Part One, Chapter 1 - Part Two, Chapter 10 Summary and Analysis

Summary

Part One, Chapter 1 - General Stanley McChrystal travels by UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter across Afghanistan on Christmas Eve, 2009, visiting six outposts as per tradition. With McChrystal are his friends and fellow men in uniform, Major Casey Welch, Sergeant Major Mike Hall, Colonel Charlie Flynn, and head of security, Chief Warrant Officer Shawn Lowery. McChrystal, like all of his fellow soldiers, misses home and family. He misses his wife, Annie, and his son, Sam. At the outpost, the garrison of some seventy-five men are initially a little distant and uncommunicative, but eventually loosen up, and get along well with McChrystal and his group. McChrystal meets a young man, whose father had been killed in a raid on an Al-Qaeda safe house in 2005. The young man had since taken his...