Essay about Black Hearts Brigade by Jim Frederick

Among these leaders was Bravo Company’s 1st platoon’s SFC Robert Gallagher. The platoon endured terrible living conditions including no running water and filthy living space. These inadequate living conditions must be met with some relaxation on the standards they were expected to follow. Company leadership viewed this as a bribe to keep the soldiers in high spirits. In reality, they set the stage for the erosion of the morals the enlisted soldiers are supposed to possess. While the morals were being chipped away, so was the original plan the battalion had hoped to follow. Fragmentation orders became a pseudo-standard for the boys of Bravo Company. What had originally started as short-term overnight patrol bases turned into fortified traffic control points with the exception of any form of fortification other than in notion only. Despite the fact that platoon-level leadership requested for supplies they were repeatedly turned down. A major breakdown in the communication between the leadership created a loss in faith in the higher leadership for the lower-enlisted soldiers on the ground. Very soon into deployment, Bravo Company began to experience contact with unseen enemy forces. The enemy was able to engage and plant IED’s and cause casualties while remaining elusive. After the first few casualties within the company, the mission to start set up traffic control points was to begin. While conducting patrols down the road time and time

COL Prescott’s understanding of operational variables (PMESII-PT) and mission variables (METT-TC) contributes to his mission command effectiveness. In Battles of the Revolutionary War (Wood), COL Prescott demonstrates his grasp of these variables by determining the British forces’ strength, the morale condition of his own men and the effective location from which his orders say defend. The 6000 British soldiers’ training and equipment outstrip the colonists in every aspect. To deny the British from seizing Dorchester Heights, COL Prescott’s understanding of the current situation gave way to his effective planning that was effective in his visualization of the defense mission.

As they began to clear the routes in the AO the casualties starting occurring. After some time had passed all the platoons had experienced many deaths and were starting to lose a lot of their platoon leadership. The mounting pressure of combat combined with the pressure coming down from LTC Kunk communication between the company and battalion level leadership began to digress. With morale lowering with every day and casualty that went by the men began to run the tactical checkpoints that they had set up ruthlessly. They weren’t treating civilian harshly and would even harass them physically. This gave them a notorious record among the Iraqi civilians. Going into December 2005 the men had begun to relax on their own standard operating procedures along the

When the men was wounded, and showed weakness the platoon leader gave comfort while getting him the help he needed. And when he wanted to hold another soldier’s hand, no judgment was given, just a hand and consolation. A strong bond had to be there, in the jungle among the grunts to save lives and stop one another from going crazy, as they only had each other.

What was the object of Task Force Baker? What problems might it have had in stopping the insurgency? How did perceptions change both by those in “Pinkville” and by American soldiers patrolling there? How did Bill Weber’s death change things? How did fighting frustrate the soldiers?

They found out they were going to one of the most if not the most dangerous place in Iraq South Baghdad also known as the Triangle of Death. October 2005 2nd Brigade started to arrive Kunk dispersed the Companies: Bravo-West, Charlie-South, Alpha-central, and Delta-North. Kunk assigned Bravo and Charlie who he believed to be his best companies the mission he judged to be the toughest. The relief in place and transfer of authority was quite displeasing many men said that the National Guard unit 48th were quite beaten up and done for. They claimed the men looked beat and scared letting the enemy dictate where they could and could not go and had very little intel on the AO and surrounding areas to pass along to them. As everyone started to settle in to their AO Kunk started focusing on the overall mission to fight the insurgency and support the people and train the IA. Now focusing in more on Bravo, Goodwin took over the Yusufiyah area and was very

Reading this book I found it to be very intriguing. It is a story about men from the 101st Airborne Division’s legendary 502nd Infantry Regiment known as “the Black Heart Brigade. These men were deployed to the country’s worst and most unfavorable location at the most dangerous time. The platoon the book talks about the most would be the Bravo Company First Platoon. They were constantly in a rough patch throughout the entire book, facing constant leadership changed and trying to survive the Triangle of Death. Being in this hostile environment caused many of the soldiers to lose discipline and not even care about life or death for their own sake. Their mentalities were at an all-time low, causing them to do crazy things like rape a fourteen year old Iraqi girl and murdering her and her family cold blooded. It was a tragic deployment and we can clearly see and feel the motions they had during their time in Iraq.

The Providence Journal declared on August 28, 1863, “the appearance of three hundred muskets in our streets in the hands of as many sturdy stalwart Black men was a novel sight in Providence … There are many excellent soldiers in these companies and they are trusty and faithful men.” At the beginning of the Civil War, African Americans were prohibited from enlisting in the United States military. In 1792, Congress ratified a federal law, which banned all African Americans from military duty. However, on January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln passed issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This decree freed all slaves from states that were engaged in the Civil War. It officially allowed African Americans to enroll in the Union Army and the

Writing in the favor of black people has always remained controversial from the very beginning. Critics regard such writing as “a highly conventionalized genre” indicating that “its status as literature was long disputed but the literary merits of its most famous example such as Frederick Douglass 's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass…are widely recognized today.” (Ryan:537) Despite of such severe resistance, writers like Douglass have penned down their autobiography to present the misery of their fellow beings.

About 180,000 African American people comprised 163 units that served in the Union Army, during the time of the Civil War, and many more African American people had served in the Union Navy. Both the free African-Americans and the runaway slaves had joined the fight. On the date of July 17, in the year of 1862, the U. S. Congress had passed two very important acts that would allow the enlistment of many African Americans, but the official enrollment had occurred only after the September, 1862, issuance of the, Emancipation Proclamation. In general, most white soldiers and officers, had believed that most of the black men, who had served in the Civil War, lacked the courage, and the will to fight

Founded on October 15th 1966 in Oakland, California, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was an organization opposed to police brutality against the black community. The Party’s political origins were in Maoism, Marxism, and the radical militant ideals of Malcolm X and Che Guevara. From the doctrines of Maoism they saw the role of their Party as the frontline of the revolution and worked to establish a unified alliance, while from Marxism they addressed the capitalist economic system, and exemplified the need for all workers to forcefully take over means of production (Baggins, Brian). Mao was important to the Black Panthers because of his different stance on Marxism-Leninism when applied to Chinese peasants. The founders of the Black

Black Resilience against Violence Effects (BRAVE) is an intervention that aims to empower Black youth with access to culturally-sensitive, mental health treatment for depression and suicide as well as resources to become involved within the political sector of social justice issues, such as police violence on Black lives. The target populations of this intervention are Black youth in middle school and high school who have shown behaviors in relation to depression and suicide ideation and reside in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and St. Louis, Missouri, regardless of socioeconomic status and gender.

In Post-Reconstruction time, Black Americans were left reeling from the aftermath of the Civil War, and Reconstruction inadequate attempt to right the wrongs of history. They also faced the horror and humiliation of Jim Crow, the terror of the Ku Klux Klan and other like-minded organizations, and the weight of oppressive legislation. These challenges resided in the consciousness of Black Americans at the turn of the 19th century, and carried on into the 20th century.

Frederick starts Black Hearts by showing the readers how there was bad tension between the soldiers and their higher leadership prior to their deployment. This internally means that there was no esprit de corps between the 1-502nd. If there is bad blood between the leadership and their men, it is extremely difficult to gain their trust or respect once you are on deployment. Although they are required to follow orders from their higher leadership, they will be obeying out of resentment instead of respect. A lot of the time, first platoon, Bravo Company, 1-502nd Regiment was respecting the rank and not the person. This is a common term in the military, which Frederick brings to light in the book.

This book got me interested in the citations of the marines in 1st platoon. I would also like to know if the author got injured during the battle. The battle itself is very tragic and horrible, but just knowing how these men had each other’s back was enough for me to want to their about their backgrounds.