Walter E. Piatt, Paktika

Very few serving US military field-grade officers have written books about their war experience.  Only one that I know—Walter E. Piatt–has published poetry.  As fate would have it, then-Lieutenant Piatt and I were roommates and fellow platoon leaders in B Company, 5-20 Infantry many years ago. Back then, Piatt was the crown prince of the “Regulars”—the most competent, poised, and physically tough lieutenant in the battalion.  He just seemed to have it all together, and was rightfully loved by the brass, admired by peers, and respected by troops.  Neither arrogant nor a stick in the mud, he was at the center of whatever fun was to be had and ever ready to turn the most harrowing event into laughter.  I don’t know if he was writing poetry when we were roommates, but I knew he had a thoughtful side in addition to everything else.

Obviously destined for Army greatness, Piatt moved quickly up through the ranks.  By March 2004 he was the battalion commander of the 2-27 Infantry “Wolfhounds” and had deployed with his battalion to Paktika province, Afghanistan.  He since has commanded a brigade and now is an assistant division commander of the 10^th Mountain Division.  But it wasn’t until the last month or so that I learned that Piatt had published a book called Paktika:  The Story of the 2nd Battalion 27th Infantry “Wolfhounds” in Paktika, Afghanistan (2006) that recounts–mostly in poetry–the story of the Wolfhounds’ year in that dangerous province pushed up against the Pakistan border.

Paktika combines short prose passages describing deployment-related events with verse ruminations on the events’ human aspects.  The prose passages are worthy of attention in their own right.  I particularly enjoyed an account of the Wolfhounds’ first battalion-sized operation against the Taliban, a mission marked by mishaps and unexpected occurrences.  Another passage interestingly recounts the Wolfhounds’ participation in the 2004 Afghan election—an event that next to the killing of Osama Bin Laden marks the high water mark in the long war.

But it is the verse that intrigues most.  Piatt’s typical poem consists of 2-4 syllable lines arranged without punctuation over the length of a page.  Not very interested in subtleties of thought and language, Piatt uses poetry to convey in clear, concentrated terms emotions associated with the responsibilities of command and deployment.  One I appreciated (and could relate to, based on my own deployment experience) recounts his anxiety in the wake of the first round of rocket attacks the Wolfhounds were to endure:

     They came
     On a day
     When all felt safe
     The first were off
     Then seven more
     Came crashing in
     Destroying all
     They contacted
     All ran
     And for most
     This was their first
     As they ran
     They clung to life
     Thinking only
     Of surviving
     The next few minutes
     This war
     Became real
     And the soldier
     Realized he was mortal
     As the rockets fell
     On Orgun-E
     (“Rocket Attack”)

The most surprising and endearing poems in Paktika are those written from the point-of-view of others than Piatt himself.  Poems told through the eyes of his wife, his sister, and his Afghan Army counterpart, for examples, demonstrate Piatt’s ability to empathize, to see the mission in terms other than the win/loss calculation of victory.  Sometimes this empathetic ability leads Piatt into bouts of self-exploration.  “Sergeant on Duty” articulates Piatt’s misgiving that his sympathy for Afghans might be a weakness that disqualifies him from being hard enough to be successful:

     The soldier spoke
     And I listened
     He said
     He hated them
     These men
     He cannot understand
     His belief be damned
     God could not help
     His hatred pours
     Each day
     He is here
     These are not men
     They are not humans
     Incapable of feeling
     Not worthy
     Of our compassion
     The only emotion
     He could feel
     Was hate
     Then he looked at me
     And said
     You like them
     Don’t you
     I struggled to respond
     My duty
     Will not allow
     My emotion to speak
     For I see
     A spark
     In all of the them
     I see the man
     Not the differences
     Yet the soldier
     Struck a nerve
     Closer to the truth
     Than I wanted it to be
     Perhaps inside
     There is not enough hatred
     To do
     What I came here to do
     And in the end
     I won’t be strong enough
     To kill
     My fellow man

Such a poem, to me, packs an extraordinarily complex array of emotions and ideas into an extremely compressed space.  The Lieutenant Piatt I knew was never afraid to admit he was wrong or that he did not know an answer.  Such ability is rare among officers; typically most are anxiety-ridden about revealing doubt or hesitation.  But in “Sergeant on Duty” I think Piatt might be worrying a bit too much.  In Shakespeare’s great play Henry V, King Henry walks among his troops at night taking measure of their fears and his own.  It is a quiet, somber scene, but not a foreboding one.  The next day in the battle of Agincourt, Henry leads the English to victory against the French in the face of overwhelming odds.

Could it be similar for Piatt?  I think his ability to take others’ views seriously–reflected in the penchant for turning his encounters with them into verse–is a source of his strength. That the strength is there should be no question.  The testimony of one of his men, recounted in an Amazon review of Paktika, provides the evidence:

“I had the pleasure to serve under Col. Piatt as a Wolfhound in the Paktika province of Afghanistan. It is an experience I will always treasure. I learned more about myself and the nobility of soldiering in that year than any other. I can say that Col. Piatt is an officer who lives his beliefs and leads by example. He was the soldier with the most “wheel time” and the longest time “outside the wire” in the Battalion. In essence that meant he spent more of our deployment in a vehicle, on the frontiers, in the face of danger than any of the soldiers in his command. This behavior goes a long way to inspire an Infantryman who is tired, scared and homesick. Thanks again Sir, No Fear!”

So, strength, courage, and wisdom through poetry.