthplace of the Taliban, where his team was surrounded by 1,000 fighters. An improvised explosive device (IED) destroyed his vehicle, costing Stube half his intestines and his right foot and causing burns over 30 percent of his body. The medic who saved his life was a student Stube had previously failed. During his agonizing recovery, he redefined service as surrender to the compassion of caregivers. Army dentist Ron Silverman, who commanded all medical assets in Iraq as a two-star general, treated Saddam Hussein's broken tooth; Hussein revealed his weapons of mass destruction bluff had been aimed at Iran, not America.

Part Three, "In Country," immerses readers in the daily realities of combat zones. Army interrogator Red, stationed at a prison in Iraq, used a technique he calls the "Needs a Cigarette approach," chain-smoking for ten hours while denying cigarettes to a nicotine-addicted prisoner carrying a letter addressed to a high-value militia commander. The prisoner eventually broke and revealed a weapons cache and the commander's whereabouts. Red reflects on a protégé who killed himself 30 days after returning home and acknowledges his own burnout. Marine captain Andy Brasosky led patrols in Iraq where his unit engaged a speeding vehicle; after shooting it to a stop, they found a dead woman and child inside. A military lawyer insisted on returning to the scene, triggering an ambush that killed one Marine and wounded 12. Corporal Jeddah Deloria, a Filipino immigrant, was alone at a guard post in Afghanistan when approximately 80 Taliban fighters attacked. Rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) collapsed his guard shack, and Deloria took gunfire wounds to his shoulder, buttock, and thigh while his right hand was shredded. He wrapped his mangled arm in his jacket and prayed until A-10 fighter jets pushed the attackers back. He later learned he had permanent partial blindness, ruptured eardrums, and a fragment lodged near his brain's motor control area; President George W. Bush presented him with the Purple Heart at Walter Reed. National Guard officer Nate Harlan faced what became his most haunting moment when a father brought a 14-year-old boy with an unsurvivable gunshot wound to the base gate. Under strict orders not to treat Iraqi patients, Harlan turned them away, a decision he revisits every day.

Part Four, "On the Home Front," examines the toll of service on families and the struggle to reintegrate. Retired master sergeant Tom discovered his old combat uniforms in an attic with his teenage daughter, prompting the first real conversation they had ever had about his service; together they created Eagles and Angels Limited, a business that transforms veteran uniforms into clothing carrying each soldier's story. Former Ranger Kevin Droddy struggled with the loss of structure and purpose after leaving the Army until a motivational seminar shifted his mindset toward helping other veterans. Army veteran Brennan Avants returned from Iraq emotionally distant and drinking heavily; his wife persuaded him to seek help at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), where counselors taught him to move through his emotions rather than avoid them, eventually leading him to disaster relief work with the Red Cross. Marine infantryman Mike Ergo, who survived the 2004 Battle of Fallujah, spent years numbing his memories with alcohol and substance use until a veterans' group and his wife's ultimatum forced him into sobriety; running became his therapy, and Ergo began carrying flags bearing fallen friends' names during Ironman triathlons. Corporal Rory Patrick Hamill, who lost his right leg below the knee to an IED in Afghanistan, reached his lowest point with a pistol to his head; a flash of his children's faces stopped him. Hamill sought treatment for PTSD and dedicated himself to helping one person every day.

The book closes with a coda titled "Memorial Day." Navy Reserve officer Shivan Sivalingam writes a letter remembering fallen friends, including a Pakistani-American officer whose convoy was specifically targeted before he was killed, and a Navy officer who charged an Afghan gunman rather than take cover, sacrificing himself so two teammates could survive. Ginny Luther, the mother of Lieutenant Robert "Bart" Fletcher, recounts how her son was killed not in combat but by a troubled soldier in his own company at Fort Hood who shot Bart when he tried to talk the soldier down. The blue star trinket Luther had given Bart before deployment was found in his pocket. Rather than harboring anger, Luther founded Bart's Blue Star Foundation, dedicated to early-childhood behavioral health training that aims to transform aggressive children into leaders. Across its many voices, the book presents military service as an experience of extremes: extraordinary courage alongside devastating loss, deep bonds forged under fire alongside the isolation that follows, and the ongoing struggle to carry the weight of what was seen, done, and survived.