Phil Klay, Elliot Ackerman & Ben Kesling: A Conversation

Phil Klay is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and the author of Redeployment, which won the 2014 National Book Award for fiction, and Missionaries, which was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2020 by The Wall Street Journal. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. In Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War (Penguin Press), Klay, who served as an officer in Iraq, notes that American identity has always been bound up in war – from the Revolutionary War of our founding and the Civil War that ended slavery, to the two world wars that launched America as a superpower. But unlike during previous eras of war, few Americans have had to grapple with the endless, invisible conflicts of the post-9/11 world; in fact, increasingly few people are even aware they are still going on. But while American military actions abroad may be out of sight and out of mind, the consequences are real. In the name of what, exactly, do we ask young Americans to kill and to die? In the name of what does this country hang together?

Ben Kesling writes for The Wall Street Journal, focusing on domestic security and issues faced by veterans. He has a master’s in divinity from Harvard Divinity School, attended the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and previously served as a Marine Corps officer in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Bravo Company: An Afghanistan Deployment and Its Aftermath (Abrams Press), Kesling tells the story of the war in Afghanistan through the eyes of a unit of men that’s part of the parachute infantry regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division. Bravo Company follows them from their initial enlistment and training through deployment a decade ago and what has happened since as they returned to combat in other units or moved on with their lives as civilians – or tried to. By the time Bravo Company made it home, three soldiers had been killed in action, a dozen more had lost limbs, and an astonishing half of the company had Purple Hearts. Since then two more died by suicide, more than a dozen have tried to end their own lives, and others admit they’ve considered it. Bravo Company is a powerful and insightful account of a war that didn’t end for these soldiers just because they came home.

Elliot Ackerman is the author of several novels, including Red Dress in Black and White. His writing often appears in Esquire, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, and his stories have been included in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Travel Writing. He is both a former White House fellow and a Marine who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. Ackerman left the military 10 years before the Taliban began to close in on Kabul in August 2021, but found himself pulled back into the conflict. Afghan nationals who had worked closely with the American military and intelligence communities now faced brutal reprisal, and Ackerman joined an effort by a group of journalists and other veterans to arrange flights and secure the safe evacuation of hundreds. The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan (Penguin Press) documents the weight of 20 years of war bearing on a single week, the week the war ended. It is a play in five acts, beginning with the initial invasion after 9/11 and ending in a tragic fifth act, a prelude to Afghanistan’s dark future.