Publisher's Synopsis
Eyewitness to War Oral History Series: US Army Advisors in Afghanistan by the Combat Studies Institute makes exclusive use of oral history. This volume is a product of interviews obtained by the CSI Operational Leadership Experience (OLE) project and our Contemporary Operations Study Team (COST). The interviews used in this volume range from a senior officer who conceptualized the idea for Task Force Phoenix, the Coalition Joint Task Force that execute a broad-based training, mentoring, and assistance program aimed at improving the Afghan National Army's (ANA) ability to field mission-ready operational commands, to embedded transition team members assigned to coach, teach and mentor their ANA counterparts. The interviews are in their own words; they provide frank commentary to a range of topics including pre-deployment training, logistics support, poppy eradication (and some of the corruption they encountered associated with that task) and integration of Special Forces with conventional infantry on operations. As the US Army continues its advisory mission in Afghanistan and in other countries around the globe, the relevancy of US Army Advisors in Afghanistan grows and should be on the reading list for Soldiers tasked with this mission. Everybody has a story to tell. In 2005, the US Army Training and Doctrine Command gave the Combat Studies Institute (CSI) the mission to capture some of those stories by conducting oral interviews with Soldiers who have participated in operations during the Long War. In this volume of the Eyewitness to War series, the narratives of US Army Advisors in Afghanistan are unvarnished, first-person accounts of Coalition personnel deployed in support of OEF. Those accounts, because of the immediacy of their production, some of them just months after their return from their missions, will be of incalculable value and service to historians, researchers, media and future generations of Soldiers and civilians to come. The accounts have been only lightly edited for clarity to remove the occasional use of excessive profanity and the rare injurious personal attack. The content and tone of the interviews remain untouched. Contents: Introduction * Interview Abstracts: * 1) Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry * 2) Colonel Dominic Cariello * 3) Colonel (P) Mark Milley * 4) Lieutenant Colonel John Schroeder * 5) Lieutenant Colonel Michael Slusher * 6) Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Stevenson Jr. * 7) Major John Bates * 8) Major Stephen Boesen * 9) Major John Clark (UK) * 10) Major Thomas Clinton Jr. (USMC) * 11) Major Hurel Johnson * 12) Major Rich Lencz * 13) Major Christopher Plummer * 14) Major Douglas Ross * 15) Major John Tabb * 16) Major William Woodring * 17) Command Sergeant Major Jeff Janke * 18) Master Sergeant Michael Threatt * About the OLE Team
