Welcome back to the Lincoln project I’m your host Reed Galen today I’m joined by Martin penelli the Washington Breaking News correspondent for the guardian us Martin was born in Leeds in the UK where he played rugby for Durham University and Rosland Park FC and worked for rugby news the guardian and the independent
Before moving to the US in 2012 since then he has written about politics books and rugby here in America his work also is included in Sports Illustrated and the New York Times he recently published his first book Brotherhood when West Point rugby went to war which is now
Available wherever fine books are sold today he’s joining me in studio from Washington DC Martin welcome thanks very much for having me thank you very much indeed I don’t understand the game of rugby but I do have some Family Ties um my best friend uh from growing up was a
Rugby player um and my first cousin Pete uh was a rugby player and they happened to be buddies on the same rugby team in college just by total happen stance right and my cousin’s wife was also in uh one of the top female rugby players
Uh in college when she was in school so I’ve always been at best peripherally attached um I was so I the few rugby people I did hang out with at my cousin’s wedding um let’s just put it this way The Hangover just ended like last week Martin and that wedding I
Think was in 2000 or 2002 so um but tell us a little bit about the game um and and then about how you came to find um the West Point rugby team and and obviously guys the West Point is the United States Military Academy at West
Point in um in the Hudson River Valley I believe Martin uh of New York of New York State um but let me just before I even let you answer your first question sorry for the extended monologue when I first saw the book uh I thought you were were talking about rugby players who
Played in World War II and that gives you a sense of when I think about West Point and going to war being a World War II you know buff I go back to the 40s when the truth is is this takes place that it covers really the the the the
Class of 2002 and the 20 years worth of War we had up close so just to just to give you a sense of when I first saw the cover that’s what I thought of but give us the inspiration for the game and how you decided to write about this team
Well the inspiration for the game your your leading there is uh very very appropriate um particular for the American game it’s a game based in colleges uh and based in clubs that people play in after college or it has been for 50 60 years it’s been established Junior school high school
Rugby younger than that is now coming through but it’s very much a college game um I say briefly at the start of the book that rugby almost had its moment a 100 more than 100 years ago when football was becoming too violent and somewhat counterintuitively rugby was decided in some schools particularly
On the west coast rugby was seen as as something that might be more controllable um that moment didn’t happen so rugby stayed bubbling at a college level and most people or a lot of people in America will know someone who played at College will know a relative who played a relative’s wife um
Again as you mentioned with um The Hangover lasting from 2002 for a long time rug rugby and colleges has been a drinking sport or it’s been a sport with a lot of partying uh male and female women’s rugby has been established here longest probably in any country in the
World to the USA with the first uh Women’s World Cup champions it’s very much been a social sport um which is the the background of the team I I found at West Point how I found the team at West Point um is very simple I was as you
Said again in the intro I was playing for rosin Park football club in London coincidentally although not entirely coincidentally a uh an old established amateur Club in England that at that point the top amateur team in England I was playing in the the second and third
Team but we had very good contacts long established at rustling park with the British military uh the Sandhurst uh British equivalent of West Point was not far down the road we played them twice a year we played combined Services teams things like that and one day in March
2002 they uh sanur I think set up the game um they said United States Military Academy from West Point they’re touring they need a game to warm up to play us um R Ros and P were literally jolly good chaps for a game I think that must have
Been said somewhere so went down there we didn’t know anything I was in the emerging players 15 at the time which was um one of the one of the junior teams we went down to the British Military Base Sports ground at older shot not knowing what we were going to
Find uh and found a team of US military cadets I now know subsequently 20 years later obviously uh almost all of them all bar about three were former football players and the ones who weren’t were largely wrestlers so it was a ridiculously tough game um we won but
Afterwards mingled with the cadets in the bar swapped MOS my opposite number who was a 6’8 offensive lineman former Army football player who had dwarfed me I’m 6’4 and a bit but knowing in his his his height he gave me a shot glass we talked briefly we went back to London
They went back off to where they were staying um the reason the game stuck in my head and has ended up 21 years later being a book is I was then working for rugby news magazine trying to make my way in sports journalism in London I was
A self- serious young man I write in the book that I was trying to I was trying to I was telling myself I could write novels at the time while playing rugby that’s what I was doing we’ve all had that dream too we’ve all had that dream
It didn’t work but the rugby one did because I went home and I wrote a diary entry about the game fairly brief but just lodging the thought because that was March 2002 when everyone knew even though even though it was a year out everyone knew that uh the Iraq War was going to
Come uh I just thought I simple thought I wonder what will happen to these guys I’ve played against I knew my opposite number was called Brian I wrote that down it was nothing much more than that but then 10 years ago uh 10 years later
And 10 years ago I moved to New York with my wife who’s American from Cambridge Matt to work for the guardian in its New York Newsroom on politics not on sport started writing about American rugby because I could because absolutely no one else was writing about it on that
Um that Forum uh and after a couple of years writing myself in I I went up to New York one day to uh went up the new the Hudson River Valley in New York one day to West Point to meet the coach who was just retiring uh who was the same
Coach they’ had and simply ask him find out if there was a story to be written about this these 2002 players what had happened to them and I found in the end a profusion of stories you can even say 15 stories which is obviously a highly
Unwise thing to try and complete in a book but the the Salient stories are now in book form I’ve spent eight years on and off in different forms trying to get the book done and now it’s done well uh let me just say before um before we talk
About West Point and the team and the and the and the men mostly men in the story um that you know if you want to take up poetry um uh you know Odes to Nature and all that or just the surroundings your description of the
Trip from New York City up to West Point is is really an Ode to um observation and expression and and I thought that that was important and that that um you know it’s it’s important in writing to show not tell uh and I think just that
One brief passage of of your trip up to West Point um certainly was I thought uh an excellent Exposition for you Young Writers out there or even you old writers out there so you get to West Point I mean you know the long Gray Line you know that I mean look it’s Benedict
Benedict Arnold surrendered it during the Revolutionary War right it’s got It’s got a massive history um you know in the early 1900s uh well let’s put it this way in the in the 1800s Robert El Le you know was at the top of the class us Grant was near the bottom of his
Class um you know the early 1900s they you know there was a class was it 1911 or 1912 they called it the the class the Stars fell on and that was the likes of Patton and Eisenhower and those types um and so it has this long and rightfully
Storied history um that really tracks uh you know the America’s best and worst times um and so and and you know you talk about the discipline and Beast which is the sort of you know if you’re a fraternity guy you think of it as hell week but at the beginning of your
Semester not at the end and and uh you know it’s it’s not it doesn’t lead to more fun in games it just leads to more and more hard work so give us a sense of the atmosphere as you saw it um you know and when you went up there to start
Working on this um and in your mind talking to both the players who were there now 20 years ago um what do you think has changed in the mindset if you can if you can answer this it might be an unfair question of of the average Cadet who in 2002 saw
911 knew war was coming they prepared themselves for that but 20 years on now Martin we’ve been you know there’s been a lot of you know second lieutenants first lieutenants captains field grade officers who’ve seen combat in terms of going up there um I was primed you
Mentioned the description of the trip I was primed for it uh by being a double history grad my first degree is in history my second’s in history of art um which I count history so I was I was I was a sucker for that trip up and I’d
Also done a little bit of research before I went I’d read what Charles Dickens said in 1842 about going up to West Point the the scenery and and the trip and i’ read some um of the classic Memoirs um so I read from the essays of James Suter which I site through to
Eventually to um David lipsky an absolutely American and also um what Rick ainson on the the long gr line so I’d read I’d read I’d read in um and that didn’t quite prepare me for when I actually got to the campus itself which is a remarkable place um as you’re saying all
The all the history that’s there the weight of it the weight of that history I learned actually AP as far as mindset goes I learned later more about the switch actually from Reading not just lipsky which David lipsky from Rolling Stone was living there on 911 he lived
There with the cadets for four years he wrote the classic absolutely American which is indispensable but there was another book which has been totally eclipsed by David lipsky written a couple of years before it’s called um Duty first and it’s by Ed Rogero who is a soldier West Point Professor novelist
Uh prolific writer very good book but it came out before 911 so it’s about peacetime West Point and it’s about um one of the uh grads it tracks goes to Kosovo to do some peacekeeping which is also shown in the in surviving West point the the uh docu um Discovery
Journal um documentary that was made in in 0102 um that’s that was a good way for me to to prepare to talk to these to my subjects about how they went in and how their their lives changed on 91 which they did because they all to varying degrees went there for sports free
Education and service probably for 5 years they would they would have thought not that would be too broad to say all of them did that they all some of them may have had long-term military Ambitions but they were by and large thinking in that way see some peacekeeping serve the country do your
Thing pay off the Magnificent free education which is what the captain calls it in the book and then go out and um on 911 that completely changed for them so their again the book tracks this their mindset the team’s mindset not all of them but most of them was fairly I
Guess a lot wants for a better term gungho in the end of 01 and into 02 the hooker Jim gerbitz hooker being a position I always have to explain that whenever I’m talking America um Jim gerbitz was very much a sort of uh gungho guy a very hardcore guy
Determined to go infantry I think eight or nine of them went infantry in the end went and fought different ways Jim as the book says his career turned out slightly different thanks to a knee injury they went on through some did come out after 5 years mat blind the
Captain saw action in Iraq then came out after 5 years went into the corporate world but some didn’t some carried on two went into Special Forces did multiple tours so they had they had a very emblematic experience of the post 911 mindset now when you go up there uh
Which I did last week I went up for a legacy night for the current rugby team it’s shifted again as you say um one of the main differences in terms of the the the nature and Ethos of rugby that you mentioned is that of uh the current West
Point team who won their first Army’s First National Championship in 2022 first time that’s ever happened uh there was a point there was one conversation with um Matt Sherman the coach I had where he pointed out he pointed to a practice game going on and said there’s one player out there who
Was not recruited for rugby which shows how the game is changing so they’re recruited players they’re recruited athletes they have Varsity status they’re much more maybe it’s it’s not I can’t say you couldn’t say quite it’s an inverse but they flipped to being extremely serious about rugby extremely serious about not
Partying I would imagine because they’ve got a very strict look on uh Spotlight on them uh being an NCAA Sport and as far as the going out into the army goes now you probably have to at the moment head to special towards Special Forces or towards flying I would imagine to
Actually see action as such that doesn’t take away anything from the service a a um army an army player was killed um two weeks ago and a helicopter crash in the Mediterranean with where the the carriers have been have been have been sent it is still a dangerous uh thing to
Do it’s still a very very very serious thing to do but yeah it has the atmosphere I wrote about which carried on for years after 911 has kind of changed I would say just to go back to the historical perspective um you know the 30s the 40s the 50s the
60s right even into the early 70s you know World War II then there’s a break not much of one before Korea right then there’s a break but not but we also have still have a draft right so there’s there’s just a massive military operation going on then Vietnam 8 10
Years right and then you hit that early you know and maybe it’s a little bit analog as Martin whereas like let’s say the class of you know 75 right is probably looking forward to those sorts of things that you’re talking about which is the massive land
War in Asia that was just chewing up men and officers right has come to an end for the most part there are are still depl forward deployed in Korea or wherever the case might in Germany because it’s still the Cold War but the truth is is that the chances of seeing
Actual combat with the exception of Grenada um Panama right until the Gulf War were probably pretty slim and now as you said it’s hot spots it could be syrians it could be you know um it it could be you know like we we’re largely out of a we’re out of Afghanistan we’re
Out of Iraq so you may have to go in but to your point right the the the men who have always been the tip of the spear seals you know Special Forces uh you know the uh the the Air Force Special Forces Marine Force Recon all those like
They’re the ones who probably day in and day out are probably forward deployed and seeing some and again not as you said not to dis diminish the service of anyone but in terms of lying combat day in and day out two or on two or off right we’re seeing this transition now
Yeah absolutely um there’s other uh changes in the um in the rugby West points in the rugby mindset as well the women’s rugby was established there um three years after the class I’m writing about they The Marvelous acronym War women’s Army rugby um they are very very serious um they are perennial uh
National National contenders or challenges um I think they they more than the men have sent some uh more than one athlete to to the Olympic uh training center in California now that’s another thing that’s come in Rugby’s made the Olympics in the sevens and army is a very good place to obviously
Produce extraordinarily fit athletes who have to have to play seventh so the place has definitely changed um I it’s you will get the you get the spectrum of uh opinions on on service with these guys from O2 you get it when you talk to younger Cadets um with these
Guys from O2 when for a couple of times during the book one one one occasion in uh particular there was a reunion staged in Cohasset Massachusetts at the Captain’s House in summer 2021 partly for a reunion and partly to get me there to do some interviews and grab the guys
I hadn’t met in person and that was a revelatory two days for me for understanding uh the military mindset mostly fueled by beer but beer helps you know beer and trust is really does help in reporting I well there’s that famous Latin saying right in buau veritas yes
So let’s talk about rugby as it relates and Sport more broadly as it relates to preparation for military service and there was one passage here that I highlighted it said quote every person despite their differences in size ability speed whatever they all have their jobs and you depend on them to do
Their job and they depend on you to do your job I mean that sounds very military I mean not if a not if a sort of a a good reminder for just any organiz organizational Dynamic you and I have different skills but it’s some way they’re going to fit into the patchwork
Of everything that’s got to get done but in the military even more so and maybe in rugby too yeah one of my favorite bits of uh reading and research for the book I I love bringing this up was uh a British um nonprofit worker called Emma
Sky who was working in Iraq for Ray odono the eventually the commander of all the forces in Iraq and she told um I think it’s Tom Ricks who ended up blurbing me uh she said they were talking about the naming of operations and bases in bag bad and she said you have to
Remember uh US the US Armed Forces don’t do irony it’s AB fantastic because she was saying that it’s true if you look at Baghdad in the name of some of the bases they’re called there’s one that’s called like Camp War Eagle and one called Camp Freedom fob Freedom um Freedom War Eagle
Hope is another one um and the British would probably call them after like a dead dog they found by the side of the road or something because they not really has invested in that yeah that was valuable to me in understanding the mindset but it also came to mind when
We’re talking about what we’re talking about which is um the use of rugby as training it’s at West Point they they’re using rugby to train officers for ground combat it’s that simple they mean it as to to an ironic British mind who treats rugby as as a great game to play a laugh
Of running out with your friends you know very serious when you get to the various levels I managed to sort of scrape into playing like University first team stuff County stuff couple of games in a in a in a professional club’s second team it’s very serious but you
You you’re not using it to train yourself to fight ground combat for your country and at West Point they really are um again Tom Tom Ricks pointed me to an amazing quote um not from a book that he cited uh about the ancient Romans how they trained it’s in the book um
Josephus the historian said it it’s it’s along the lines of he would not be mistaken who describe their uh exercises as bloody battles and their battles as bloody exercises I think I’ve got that the right right way around um you I’ve contrasted that in the book to Mike
Buddy the current Athletics director at West Point saying pretty much the same thing he says uh rugby is ground combat except we get to keep score and um at the end you don’t carry away your dead and wounded well you may carry away some because you may have to with the way
Rugby plays out it’s all about cohesion it’s all about playing for each other it’s all about the weak point is compensated by the strong point it’s all about not letting your fellow Soldier down um as GE again to cite the third source as George Orwell said serious
Sport is war minus the shooting which it is and this is an absolute distillation of it and I found that fascinating to get into that and once having realized that my sort of ironic flip take on it was irrelevant doesn’t matter that’s just that’s just British it was
Absolutely fascinating to to read into that and to watch it and still to watch it in in play these days well and and so a couple of things that were a good reminder um of of the military in particular as you said um infantry combat right um first of all these these
Players as you said the majority of them go into to the Infantry they’re 22 right they’re 22 um I remember when I was a 22y old Martin I was not qualified I might and I still might not be to do much more than like work at a convenience store but here they are
Being charged with the lives of men and women in their Command right in in combat zones as you know too fi great officers and and and we’ll get to some of that and and you know just sort of the the irony of life that’s weaved through all
Of this too um you know they have to go out and do this stuff you know that that like none of us can imagine right you’ve got to pick up a rifle you’re a platoon leader right maybe you’re a company Commander as you get as you get you know
A little bit more advanced but here you have you know whatever number of soldiers it is and i’ I’ve been blessed to have a number of friends who were um more in the Navy and the Marine Corps than the Army but you know I I was always struck by the seriousness
Seriousness with which they took the charge of being responsible for the lives of of their soldiers and or their Marines yeah it’s um that’s precisely it the first uh proper chapter of the book after The after the forward and um introduction uh has follows Matt blind the captain and fullback on his
Deployment to Iraq to mosul and two just south of it h hamam alil in 2004 and it ends up with the point in in mosul where things got hot for in the Battle of mosul for a week and describes his experiences there but he he provided the photo which we’ve printed on each
Chapter has a photo trying to illustrate it and he provided the photo which is of Matt I think in hamam alil standing with a mortar in his hand he’s holding a great big mortar and he’s smiling and he looks about five I don’t mean that derogatory to to Matt
Matt Matt was a you know a superb athlete at that point who’d come out of West Point for four years Captain West Point but he just looks so young and there’s a there’s a soldier standing behind him who looks even younger and that really the kid behind just looking
At the picture here it’s literally right at the beginning the kid behind him at the time couldn’t have been more than 18 or 19 yeah probably was 18 or 19 and that’s what that was another thing there’s points throughout throughout the whole writing of this book which where
It hit me what I was what I was talking about the other Salient one I mean they’re all Salient but um Jim gerits again the hooker Central character in the book for a sad reason um rugby wrecked his knee rugby sent him away from infantry couldn’t complete his
Dream but he found purpose in Convoy security which is about sounds mundane and turns out of course in Iraq to be the most dangerous thing you could possibly do so I interviewed as many members as I could find of the platoon he put together a bunch of Outsiders uh
Cut from other places oddballs they would say themselves that he put together and formed into this security platoon which eventually doing that job cost him his life and that you’re thinking again there that this is a bitterly disappointed 23y old 24 year-old who has seen his army career
Wrecked and then has this chance to re resurrect it and according to all his men and the women who served with him who I talked to did such an incredible job of it aged 24 while embittered well disappointed well delayed doing what he wanted to do and still did it it’s it’s
Tremendously impressive what do you think is the percentage it’s an unfair question mark what is the percentage of something like a Jim geretz whose leadership ability is innate versus what he learned at West Point he would be an interesting character study in that sense Jim because Jim along with a guy called Clint
Alanic um they were two best friends they were right in the middle of the group there’s a couple of other as I’ve described them big dogs CU I was doing a study of sort of group dynamic seeing how they came together Jim was a real I
Use this word all the time because I love it um it comes from Philip Roth he was a real rugby Berserker if you put it that way he was uh his sister described his attitude to to class work and to Athletics at high school as balls to the wall all the
Way uh his coach at high school City had the dirtiest uniform at the end of every training session and he would lead extra training after defeats partying after wins he took that to West Point he very soon dropped out of football because he wasn’t big enough and he was a big a big
Guy uh and he found rugby through Clint and the two of them played four years of rugby which is relatively rare most people come after one or two years or did then and seeing Jim as a leader and whether what’s innate and what’s not I’m not sure if I’m not sure I could
Answer that about innate leadership in him there’s some stuff in there’s a couple of scenes in high school of him leading people around after I think a bomb threat was called in that one of his friends told me about but his his sheer force of personality is what West
Point identified and channeled I think and some younger cadetes younger Cadets have told me on and off record about how they would avoid him at training at training sessions it’s like go nowhere near Jim gerbitz and I know that kind of figure from playing at Durham University particularly and playing at russin Park
At Durham University we had a couple of front row players front row being where hooker and props play the big the sort of suicidally dangerous hard place to play we had a couple of Internationals um one who ended up playing England B and one who ended up playing for the USA
Actually um and when I was a a freshman second row quite good I was sort of being promoted up but not really you know two years younger than them three years younger than them I just stayed the hell away from them at training and as soon as I learned about Jim and Clint
I thought yep stay away I’d stay away the hell away from them and I’d go I’d do anything they told me on the field I’d follow them everywhere and in training I would be very very keen not to be anywhere near them and a few players said a similar thing but Clint
And Jim both developed into by all accounts good infantry leaders really hard guys who would not ask their men to do anything they didn’t do and would go to coin the phrase from uh Jim’s high school days to use the phrase um Bulls to the wool I I think it’s also
Interesting I I’d be curious about this because um just as an aside um you know the uh the the miniseries on HBO banded Brothers I think de vied I think on September 9th or maybe 10th 9th um and yeah and some of these guys would watch this religiously and of course obviously
Um dick wyers um you know in the in the in the book by Ambrose and then in the story um played by Damen Lewis brilliantly um is the is the Infantry officer if you had to serve in a line company you’d wanton as your Co right
And I’m curious if in some ways some of these some of these you know soon to be soldiers at the time saw something like that I said you know what like this is how it’s supposed to be I wonder maybe if art informed life a little bit Yeah I
Think that they they absolutely did they they say in the book barious ones and they they watched Banda Brothers religiously they had it on Loop on their coach when they came to Europe to play us when they went to Normandy um I just put some photos of that on on Facebook
Yesterday the one of the team who I can think might have been closest to a dick Winters character was a guy called Zack Miller um from far west in Pennsylvania a big guy there’s a great story uh from one of his best friends in the book about
Taking him to a party uh at home in New Jersey somewhere and being asked because Zach was huge with great big shoulders and a big deep voice big lad um Jay his friend being being asked literally who’s the Meathead and J Jay saying you mean the Meathead who ended up being the road
Scholar is that the one you’re talking about precisely that oh that’s no me head you don’t know about that guy um there’s video footage of Zack from the a bicentennial event talking to Anderson Cooper towering over him big booming voice and telling him that the most challenging thing he’d done as a road
Scholar a Truman scholar as well uh was funny and and may I just read this passage about about uh Zack quote the most extraordinary student I have encountered during 10 years of undergraduate teaching a natural leader not in the least self-absorbed who puts me in mind of Scholars like day cart he
Also noted that Miller quote would often appear class after week weekend’s rugby tournament with spectacular bruises and cuts sort of a warrior poet yeah who wanted to be um openly wanted to be a senator and perhaps president and was regularly thought of that way
Um he would have I mean it occurs to me now he would have I’m talking about Zach in the past T because Zach died he would now have been very likely a contender for the Republican nomination I guess I’m guessing there about his affiliation but certainly as an old style Republican
Nomination in Pennsylvania for that for that race but let’s let’s talk about Zack and um you know some of the other characters um Clint you mentioned um who made it further but is no longer with us also is that Zack Dy in training he in in ranger training he never made it to
Combat he never made it to Oxford um and it it’s a good reminder um and I know for one of my best friends you know the he was lucky enough to get all his Marines through combat in places like fujia and lost a number of them when their Humvee flipped over right and
So you know whether or not it’s it’s in the in the woods or it’s on a road in you know outside of Bagdad or if it’s in a lake in Texas sometimes life you know isn’t fair and your numbers up and it doesn’t make any sense and there’s a guy like Zach
Miller who has all of this talent to offer the world and the next thing you know he’s pushing himself so hard and the systems in place at the time um weren’t there for him y that was um re reconstructing what happened to Zach you mentioned the lake in Texas what
Happened to Joe Emi and what happened in Baghdad to Jim it’s obviously the hardest work of the book in Zach’s case it’s he died of heat exhaustion um in pre-ranger school actually he was he was trying to he was training for Ranger school there there was a absolutely intractable historical question of why
He didn’t make it straight into Ranger school it’s something to do with failing sit-ups or press UPS nobody can quite say which one it is reports which appear to be a fairly if not completely subjective decision based on the TR B based on the Cadre there right whether
They just decided they didn’t want to give it to you absolutely I went to uh for advice on this to two uh veterans and writers who went through Ranger school um Andrew exom who formerly wrote for the Atlantic uh wrote a book called this man’s Army and is a rugby fan a big
Rugby fan and uh Craig M uh melany who was a road scholar two years before Zach and did what Zach was trying to do he he got through Rangers school first so he could go to Oxford and come back and not have to do it after two years softening up at
Oxford um it’s totally subjective the trainers the Cadre are unfair that’s the point Zach failed something as did two other liut tenants he was with they went off into pre-ranger and then the pre-ranger um experience it’s remarkable cataloging of a of a number of small things going wrong and all just
Adding up there’s a number of small reverses over a few very hot days in Ranger school that even then should not have added up to Zach not being not coming back from Land Navigation not being found immediately and then being found dead but he was um he was found
Out on on the ranger uh pre-ranger School Land Navigation course um died of heat exhaustion it’s it’s it’s a remarkable as you say reminder of you’re writing a book about war and this was just preparation for war in a way it was preparation for preparation for war and
A remarkable awful series of accidents occurred and and Zack Miller would died at the age of 22 right and then you know another one where again life just comes is uh how do you say his last name Emi uh Emi Joe Joe Emi um you know is is from California
He’s down in Texas on a lake on a speedboat and just sort of as a joke jumps off the edge into the lake Eddie never comes back up Eddie Johnson who was the only person who saw him jump because the two guys in the front of the
Boat didn’t see it one of them was driving the other one was looking ahead um Eddie said to me he just thought um you know I think the phas I think the quote was in there it’s like it’s Joey quit around you know Taps without much urgency Taps the guy the
Driver of the boat on on the boat says turn around we going to get get Joey and he just didn’t come up um he he would he had a lot of beer at the time which would have contributed to it but it was just a it’s a the randomness and the
Cruelty of Fate is staggering and talking again then to to Eddie who saw the whole thing but also of course to George Joey’s dad and to Mariann his sister his surviving relatives it’s um it it’s it’s hard to Fathom apart from the sheer randomness of it that
That could have the the way that happened the way just Joey just decided to jump for a joke and that was that it’s it was it was it’s not not easy reporting at all when you’re going You’ started a book based on Rugby and you’re going into these
Areas well no and so let’s talk a little bit about that I mean you you spend a lot of time um with the players obviously you know sometime after their graduation after their service in some cases um and you spend a fair amount of time or maybe a lot of time with the
Famili so give us a sense of of you know what those families felt as they you know heard Zach wasn’t coming back from pre-ranger chaining or Jim who to your point um you know you know I you I think you know given and and I want to I want
To come back to this but given the um the proliferation and I think that is the right word Martin of IEDs in improvised explosive devices which could have been any number of things and got more lethal as the war went on um right the Convoy Duty was probably the most
Dangerous Duty there had to be on a day-to-day basis so how did the families feel when they got this news you you you illustrate the the you know we’ve all seen it in cinema of the car pulling up to the drive so give us a little sense
Of that as you talk to these folks well there when it comes out I mean um between talking to me it’s between 15 no 10 years after Jim died and up to 20 years after Zach died and Jo and Joey died um the process of of a journalist
Turning up to ask you questions about this obviously brings the whole thing back so it there’s there’s resurfaced anger in all three cases there’s anger in in Zach’s case at how it could have been allowed to happen um I’ve seen thanks to the thanks to Zach’s parents
The Millers I’ve I’ve seen the Army uh the Ranger school report which detailed all these little mistakes and the and the various things they were going to do uh afterwards and did do to change the way the course was run in Joey’s case there’s anger and disbelief that he
Could have done that um that he did and Eddie was very brave talking to me because he saw his friend jump and then had to be with Joe’s uh dad George while they were looking they were combing the lake for a day and in Jim’s case it it
Spreads out further and further because um I should definitely say there’s Jim’s parents Ken and Helen who uh they I engage Eng with them very closely lots of interviews they are wonderful warm Jersey Shore people um in a way in that case I didn’t have to do the most wrenching conversation
There because um Ken did it for a Rutgers oral history project uh about 10 years ago I think which I found just in my travels on the web but the in in Jim gerb’s case the ripples go out I mean all all the ripples of all deaths go out
Go out further in J in Jim’s case he was married he had his widow t who is extensively interviewed for the book his sister Kathy um but also his men the survivors uh and as well as well his men and his brothers and among his men it’s
It’s very important not to forget that another man died in that Convoy Dustin yansy the driver of the first Humvee who was um a guy from South Carolina he was uh he died on the operating table there’s some conjecture about whether Jim died on the road or the operating
Table operating table which becomes a um a thing in the book I mean a a literal explanation of the fog of War yes and recing reconstructing that incident through the fog of war was difficult uh traumatic for the guys who were recalling recalling it for me
And they did they went to some very dark places one of them Zack Palmer the driver who was next to Jim and whose whose hand was injured um he was also the medic and his hand was injured so he couldn’t gy straight away he was doing
His uh post round in Florida when I tracked him down and talked to him and he paused the round to cry and paus the interview to cry and it it’s as a lifelong editor and politics writer so not a door kner not a reporter on on familiar grief which in in a classic
Fleet Street education as reporter you would you’d know how to do it I’m not that and so this was raw repeatedly and I felt pushed to carry on and doing it to tell the story properly but also to do all these guys Justice and I hope I did it with Jim’s platoon I
Think I talked to five of them four of um well two of whom were in the Humvee with him um one Alejandra Michelle who was the sergeant in the first Humvee who was who was hit and two guys who came up from behind to to reconstruct as best I
Could what had happened it’s not the definitive version the players have told me there’s loads of stuff in the book they didn’t know there is uh just go it goes off in all directions there is there’s there’s uh I I didn’t get the Army report on what happened to Jim I went through
Freedom of Information processes got two steps on but never got it um it’s very possible it could pop into my inbox any day which might change what we do it also may never do it may just be Bureau it’s almost certainly just bureaucracy it’s not cover up but well and I want to
Get to that in a second the the Army as an organization but I mean so you know you know we talked about Band of Brothers um right we few we happy few uh hen Shakespeare’s Henry VI right um my favorite rendition of it happens to be Kenneth Brana um but I’m sure everybody
Has their own um but you know you you reference uh Sebastian younger who who I’ve interviewed as well um about this Brotherhood and and I don’t want to leave out uh you know all the women that now serve uh and Sisterhood as well of of something that really com nothing
Other than probably combat can really create yeah that’s um I I’ve been very keen to say brother you know this book in future could be called Sisterhood the way combat roles are changed and the way rugby has changed as well um Sebastian younger’s work on what in three books
War tribe and freedom was incredibly um influential for me I’ve I’ve been lucky enough to interview Sebastian a couple of times meet him including interviewing him about cormack McCarthy after K McCarthy died which was sort of well yeah we could do listen we’ll get the three of us together we’ll do nothing
But two hours on coric MC that was like that was like sort of fantasy journalism when I got to do that do that piece um Sebastian’s work particularly tribe because it talks back and forward to the other two books around it really informed informed what I was doing
There’s a point where Mo green the fly half who was one of the absolute uh Al he’s a kind of an alpha male in within the group of alpha males but he’s he’s he went Special Forces finished fourth in his class at West Point when Special Forces was so far as
I understand really one of the trigger pullers um Mo says I was asking Mo what did you find in your in rugby at West Point how did you live with it and he he described how he was a bit iconic clastic towards West Point towards all the official strictures towards the uh
Discipline he said rugby gave him an out for that but he said in rugby I found my tribe that was it it’s my tribe it was a bunch of guys who I could play with exhaust myself with train with drink with none of them are actually um none
Of them get carried away there’s there’s a there’s another very good book that I read in in doing this called um red platoon by Clinton ramisha who fought in the battle that became the subject of uh the movie The Outpost which was based on Jake tapper’s book on the the same
Battle cop keting in Afghanistan Clinton Amisha just came out with a paragraph which I took in full and quoted in the book about how Band of Brothers particularly and Henry V have created this expectation that everybody in a platoon and everybody in a team everybody in a squad will be brothers
And and work perfectly together and of course that’s not true in any group there are people who don’t fit in there are people who are slightly outside it there are people who don’t operate um as purely in interest of the as you’d want everyone’s and and brothers can have I
Mean I don’t have one but a Brothers can fight as as roughly and as awfully with one another as anybody maybe more I have two I played rugby with them at high school and we we we had our fair share of scraps um that Clinton raisha passage was was
As vital to understanding the the Brotherhood as the sort of more um idealistic descriptions around Vander Brothers the the TV series but not in the series itself that’s a very realistic series uh when it in terms of the the people who don’t fit in or the
All the the problems within it um and Y Sebastian y to go back to him is the same Sebastian um Restrepo the film and War the book are just they you know they’re they’re unapproachable for as reportage goes I mean obviously one thing I wasn’t going to do and didn’t do
Was would be go to go to Baghdad because Americans had left by them but also I write politics every day so I wasn’t going to do it so I was relying on that kind of reportage and his work on on men in combat and men when they come home
From combat is I think unsurpassed well and and and just broadly speaking um for all the men and women who have served um and are serving and especially those who have had uh you know real live close quarters combat experience too uh as you know martinon I
Can’t speak for the UK but in the US we often do not do nearly right enough by them uh when they get home and I always think about um the movie The Hurt Locker Jeremy rener plays a a a bomb disposal Tech and the to me this is why Martin
Some directors are just incredible because they can tell a story in three seconds and it’s when renner’s character has come home from Iraq and his wife sends him to the grocery store to get cereal and Katherine Bigalow I believe directed it has this long shot of the
Cereal aisle and it’s 800 kinds of cereal in every color shape everything else and renner’s character just looks at it completely helpless as to what to do and the next scene is him back in the suit in Iraq which is the Rhythm such as
It is and as lethal as it can be of combat of military life of purpose of Brotherhood of Sisterhood is one thing coming home now saying first what am I supposed to do with myself and second Mar whatever compares to that right you know you can have some Outlet you know I
Saw I saw a story the other day that many sort of um you know Ultra athletes right Ultra marathoners all this stuff have some history of trauma in their lives and this is how they sort of account for it but you know it’s one of
Those things and I i’ be curious to see as as you talk to many of these men mostly men who who were officers who you know came home do you get a sense that they have adjusted or do was there a sense of adjustment that you could
Discern I mean you said one of them went Corporate America it’s probably not unusual for for a high- performing West Point grad former infantry officer but what’s your sense of how they readjusted after that I think one or two had problems readjusting I mean it’s not in the book because the book
Doesn’t go that far um you know David finle of the Washington Post wrote the brilliant book um the good soldiers about rust DEA which I use and because that’s where Jim was and then he wrote thank you for your service about what happened to those soldiers the survivors
When they came home that would potentially be another project for me to do um I think in a very general sense it’s it wasn’t easy for some um it was in the the most direct uh expression of this that’s in the book is uh Jim gerbitz coming home on leave not
Long before he went back to Iraq and was killed and Tori talks about driving around Savannah with him uh and him being uh transfixed on every single bit of uh garbage by the side of the road because that’s as Eric Stan says in the book another rugby player that’s what
You were looking for when you on IED clearance or when you’re on uh Convoy route so when Jim was driving to the supermarket to the serial aisle he was looking he was tense he was looking for looking at the side of the road he couldn’t stop scanning for for danger
There is actually there’s an anciliary um tale which you mentioned at the start of the conversation the the look of the book The rugby ball with the dog tags which uh an author friend of mine Charles Kaiser I’ll name drop him because he’s he’s been valuable for
Advice told me in the right while I was in the writing he’s like one of your first battles forget everything you’re trying to do to finish the narrative you are you going to get a good cover because your book has to look good if you don’t like the way your book looks
You’re going to have a problem and godine played an absolute Blinder with the cover it’s a remarkable image that image of a rugby ball with dog tags which uh if readers look closely it’s Jim Gerber’s tags it was thought of by the warehouse manager at godine the publisher up in New Hampshire Dylan
Dylan gray a retired Sergeant two tours I think multiple tours to Iraq and he thought of that and Dylan’s doesn’t didn’t know rugby from from anything um by his own account not much of a reader but he this project came on board and he said hey what about a rugby ball muddy
It up and some tags and I I he I couldn’t fit it he couldn’t have hit it better and in talking to Dylan about his experience of reading the book about guys he didn’t know a sport he doesn’t know guys younger than him has been really educational for how Dylan what it
Did to Dylan to read the book especially obviously the four chapters about the Convoy um it’s been very telling and he’s been very very kind very effusive about it but just seeing his experience as someone who came to this with that that side of experience and having come
Home from it was really really educational for me yeah you know it’s a beautiful cover it’s of course called Brotherhood when West Point rugby went to war um Let me let me zoom out for a second to the Army as an institution um there are a couple of reminders in here
Um and there have been numerous books written about the leadup to the Iraq War and the war itself but you provide a lot of reminding Martin that for all of the United States military their ability the Army’s ability to be the finest fighting force and the most lethal fighting force probably Humanity
Has ever known um it can fight a war better than anybody um the problem comes when they’re trying to hold a peace and often times that’s not the Army’s fault that’s not the General’s fault that’s not the Colonel’s fault that’s not the lieutenants or the sergeants or the
Privates or the Specialists fault and then so they go into this with you know unarmored Humvees right um you know and and then as soon as you know Bremer fires the Army he fires all the civil servants now there’s a bunch of guys out of work with guns and everything at
Their disposal uh you know and now you know artillery shells start to be planted right and and the the you know the Innovation that these guys came up with on how to kill American soldiers uh didn’t stop throughout the war and it went from an artillery shell to
Basically a shaped metal charge that became molten in air and it just cut through a Humvee like butter and you know it wasn’t until they came up with IM wraps and everything else um you know that were shaped in a certain way underneath to deflect the blast um but
You know a lot of this is sort of hillbilly armor right they put a you know halfin she steel sheet on the floor but you saw that too in World War II right they put sandbags someplace because and it never fails to shock and disappoint me and sometimes infuriate
Martin that you know you there’s that old expression that I really dislike which is you go to war with the Army you have yes but isn’t it somebody’s job to figure out what that Army might need before you send them there yeah it is every every player’s experience was
That was the experience of trying to deal with the fight one what next don’t have the right things don’t have the right guidance um sometimes did have the right guidance and and we’re practicing particularly the guys who who served up around mosul when Petraeus was in charge doing counter
Insurgency they had the right approach they did their best um Mo Green tells a story he tells one story of being lucky that he’s small because he could fit in the Humvee with all the sandbags they had to put on the floor because they weren’t properly armored he tells
Another story of a commanding officer wanting to put glass windows in their HQ so it didn’t look like a bunker whereupon when there was a car bomb those windows shattered and lots of injuries came from the shattering glass it’s that sort of push and pull between
Trying to govern and trying to be an an effective fighting force Mo and the guys up in mosul had a better time of it perhaps than others because of that approach that Petraeus had then but then pus was pulled away well also more like more what I’m going to call Friendly
Locals right the cdss are more friendly but because the Kurds had been massacred by Saddam so they were yeah friendly and more friendly more friendly very good Fighters but then when Petraeus pulls out to fua because fuja kicks off insurgents come up to mosul and mosul
Kicks off and you have Mike m Matt blind young Matt blind in in the uh hatch of his Striker going through mosul in his first day in battle wondering what Earth’s going on that’s classic fog of War stuff but the you know we’ve touched on this as well
The lack of uh preparation the lack of equipment really comes down to this is well expressed in this story of Convoy security and Jim gerits and top flight from um 26 forward support third infantry division they were that’s a ramshackle group of people with some Humvees which had guns on that’s kind of
It um they described two or three of them described the training they had uh from Jim before they went in country and then when they got to Q8 and the his way of shaping them into a into a reasonable security platoon but the the training
They got uh when they took over from I think it was second calav was um a left seat right seat drive so one drive with the with the the people you’re replacing where you go around this route in Baghdad where you’ve never been and you
Told watch out for that there’s a gap in the barrier that’s that here’s a place where we always have to watch out right you’re done see you that’s it for these 20 three 24 year old guys who are not in mraps the big cougar and buffalo things that’s again that’s expressed through
Eric Stan Eric sanber as a guy happened upon he’s a 2004 West Point grad who played rugby with these guys so I found him he’s uh engine army engineer he spent a year north of Baghdad on root clearance in using armored personnel carriers which are the same ones they’ve been using since since
Vietnam he just didn’t have I mean literally you go back to you go back to a bright shining Lie by with about John Paul Van and he’s you know he’s yelling at he’s in he’s in a plane somewhere and he’s yelling at Vietnamese officers in
M3s I mean that’s that was 1965 I yeah it’s it’s those things I was I was staggered when I found out those things were that old but um again in in researching that chapter I found a Patrick Coburn reported piece from the Independent mild paper about going out
With the engineers with the sappers and watching them look for IEDs in the road by basically probing the road with metal rods right titanium rods because they’re not titanium rods yeah so it’s like it’s it’s just a remarkable it’s a remarkable and chilling story of how all these
Soldiers in their different ways tried to cope and as you said in the question how they were forced to try to cope because there’s no planning for the after um I don’t go into the politics of the Iraq war in the book um I don’t go
Into I mean I I I give pointers like you said to how the how the road to War uh progress and and obviously how these conditions came about but I don’t I don’t go into the right and wrong I didn’t really go in to it with the
Players much because they all gave me the same answer right or wrong yes no I had my men to look after they’re West pointers it’s not I realized very soon when I started the reporting eight years ago as a guardian reporter that was one of the the questions I had I realized
Quite soon that I could drop it because this was this was a human story it’s not a it’s not a politics story um the Iraq War you know the political side of the political side the blame for for all this is is a whole genre of books um
That’s not what this is this is the story of the guys on the ground on the ground trying to cope well it is a fabulous story um and narrative about about these these men Mo again mostly men and there are plenty of I would say incredibly strong women
Featured throughout as well Martin all right so um if I may let’s fast forward to your day job so tell us Martin pingelly what does the world look like to you as a political reporter it looks like fullon insanity every day um I moved down to Washington to become breaking news
Washington Breaking News correspondent this summer brought my family down I’ve spent it’s the nature of the job I’ve spent most of my time at my desk because there’s so much stuff to keep up with I’ve been to the capital on the White House Shore um I’m not there every day
Chasing down stories with an organization the size of the Guardian I’m at my desk chasing down you know some political books uh grab hold of those but otherwise just trying to trying to cope trying to drink the fire hose yeah I mean there are things that
You know we’ve all been through um you know in any amount of time not only as people who are engrossed or involved in American politics on a regular basis but also just as Americans where there are things that used to happen that would be a scandal right for days weeks months
Years that now just sort of you know go on you know I saw this story it was an not to mention a rival but a an you know a New York Times headline about you know Donald Trump Jared Kushner and you know questions arise about what Trump might
Do with you know his pardon power in a second term like what do you what the hell do you think he’s going to do with his pardon power like you needed you needed a whole news story to write about this like what what were you thinking like everybody knows what the hell he’s
Going to do he didn’t he would if he if he was if he wasn’t worried about getting in more trouble before he left office the first time he would have done more of it um and so I just I guess my question is like how do you how do you
Take something like that where it’s like this should be a scandal and not downplay it as I’ve just done because my opinion is everybody should know that but also like make it you you you’ve used the word salient how do you make the insanity Salient for readers we have
An advantage at the guardian even though it’s Guardian us but we’re we’re tied to a Fleet Street paper obviously we’re part of it um and in Fleet Street no one Minds if you have a point of view we will we’ll report everything accurately we won’t make stuff up but our headlines
Will be pointed and our story selection will be pointed the guardian is a is a liberal paper so in terms of making things Salient I am um quite often showing my readers the bad thing in way and saying here it is it’s it’s the bad thing there is there’s a certain
Latitude for a bit of editorializing in our copy a lot of the time so but but but let me let me ask you that is someone who’s been a reporter for a long time because um steuart Stevens one of our senior advisers said you know the thing that’s that’s frustrated him about Mo
American coverage political media coverage is that you know everything’s this they’re all bound and determined not all but many are bound and determined to show that they are are somehow quote objective Stuart’s question is okay but how do you tell both sides of a lie well that’s I mean
In our case we just say it’s a lie we can do it it’s an advantage we have and there’s a million advantages the times and the post have over us incl you know in terms of depth of resource brilliant of reporting skill and and so forth I wouldn’t say we’re we’re we can’t
Compete with them every day there’s no point try saying we are but we just say it’s a lie we’ve said Trump lies about electoral fraud for as long as he’s been lying about it because he lies we don’t have to go into calling it’s a false
Claim or a falsehood or saying trying to say why he says it we it’s a lie and it’s quite refreshing to be able to do that for us um it’s refreshing for us to point to things like threats to abortion rights and just say that’s just a threat
To to the rights of abortion that’s a threat to guarant freedoms that should be guaranteed we can do it there’s a there’s a there’s an editorializing edge in pretty much everything we do as a British paper as there would be and as as there is in some form for a British a
British organization or a British or organization like the male from the other side of the spectrum they will do the same thing we the guardian will definitely we will claim we’re not as scoreless as as the male for example can be sometimes but we are we are s we are
Serving liberal readers around the world that’s our aim while being determined to be uh objective about the truth it’s a shame that you and I have to spend seven minutes talking about objective truth in journalism but here we are before we let you go where can we find your work um
And where can we find you online if you still Dare To Tread social media you can find me at the guardian Martin py my author author page um you can find me in I still call it Twitter Guardian style guide still calls it Twitter I’m Martin
Pangy um I’m on threads same thing at Martin mangelli I’m on Facebook where I’ve got a I’m keeping going um a Facebook group on the book uh which is proving to be very useful for putting a community together of army rugby players arm my people readers and also a good
Way to keep talking about these players and keep um sourcing material if it goes to a it’s gone to a second printing if it goes to a paperback I’ve got I’ve learned more since it came out because but I’ve met people I found new sources uh new conversations so um go to
Facebook look for Brotherhood when West Point rby went to war there’s an open group to join and it’s that’s where it is all right as always gang you can find me on Twitter @ readed galin on threads and Instagram _ _ LP and on substack atth Homefront again everybody the book
Is Brotherhood when West Point rugby went to war Martin pingi thanks for joining me and everybody else we’ll see you next time thanks again to everyone for listening be sure to follow And subscribe to the Lincoln project on Apple podcasts Spotify Google or however you listen don’t forget to leave a
Five-star review to connect with us follow us on Twitter @ Pro Lincoln and for more information on our movement to join our mailing list subscribe to our newsletter or make a contribution to our efforts visit Lincoln pro. us if you want to message the podcast directly please send an email to podcast linen
Pro. us and if you want to personally join the fight to save our nation’s democracy visit jointhe union. us for the Lincoln project I’m Reed Galen I’ll see you on the next Episode
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