Eleven Days (30 page)
Edmund N. Carpenter II: soldier, scholar, father.
| AOIC | Assistant Officer in Charge |
| AQAP | Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula |
| CACO | Casualty Assistance Calls Officer |
| CBI | China, Burma, India |
| CCN | Command and Control North; one of three detachments under the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam—Studies and Observations Group |
| CO | Commanding Officer |
| DAM NECK | An area, part of Naval Air Station, Oceana, Virginia; home to twelve tenant commands including the Naval Special Warfare Development Group |
| DEVGRU | Naval Special Warfare Development Group |
| DOR | Drop on Request |
| FOB | Forward Operating Base |
| HAHO | High Altitude High Opening |
| HUMINT | Human Intelligence |
| ISR | Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance |
| JAG | Judge Advocate General |
| JG | Lieutenant, Junior Grade (LTJG) |
| JSOC | Joint Special Operations Command |
| KIA | Killed in Action |
| KSA | Kingdom of Saudi Arabia |
| LAR | Lung-activated Rebreather |
| MAC-V | Military Assistance Command, Vietnam |
| MAM | Military Aged Male |
| MBITR | Multiband Inter/Intra Team Radio |
| MRAP | Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (vehicle) |
| NCIS | Naval Criminal Investigative Service |
| NSW | Naval Special Warfare |
| NVG | Night Vision Goggles |
| OODA | Observe, Orient, Decide, Act; a strategic concept developed by John Boyd and usually referenced as “an OODA loop” |
| OSS | Office of Strategic Services |
| PRODEV | Professional Development |
| QRF | Quick Reaction Force |
| SEAL | Sea, Air, Land |
| SECDEF | United States Secretary of Defense |
| SERE | Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape Training |
| SOCOM | United States Special Operations Command |
| SOG | Studies and Observations Group (MAC-V-SOG) |
| SOP | Standard Operating Procedure |
| SQT | SEAL Qualification Training |
| UDT | Underwater Demolition Team |
| ULT | Unit Level Training |
| UBL | Usama bin Laden |
| XE | Xe Services, LLC. A private security contracting corporation, formerly known as Blackwater USA, currently known as Academi |
These works informed my understanding of war and of special operations forces, Naval Special Warfare in particular. This list is not complete. Yet it was never meant to be complete. The four articles were ones that stayed on my desk long after I’d read them. The
Congressional Record
contains references to the JAG memos that Jason cites in his letters.
At the end of
The Iliad
, Priam visits Achilles to beg for the body of his son, Hector. (Achilles killed Hector to avenge the death of his friend Patroclus.) Enemies, Priam and Achilles bond over loss. And so Achilles agrees to give the body back, and to stand down his armies for the time required for a proper burial: eleven days.
Admiral McRaven oversaw Operation Neptune Spear, the raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2, 2011, that killed Osama bin Laden. According to public record, eleven other raids were conducted that night. This story is inspired in part by that coincidence. We don’t know about those other raids and likely never will.
BOOKS
Bahmanyar, Mir, and Chris Osman.
SEALs: The U.S. Navy’s Elite Fighting Force
. Oxford, 2008.
Bowden, Mark.
Black Hawk Down
. New York, 1999.
Chalker, Dennis, with Kevin Dockery.
One Perfect Op: An Insider’s Account of the Navy SEALs Special Warfare Teams
. New York, 2003
Colby, William.
Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA
. New York, 1978.
Couch, Dick.
The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228
. New York, 2001.
——.
The Finishing School: Earning the Navy SEAL Trident
. New York, 2004.
——.
Down Range: Navy SEALs in the War on Terrorism
. New York, 2005.
——.
Chosen Soldier: The Making of a Special Forces Warrior
. New York, 2007.
Counterinsurgency Field Manual
. Chicago, 2007.
Cunningham, Chet.
The Frogmen of World War II: An Oral History of the U.S. Navy’s Underwater Demolition Units
. New York, 2005.
Dockery, Kevin.
Navy SEALs: The Complete History
. New York, 2004.
Durant, Michael, and Steven Hartov.
The Nightstalkers: Top Secret Missions of the U.S. Army’s Special Operations Aviation Regiment
. New York, 2006.
Eversmann, Matt, and Dan Schilling.
The Battle of Mogadishu: Firsthand Accounts from the Men of Task Force Ranger
. New York, 2004.
Filkins, Dexter.
The Forever War
. New York, 2009.
Finkel, David.
The Good Soldiers
. New York, 2009.
Fussell, Paul.
The Great War and Modern Memory
. New York, 1975.
Gormly, Robert A.
Combat Swimmer: Memoirs of a Navy SEAL
. New York, 1999.
Greitens, Eric.
The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL
. New York, 2011.
Grossman, Dave.
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
. New York, 1995.
Hedges, Chris.
War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning
. New York, 2003.
Herr, Michael.
Dispatches
. New York, 2009.
Janowitz, Morris.
The Professional Soldier
. New York, 1960.
Junger, Sebastian.
WAR
. New York, 2010.
Kelly, Orr.
Brave Men, Dark Waters: The Untold Story of the Navy SEALs
. New York, 1992.
Kerry, Bob.
When I Was a Young Man
. New York, 2002.
Krakauer, Jon.
Where Men Win Glory
. New York, 2010.
Kyle, Chris.
American Sniper: the Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History
. New York, 2012.
Luttrell, Marcus.
Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10
. New York, 2007.
MacPherson, Malcolm.
Robert’s Ridge: A Story of Courage and Sacrifice on Takur Ghar Mountain, Afghanistan
. New York, 2005.
Marlantes, Karl.
What It Is Like to Go to War
. New York, 2011.
McRaven, William H.
SPEC OPS: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare: Theory and Practice
. New York, 1996.
Mitchell, Stephen, trans.
The Iliad
. New York, 2011.
Netanyahu, Iddo.
Yoni’s Last Battle
. Jerusalem, 2002.
——.
Entebbe: A Defining Moment in the War on Terrorism: The Jonathan Netanyahu Story
. Tel Aviv, 2003.
OSS Assessment Staff.
Assessment of Men: Selection of Personnel for the Office of Strategic Services
. Scranton, Pa., 1948.
Pfarrer, Chuck.
Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL
. New York, 2004.
Plaster, John L.
SOG: The Secret Wars of American Commandos in Vietnam
. New York, 1997.
——.
SOG: A Photo History of the Secret Wars
. Boulder, Colo., 2000.
Reske, Charles F.
MAC-V-SOG Command History Annexes A, N, and M (1964–1966): First Secrets of the Vietnam War
. Ohio, 1992.
Rottman, Gordon L.
US MACV-SOG Reconnaissance Team in Vietnam
. Oxford, 2011.
Russ, Martin.
The Last Parallel
. New York, 1957.
SEAL Sniper Training Program
. Boulder, 1992.
Sebald, W. G.
On the Natural History of Destruction
. New York, 2004.
Shephard, Ben.
A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century
. London, 2000.
Stanton, Doug.
Horse Soldiers
. New York, 2010.
Stevenson, William.
90 Minutes at Entebbe
. New York, 1976.
Stouffer, Samuel et al.
The American Soldier: Adjustment During Army Life
. Princeton, N.J., 1949.
Tucker, David, and Christopher J. Lamb.
United States Special Operations Forces
. New York, 2007.
U.S. Department of Defense.
The Armed Forces Officer
. Washington, D.C., 2007.
Wasdin, Howard, and Stephen Templin.
SEAL Team Six: The Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper
. New York, 2011.
Weiner, Tim.
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
. New York, 2007.
Williams, Gary.
SEAL of Honor: Operation Red Wings and the Life of Michael P. Murphy, USN
. Annapolis, Md., 2010.
Von Clausewitz, Carl.
On War
. London, 1968.
ARTICLES
Holbrooke, Richard C. “The Smartest Man in the Room.”
Harper’s
, June 1975.
Kaplan, Robert. “The Humanist in the Foxhole.”
The New York Times
, June 14, 2011.
“Osama bin Laden.”
The Economist
, May 5, 2011.
Schmidle, Nicholas. “Getting Bin Laden.”
The New Yorker
, August 8, 2011.
GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS
Congressional Record—Senate
, July 25, 2005, S8772.
FILMS
The physicists referenced in the story appeared in Errol Morris’s documentary,
A Brief History of Time
.
SITES
Text of Churchill’s note to General “Pug” Ismay, First Baron Ismay, on naming missions, can be found at
http://www.winstonchurchill.org
.
ETC
.
The concept that “all ambiguous behavior is interpreted negatively” was developed by Harvard Business School professor Thomas J. DeLong.
ERMISSION
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Alfred A. Knopf: “Sunday Morning” from
The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
by Wallace Stevens, copyright © 1954 by Wallace Stevens and renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
Naked Snake Music: Excerpt from “Dixie Chicken” by Lowell George and Martin Kibbee, recording by Little Feat. Reprinted by permission of Naked Snake Music
Random House, Inc. and Curtis Brown, Ltd.: “Shield of Achilles,” copyright © 1952 by W. H. Auden and renewed 1980 by The Estate of W. H. Auden, from
Collected Poems of W. H. Auden
by W. H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc., on behalf of print rights and Curtis Brown, Ltd., on behalf of electronic rights.
A Note About the Author
Lea Carpenter graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton and earned an MBA from Harvard, where she was valedictorian. An editor of
Zoetrope
and a former deputy publisher of
The Paris Review
, she launched
Think, See, Feel
, where she writes the English Lessons blog as well as being a blogger for
Big Think
, which has two million unique visitors a month. This is her first novel.
For more information, please visit
www.aaknopf.com
A VINTAGE BOOKS
READER’S GUIDE FOR
Eleven Days
by Lea Carpenter
The introduction, discussion questions, and suggested further reading that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of
Eleven Days
, Lea Carpenter’s astonishing debut novel about a single mother and her Navy SEAL son.
As the novel begins, Sara’s son, Jason—on his fifth tour of duty—has been missing in action for nine days, after the most secretive and important special operations mission of his career. Sara’s suffering is compounded by the fact that Jason’s father, David, had died when Jason was only eight and had left them long before that, engaged in some mysterious work overseas.
Though Sara lives alone in a simple farmhouse in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, she has become a local celebrity, with the press corps camped out in her driveway, waiting for word about the son of a man, well known in diplomatic and military circles, who had himself reportedly died to “make this country safer” [
this page
]. Sam, one of Jason’s friends from the “Teams,” has come to live with Sara and see her through this most difficult of times.
The novel proceeds in chapters alternating between past and present, told from either Sara’s or Jason’s point of view, and creating a narrative tension that draws the reader in. Some chapters are devoted to Jason’s incredibly intense training as a Navy SEAL, but it is the ethos and culture of the Teams that Jason finds most compelling—the loyalty, teamwork, attention to detail, restraint, and willingness to sacrifice oneself for one’s fellow team members. The goal is to become not merely a solider but a
warrior
, in the most exalted and valorous sense of that term. In a letter to his mother, Jason writes about the Inner Warrior who knows when to act and when to refrain, a skill that has become increasingly important in the new warfare, often played out at close quarters, in clearing rooms rather than large-scale engagements on battlefields.