‘Fighting 69th’ brings story of fabled regiment up to date

Text Size: A | A | A

In 2006, Lt. Colonel Charles Crosby, commander of the 69th Regiment of the New York National Guard, asked Sean Michael Flynn to write a history of the regiment’s recent participation in the war on terror.

The 69th Regiment is based in Manhattan. When it was created in 1850, most of its soldiers were immigrant Irish; the regiment fought so fiercely in the Civil War that Confederate General Robert E. Lee nicknamed it “The Fighting 69th.”

Flynn, who lives in Albany and served as an officer in the 69th, completed the history Crosby requested. It is titled “The Fighting 69th: One Remarkable National Guard Unit’s Journey from Ground Zero to Baghdad.”

Although a military history, Flynn makes two important broader points about the military and America. Problems occur when we do not understand war or what the military can and cannot do. Flynn also reminds readers that, when politicians or citizens make bad judgments, American soldiers will give effort, imagination and sometimes their lives to minimize the damage or make things right.

The first member of the 69th that readers meet is Geoff Slack, who commanded the 69th in Iraq. Flynn uses Slack’s arrival in 1991 as a captain, at the 69th’s armory on Manhattan’s lower East Side, to show the regiment’s proud past, its potential and its low point.

At the armory is a display case with the regiment’s battle flags. In describing Slack finding the case, Flynn notes that America “relied on the regiment so heavily in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that the regiment had earned more battle credits than any other in the world, except the Black Watch out of Scotland.”

Low point

The 69th did not fight in Korea or Vietnam. When Slack arrived in 1991, the regiment was poorly trained, underequipped and had little ammunition.

The 69th’s armory was in a depressed neighborhood. When Slack reported for duty, he walked around piles of garbage and heard “the screams and rants of alcohol- and drug-crazed women who were housed on the armory’s fourth and fifth floors.”

Slack pushes the regiment to improve. Because of the 69th’s Irish beginnings, it marches in each New York St. Patrick’s Day parade. By the 2001 parade, the unit’s soldiers are better trained but not yet ready for action.

On September 11th, after seeing the second plane hit the World Trade Center, Slack sped from his Long Island home to the armory. In this time of fewer cellphones, he asked his wife, Debbie, to call officers, sergeants and key leaders on the regiment’s alert roster from their home.

Slack and his men readied the regiment to respond if another attack came and helped with rescue. They established a cordon around Ground Zero.

When people saw the 69th on duty, Flynn states, they “assumed the soldiers . . . were the Army’s most elite troops.” Yet the 69th, Flynn states “had been written off as a joke, by the State and as a waste of resources by the Pentagon . . . But when the smoke started to clear . . . Americans saw Gotham’s own weekend warriors and the country breathed a sigh of relief.”

The World Trade Center collapse killed some members of the 69th, who were on duty as police officers or firefighters. Their comrades wanted to find the terrorist planners. After Ground Zero, the 69th guarded West Point. In 2004, the 69th was combined with a Louisiana National Guard brigade and sent to Iraq.

Although the unit received training, Slack and his officers worried it was not enough. Men were still armoring equipment minutes before the unit drove from Kuwait into Iraq.

Deployed in Iraq

In Iraq, the 69th was directed to secure Taji, a 110-square-mile community north of Baghdad. To control this area, slightly larger than Brooklyn with 50,000 residents, the 69th had 230 soldiers.

Terrorists in Taji so successfully attacked Americans with roadside bombs that Americans stationed there before the 69th arrived would only patrol to address a specific problem. The rest of the time, terrorists shelled American bases — even the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad — with impunity.

Some of the 69th’s soldiers were former New York City police officers and gang members and they soon realized they were not “fighting an insurgency; they were fighting a gang war.” They got intelligence and every chance they had, they fought. In about two months, they gained control of Taji.

After Taji, the 69th provided election security in Baghdad and guarded the road from the airport to downtown. One of the book’s most moving scenes is a description of Iraqis marching to vote. New Yorkers grumble about politics. But none of us “had to pass through Sunni areas, whose streets were lined with toughs looking for trouble,” on the way to vote.

Flynn shows how much work is needed to make a successful soldier — and successful military units. He offers many examples of how people think combat-ready troops can appear in months after years of neglect. Flynn seems to be warning pacifists and hawks that the country will be in danger if it neglects to affirm, train and equip its soldiers, that we will not be ready when defense is needed.

The book has some military jargon and it is sometimes hard to follow the organization of American units in Iraq: an organization chart would have clarified this.

Human element

Nevertheless, “The Fighting 69th” is highly readable. Flynn does an exceptional job of capturing the human element of warfare. He capably develops biographies of more than a dozen soldiers and officers in the regiment. His complete, complex biographical sketches honor the bravery of these men. The people are not perfect and Flynn presents shortcomings and virtues.

Flynn’s writing has a strong driving pace. When he combines the biographical sketches with a timeline, stretching from the Civil War to the 21st century, the combination pulls the reader along at an ever quicker pace. The story starts quietly but Flynn creates suspense and curiosity, even though we have lived and are living through many of the events in the book.

With the strong, fast-paced writing and its allusions to Irish-American history, this book will appeal to people who are interested in Irish-American history, the military or solving apparently insoluble problems.

---

Get ALL of our news...Click here to subscribe to our online edition, a complete replica of our print edition.

---

comments