As the war with Iran enters its second week, it’s easy to focus on the abstractions of conflict—geopolitics, strategic objectives, oil prices, escalation risks. But war is never only about nations and interests. It is also about individuals: the people asked to fight, and the families who wait for them to return.
At least six American service members have already been killed in the Iran war, alongside many more from other countries. There will almost certainly be more. Each of them leaves behind a life and legacy: parents, spouses, children, memories, and unfinished plans.
Few understand this more viscerally than retired U.S. Army lieutenant general Mark Hertling. In his new book, If I Don’t Return: A Father’s Wartime Journal, out on March 10, Hertling reflects on the most intimate dimension of war—the fear of leaving your family behind, and the quiet courage required to face that possibility. The following exclusive excerpt begins in 1990, when Hertling, then a young cavalry officer preparing to deploy to the Gulf War, began writing a journal for his two young sons in case he never came home.
His pages carry lessons today’s newest generation of soldiers may come to know all too well. —Jillian Lederman
In the late fall of 1990, I had a premonition that I just might die.
My cavalry squadron had just been ordered to war in Iraq, and our mission carried a blunt forecast: We might suffer over 50 percent casualties. Today, many Americans forget that Desert Storm was not expected to be easy. Saddam Hussein had the fourth-largest army in the world, and they had just fought an eight-year war with Iran. Hussein had also just used chemical agents against his own citizens—the Kurds—in a town called Halabja. Back then, many of us were expecting the worst.
That number hung over the squadron like a cloud. We weren’t overcome with panic—we were, after all, soldiers being asked to do our duty. But I had the sober and nagging realization that my two young sons, then 10 and 7, just might grow up without really knowing their father.
My remedy was to begin a journal, recounting my time in service and my reflections on it. If I didn’t come home, I thought, at least our boys would have my words, know my actions, remember some things about me as they grew.
