"I found myself in a highly civilized world ignoring the Vietnam War . . . . Nobody I knew even talked about Vietnam, making it a very difficult situation to return to."  ~ Oliver Stone, movie director and Vietnam veteran

Imagine yourself, never having left America before and only recently out of school and, suddenly in a foreign land. Now imagine yourself as a heavily-armed, heavily-armored teenager, sweating under 50 pounds of gear in 110 degree heat, having to tell a beaten, occupied people what to do. Imagine not knowing the local language. Imagine having conquered that country, having the war declared “over” and then having the fighting intensify.

What Was Asked of Us, by Trish Wood and Vietnam veteran Bobby Muller, mostly succeeds in putting the reader into the boots of the conquering US soldier on the ground. And then puts the reader into the body armor as occupiers. 

“Most of the time I was pretty calm . . . . At other times I had to be in the middle of a bunch of Iraqis that weren’t doing what you wanted them to . . . . It’s a frustrating situation to have to act outside of your nature,” said cavalry scout/sniper Garett Reppenhagen. “The reasons why soldiers do half the shit they do is mostly out of fear of punishment . . . what motivates these kids is fear of being punished.”

We discover Reppenhagen is among the most reflective soldiers interviewed, one of the more confessional voices in a revelatory book.

Some soldiers admit a thrill of combat. Like USMC veteran Matthew Winn. “I’m glad that I joined and got to see some combat . . . . I don’t think I was ever scared. I know it sounds like a typical guy, but I don’t think I was ever scared. Combat was just something I always wanted to do, and I enjoyed doing that. I had adrenaline--I guess I’m an adrenaline junkie, but it was fun.”

Yet the war eventually took a toll on everyone. As war veteran Hemingway once wrote: “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”

“I started bawling,” admitted Ken Davis. I just started crying. And I said, ‘God, you picked the wrong guy for this job. You picked the wrong guy to be in this country.” Davis found himself at the center of the Abu Ghraib atrocities. He tried to report the abuses to his superior but was told to shut up. “Military intel is in charge of the entire compound,” a lieutenant told him. After the scandal exploded, Davis asked: “I don’t believe it was just a few bad apples. I’m not that gullible. I am not going to be lied to by a government that I would have given my life for in Iraq.” 

Infantryman Joseph Hatcher concurred. “We’re in the country for the oil . . . . There is no connection to 9/11. There’s no reason for us to be there. We’re walking down the street telling people we’re there to help them, and all night long we just kill each other. If I was a citizen there and someone came in and tried to take over my country, take over my city . . . . I would be out on the street with every single one of them.” 

In country from Feb 2004 to March 2005, Hatcher admitted his bias. “I have so many problems with this war and this military, and this government. It’s hard for me to talk about it because I don’t know where to direct my frustration.”

Mostly the frustration spills from the pages of the book, much of it directed at the mission, or lack of one.

“You know, by the time I arrived in Iraq, I realized we weren’t going in after WMD, I was there as a cop, a fireman, a sewage-waste manager,” said Brady Van Engelen. Shot in the head, he survived.

“Our idea was to use the neighborhood people to come out and clean the garbage up,” said Jonathon Powers, about his stint in Baghdad. “It would have cost us just forty dollars a week to pay for trucks, garbage bags . . . . It turns out the CPA wouldn’t give us the forty dollars a week . . . . We kept looking at each other like, what the fuck are we doing? They needed a sewage solution. Forty bucks a week for a fifty-thousand person sector and we couldn’t get it done.”