The Book: A Soldier’s Promise, by Daniel Hendrex
The Story: First Sergeant Daniel Hendrex was deployed to Iraq shortly after the the overthrow of Sadam Hussian. He had been around the block in war zone situations and while he was bummed to have to leave his wife for a year, he was excited to be part of the action. He was ready to defend his country.
When he got there, things were so much more bleak than he had anticipated. The group of men that he was with was amazing but they realized that they were up against something that was tougher than they had anticipated. The real issue was that the terrorist groups covered for each other and killed people who didn’t so it was nearly impossible to catch the men in charge of the uprising.
One day, a fourteen year old boy named Jamil came up to the guards at the base and told them to arrest him. They were totally suspicious. They took him in and he came out with all this info. Turns out his dad was heavily involved in the insurgency and Jamil wanted to turn him in. His dad had been trying to get Jamil to fight, but Jamil felt like it was wrong and he just couldn’t do it. The US military raided Jamil’s family’s house and got his dad. From that point on, Jamil pretty much had a target painted on him. He lived in the American base and would go for rides and point out high-ranking members of the insurgency just walking down the street. He became a valuable tool for the American military, but at the same time cut himself off from his family and his country.
At the end of Daniel’s deployment, he was sad to have to leave Jamil there. He made him a promise that he would do everything he could to get him out of Iraq and into safety. This turned out to be a much harder task than Daniel ever would have thought, but after all of Jamil’s sacrifice, it was worth it.
What I Thought: My mom gave me this book with the comment that it was an amazing story but that it wasn’t very well written. It’s hard for me to convince myself to read a book that isn’t well written so this one sat on my shelf for several years before I decided to read it. I was just in the mood for some non-fiction and I decided to read this one. Turns out her review was spot on.
It truly is an amazing story. Sometimes it is hard for me to believe that all of this is going on at the same time as my life. It’s crazy for me to think that there are countries that are war-torn, fathers that teach their kids to kill soldiers, and places where hearing bombs every night is the norm. It’s also hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that American men and women give up the coziness of our lives here to go over and try to mend the situation. The whole time I was reading, I really had to remind myself that this happened very recently and is still happening today.
I was truly moved by Daniel’s dedication to get Jamil out of Iraq. Through the first part of the book, Daniel kind of got on my nerves. He is a long-time military man and just came off as kind of smug. He had a really caviler way of talking about death and killing that was kind of off-putting to me. As the book progressed and he got to know Jamil and really open his heart to him, I was really touched by how quick he was to take on a large amount of work to fulfill the promise he had made to him. Good stuff.
Like my mom warned me though, the writing wasn’t great. It was choppy and repetitive and I felt like it just got way too into the “they shot us on this street then we took the offensive and blah blah blah”…. maybe it’s because I’m a girl but war play-by-plays are totally lost on me. I also felt like maybe a chart should have been put in the front of the book with the chain of command. He would through out titles and expect me to know what that meant. I don’t know if a First Officer would have been under his authority or over him. I think this a lot about military books. It seems like eventually I’d figure all that out, but my brain can’t get it. A chart would help.
For a book with such a heavy subject, it was a really easy, quick read. I read it in just a couple of days and was totally intrigued the whole time. There was a lot of suspense going on and I just got so attached to Jamil that I wanted to know what happened to him. I’m going to click around on Google once I’m done writing this and see where he ended up. I’ll let you know if I find out something amazing.
Conclusion: I think that this would be a great audiobook to listen to on a car trip with your significant other. Men and women will enjoy this story equally and it’s light enough that you can read it and chat a little bit. Not the greatest war memoir I’ve ever read, but seriously an incredible story that is worth a couple days’ reading time.