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Joker One

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Donovan Campbell (200)

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“I became amazed at how much my men would tolerate if someone just took the time to explain the why of it all to them.” (275)
The feeling of war is non-stop stress and needed alertness that takes on a soldier, no matter how emotionally or mentally sound they are. Soldiers, by definition, are people who decide to support a cause. This means that they must believe in that cause and think it is worth possibly dying for. But of course soldiers are human. They want to know exactly what they are doing and why. This feeling of being in the loop allows soldiers to know exactly how to execute an order and create a smaller margin for error. They must make split second decisions and wondering what their objective actually is.

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“You can only pretend that you're already dead and thus free yourself up to focus on three things: 1) finding and killing the enemy, 2) communicating the situation and resulting actions to adjacent units and higher headquarters, and 3) triaging and treating your wounded. If you love your men, you naturally think about number three first, but if you do you're wrong. The grim logic of combat dictates that numbers one and two take precedence.” (298)
This kind of feeling of human nature being drowned by the need to complete your objective perfectly sums up the entirety of war and conflict all together. When you become a soldier you must throw away almost all of your natural instincts of fleeing, panic, and wanting to help others, considering that would the difference between life & death.

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"Dear God, please don't let me screw up and get everybody killed."(77)
Soldiers view each other as family. They need to; they don't have anyone else out with them. Accordingly, they look out for each other and will protect each other with their life. Donovan is the leader of his platoon, so he feels responsible for them if anything were to happen. These feelings make Donovan's position especially strenuous and takes a toll on him. Non-the-less, he pushes through these feelings and acts calmly and does whatever he can do to protect his comrades.

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Details characteristics and Donovan's prior training going into combat. His ability to prepare the men for the stress and downright scary circumstances are the reason they were able to be such a effective fighting force and why they were able to keep the city secure.
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Still being used heavily to this day, Ramadi was thought of as an itegral location in Iraq that connected several chokepoints that resided terrorist cells. If it was not for the marines that took the city in 2006, the U.S. would not have been able to respond to terrorist activity as they can now.

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After graduating from Princeton, Donovan Campbell wanted to give back to his country, engage in the world, and learn to lead. So he joined the service, becoming a commander of a forty-man infantry platoon called Joker One. Campbell had just months to train and transform a ragtag group of brand-new Marines into a first-rate cohesive fighting unit, men who would become his family. They were shipped out to Iraq to protect a Iraqi city before a terrorist cell could infiltrate and dissolute into the population. Fighting between the forces began, and this story follows how Donovan reacted and the actions of him and his marines. When conflict did happen, Campbell and company were there to protect the innocent, battle the insurgents, and pick up the pieces.

As commander of a forty-man infantry platoon, Campbell and his troops prepared to be sent into a relatively enemy territory, where he would do all he could do to bring back his marines, men who would become his family: Sergeant Leza, the house intellectual who read Che Guevara; Sergeant Mariano Noriel, the “Filipino ball of fire” who would become Campbell’s closest confidant and friend; Lance Corporal William Feldmeir, a narcoleptic who fell asleep during battle; and a lieutenant known simply as “the Ox,” whose stubborn aggressiveness would be more curse than blessing.

Campbell and his men were assigned to Ramadi, that capital of the Sunni-dominated Anbar province that was an explosion just waiting to happen. After seven months of day-to-day, house-to-house combat, nearly half of Campbell’s platoon had been wounded, a casualty rate that went beyond that of any Marine or Army unit since Vietnam. Yet unlike Fallujah (A separate yet also important Iraqi city), Ramadi never fell to the enemy.

Told by the man who led the unit of hard-pressed Marines, Joker One is a gripping tale of a leadership, loyalty, faith, and camaraderie throughout the best and worst of times.

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The urban landscape of the city did not allow for drone airstrikes to flush the city buildings of hostiles, so soldiers had to search each house one by one. This methodic way of clearing the city proved challenging, and lethal, as several fatalities were caused by close quarters combat(CQC). The constant threat of an ambush also had the marines alert and watching their surroundings. This extreme difficulty is what amplifies this units ability to hold out for so long with such casualties and limited aid.

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In early 2004, the Marines of “Golf” Co took over the city’s pacification and protection duties from the U.S. Army. The leathernecks aggressively patrolled the city streets and crowded alleyways. In the ensuing months the company did well, improving the tense relationships with the city’s Sunni population. Campbell writes, “My job description was twofold: 1) save lives and 2) take lives.” In time, Ramadi earned the title of Iraq’s most dangerous place; however, the day-to-day struggle for the city soon was overshadowed by two headline-grabbing battles in another Sunni-dominated city: Fallujah.

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Campbell’s book is neither about his leadership nor himself. It stands as a glowing testimonial to the “grunts” who Campbell led and eulogizes in his story. The book highlights the natural human, even mystical, admiration shared among warriors.

In a closing chapter, Campbell writes: “Now I think that I understand a bit more about what it means to truly love, because for my men, love was something much more than emotion…. For them, love was about deeds, not words, and as I reflected that day on the love of my men, a thousand small acts came to mind. Love was why Waters gave Mahardy his last cigarette. It was why Mahardy said, ‘F--- you, I’m not taking your last one,’ and gave it back…. Love—laying down their lives for one another—nearly every single day.”

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Drone usage has become the subject for heated debate by both citizen and military alike. Can they be relied on? Is it a smart idea to give a a somewhat independent A.I. weapons while flying over civilians or extremely tense areas? No matter what your stance on the matter is, there is one thing for certain, they are effective at what they do. They support ground infantry in both reconnaissance and taking out bad guys. Without drones flying above our people oversees, we would see less and not be able to preemptively act against a threat. It was through the lack of these drones keeping an eye out for them while they are fighting in the streets that makes Donovan's story that much more heroic.