Memoir Gives View of Iraq ‘Strike Cell’

Exterminating ISIS: Behind the Curtain of a Technological War. Brennan S. Deveraux. Casemate Publishers. 208 pages. $34.95

By Maj. Gen. Dana Pittard, U.S. Army retired

Brennan Deveraux has written an excellent memoir. His book, Exterminating ISIS: Behind the Curtain of a Technological War, is about the fight against the Islamic State group in 2016 as seen through the lens of a young staff officer. The book takes you into one of the secretive operations centers called “strike cells,” where ISIS fighters are hunted and killed day and night. This also is the story of a man’s journey and transformation from a cocky artillery captain who just wanted to get “his rockets” into the fight to a more seasoned and reflective professional.

From the beginning of Exterminating ISIS, the reader gets a real and sometimes raw impression of the author. In many ways, Deveraux is representative of his generation. He was in high school when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, and he eventually became an Army officer because he needed a job after college.

His job as an artillery officer eventually would become his calling and, in many ways, his identity. He was deployed three times as a company-grade officer. The focus of the book is on his third deployment, when he was assigned to a strike cell in Iraq.

Deveraux gives the reader a glimpse of a strike cell, which controls aircraft, drones and rockets that remotely kill ISIS fighters and support Iraqi security forces on the ground. Deveraux is a rocket-artillery liaison officer in the strike cell. He initially saw his role as an advocate for involving High Mobility Artillery Rocket System rockets in the fight against ISIS. He eventually succeeds and becomes a trusted member of the strike cell team.

In addition to engagements against ISIS, one of the more compelling themes in the book is how Deveraux’s view changes from wanting to kill a hated enemy to feeling some empathy for them as human beings. A turning point for the author was watching ISIS fighters slowly drown in the Euphrates River after the strike cell targeted and sunk their boats. Seeing their deaths in real time clearly affected the author and others in the strike cell.

By the end of his deployment, Deveraux appears to be a changed person—more highly skilled in using rocket artillery, more empathetic, more professional and less eager to engage in future combat.

The book also addresses Deveraux’s redeployment back to America from Iraq and his reintegration with his family. Deveraux discusses how his experience killing ISIS fighters negatively affected him years later. His post-traumatic stress disorder demons are real, and he is not afraid to express his feelings to the reader. 

The book is invaluable in giving the reader insight into a strike cell in combat. It is refreshingly authentic when addressing the feelings and emotions of the author in a combat situation. The book leaves the reader wanting to know more about the other key characters on the team such as the strike director, battalion commander, first sergeant, etc. However, by not revealing the names of these principal characters, Deveraux conceivably is able to be more candid about them in the book.

Exterminating ISIS is a must-read for those interested in understanding the impact of modern technology on warfare, where drones can see everything on the battlefield. It would also be of interest to those who want a better understanding of the fight against ISIS in Iraq as well as the impact of war on its practitioners, whether they are physically fighting the enemy or fighting remotely.

Maj. Gen. Dana Pittard, U.S. Army retired, is vice president of defense programs for Allison Transmission Inc., Indianapolis. During his 34 years on active duty, he served multiple combat tours in the Middle East, including as joint forces land component commander-Iraq. He is the co-author of Hunting the Caliphate: America’s War on ISIS and the Dawn of the Strike Cell.

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Oft-Overlooked WWII Leader Led From Africa to Germany

General Lucian K. Truscott: ‘Quite a Talent for Fighting.' Glyn Harper. Exisle Publishing. 196 pages. $27.99

By Col. Cole Kingseed, U.S. Army retired

Eighty years after World War II, Gen. Lucian Truscott remains one of the Army’s most distinguished, albeit overlooked, commanders. Over the course of the war, Truscott commanded troops at the regimental combat team, infantry division, corps and field army levels.

In a provocative new biography of this illustrious warrior, General Lucian K. Truscott: ‘Quite a Talent for Fighting,' author Glyn Harper explores the background and combat record of the commander whom Gen. Dwight Eisenhower labeled the best Army commander after Gen. George Patton.

As professor of war studies at Massey University in New Zealand until his retirement in 2022, Harper is a prolific author of multiple books on World War I and World War II. Having served in the Australian army and later transferred to the New Zealand army, Harper rose to lieutenant colonel as head of the Military Studies Institute.

Harper is best in describing Truscott’s impact on the 3rd Infantry Division when he assumed command on March 8, 1943. Dissatisfied that standards for advancing on foot did not match that of the Roman legions, he immediately issued an order that, henceforth, the division would march at a rate of four miles per hour instead of the regulation two-and-a-half miles an hour. The subsequent campaign in Sicily soon demonstrated that the commander and what his troops called the “Truscott trot” had transformed the 3rd Infantry Division into the best division in Patton’s Seventh Army. 

According to Harper, Truscott had enjoyed working with Patton, a commander whom he deeply admired, but he was not as keen for his next Army commander, then-Lt. Gen. Mark Clark, commanding Fifth Army. Though he served under Clark throughout the Italian campaign, Truscott found Clark “strange, most strange.” Though Clark possessed “plenty of ability,” Truscott found him “one of the most self-centered individuals I have known.”

To offset the stalemate in central Italy, Allied headquarters conducted Operation Shingle, an amphibious assault at Anzio, some 30 miles south of Rome, in January 1944. By the end of the month, Clark and his immediate superior, Sir Harold Alexander, became disappointed with the slow advance from the beachhead and appointed Truscott to command VI Corps. Gen. Jacob Devers, the senior American commander in the Mediterranean, later stated, “The day that Truscott took over, things changed at Anzio.”

In the ensuing months, Truscott planned and executed the breakout from the Anzio beachhead that began on May 23, 1944. It was Truscott’s finest hour.

Following the capture of Rome in June, Truscott led VI Corps from southern France in Operation Anvil to the Vosges Mountains before returning to Italy to succeed Clark as Fifth Army commander in December 1944. Following the war, Truscott replaced Patton as Third Army commander and served as the military commander in Bavaria.

To his credit, Harper highlights the blemishes in Truscott’s career. He also said Truscott’s “worst tactical error was to use the Rangers to lead the attack on Cisterna at the end of January 1944. It resulted in the destruction of two Ranger battalions.” Harper also asserts Truscott didn’t do enough to transform the 92nd Infantry Division into an effective fighting formation and for not finding a commander who valued and respected the African American soldiers he commanded.

Why has Truscott been overshadowed by other commanders? Harper posits two reasons: Truscott fought in secondary theaters of war, and he eschewed publicity.

He concludes by sharing the key thought of Truscott’s first biographer, H. Paul Jeffers, noting that Truscott “did not give a damn if his name was in newspapers or written large in history books,” but Harper’s biography demonstrates that Truscott deserves more recognition.

Col. Cole Kingseed, U.S. Army retired, a former professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York, is a writer and consultant. He holds a doctorate in history from The Ohio State University.

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Free French Officer Fights Against German Occupation

Général Louis Dio: The Wartime Epic of One of Free France’s Greatest Soldiers, 1940–1946. Jean-Paul Michel and Monique Brouillet Seefried. Translated by Jason R. Musteen. Helion and Company (An AUSA title). 376 pages. $39.95

By Stephen Bourque

Few Americans know that France is our oldest ally, with our relationship dating back to the American Revolution. That is unfortunate, since it is not difficult to argue that French cash, military supplies, volunteers, naval operations in European and Caribbean waters and decisive action during the Yorktown Campaign of 1781 directly contributed to America’s successful fight for independence.

It is a matter of common knowledge that American involvement in World War I was crucial to that conflict’s outcome in 1918. Most Americans also know that in World War II, France capitulated to Germany after a relatively brief campaign in 1940. However, few understand why it happened or that the German army recorded at least 45,000 killed and missing, and another 111,000 soldiers wounded during that period, so France wasn’t exactly a pushover. Few Americans know the story of how the French army recovered and managed to end the war with over 400,000 fighters on the ground in Italy, France and Germany.

 The distinguished team behind Général Louis Dio: The Wartime Epic of One of Free France’s Greatest Soldiers, 1940–1946 has helped correct this omission by providing a detailed examination of the war through the eyes of a young French officer, Louis Dio.

Its authors include Gen. Jean-Paul Michel, who commanded Dio’s former regiment and later served as president of the 2e Division Blindée veterans association, and Dio’s goddaughter Monique Brouillet Seefried, who holds a doctorate from the University of Paris-Sorbonne and served as commissioner of the World War I Centennial Commission. Translater Jason Musteen, a former cavalry officer and professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, has done a superb job of translating the original French manuscript into English.

In 1940, as the war in Europe commenced, Capt. Dio commanded a detachment of camel troops in French Equatorial Africa. This narrative explores the dilemma faced by most officers in the wake of Germany’s decisive victory over the French army in June 1940. Motivated by Philippe (de Hauteclocque) Leclerc, Charles de Gaulle’s appointed military commander, Dio joined the Free French cause. Over the book’s first seven chapters, readers accompany Dio as he serves as Leclerc’s trusted subordinate as they solidify the Free French hold on Cameroon and Gabon and then march across the Sahara Desert and defeat the Italian troops at Kufra in February and March 1941. By January 1943, Force L, Leclerc’s command, had linked up with British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army and guarded its left flank during the advance into Tripoli.

After the Allies drive the Germans from North Africa, we follow Dio as he helps Leclerc transition his command from a relatively informal task force to the 2e Division Blindée (the French 2nd Armored Division) as it becomes De Gaulle’s most prestigious and best-equipped combat unit. After training and reorganizing in Morocco and England, the division arrives in Normandy in August and joins American forces, closing the Falaise Pocket. We follow Dio, now commanding the Regiment de Marche du Tchad (Infantry Regiment) and leader of a combined arms tactical group, into Paris and across France to Strasbourg and the fighting in eastern France. As the war ends in May 1945, the 2e Division Blindée is in Berchtesgaden, Germany, and Dio is its new commander. 

There is much to unpack in this superb book as it sheds light on an aspect of World War II history American soldiers and scholars generally have overlooked. Dio was a resourceful officer, and there is much military professionals and historians can learn in this detailed and fast-moving account of army operations and the political resurrection of France. 

Stephen Bourque is professor emeritus at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. His most recent book is Tubby: Raymond O. Barton and the US Army,1889-1963, an Association of the U.S. Army Book Program title and winner of the 2025 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Biography.

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Getting What’s Needed Where It Needs to Go

Professionals Talk Logistics: Sustaining Strategy and Operations. Edited by Jon Klug and Steve Leonard. Howgate Publishing. 220 pages. $65 hardcover, $29.99 paperback.

By Col. David Dworak, U.S. Army retired

Professionals Talk Logistics: Sustaining Strategy and Operation, edited by Jon Klug and Steve Leonard, is a compelling exploration of the intricate relationship between military strategy and logistics, emphasizing their interdependence in modern warfare. Edited by a pair of seasoned military professionals and scholars, the book provides a nuanced understanding of logistics as a critical enabler of strategy, offering historical, contemporary and future perspectives.

The book’s central thesis is that logistics has always been, and will continue to be, a cornerstone of military strategy. The introduction aptly states, “Logistics both enables and constrains military strategy and ignoring one imperils the other.” This foundational idea is woven throughout the book, supported by historical case studies that illustrate logistical principles and their impact on strategic outcomes. The book is structured into three sections—representing the past, present or future—with each offering a distinct lens through which logistics is examined.

The Past: This section delves into historical campaigns, ranging from Alexander the Great to World War II, to demonstrate how logistics shaped military outcomes. Richard Killblane’s chapter on logistical operations highlights the evolution of strategic deployment, sustainment and retrograde operations, underscoring logistics as the backbone of military campaigns. The Berlin Airlift, analyzed by Ron Granieri, serves as a powerful example of logistics’ strategic impact during the Cold War, showcasing its role in geopolitical maneuvering.

The Present: The focus shifts to contemporary challenges, such as the logistical complexities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine. Kevin Benson’s account of Operation Iraqi Freedom reveals the tension between policy and logistics, emphasizing the importance of sequencing and sustaining forces. Rich Creed’s reflections on logistical literacy advocate for a culture that integrates logistical expertise into leadership development, underscoring the need for combat-arms officers to deeply understand logistics.

The Future: This section is particularly thought-provoking, exploring emerging trends such as artificial intelligence (AI) and contested logistics environments. Matt Evers introduces a theory of the supply chain environment, reframing logistics as a maneuver space that can help commanders and staff better understand the operational environment. Stacy Tomic and colleagues examine AI’s potential to revolutionize battlefield logistics, balancing efficiency with the need for human oversight. Mick Ryan’s narrative on the “Darwin Strategic Bastion” during a hypothetical second Pacific War illustrates the strategic importance of logistical depth, diplomatic agreements, hubs, contractors and automated production lines in future prolonged conflicts.

While the book provides a broad look at logistics and sustainment in relation to strategy and operations, its brevity limits coverage on certain timeless logistics issues. Topics such as requirements determination, over-prioritization and the tooth-to-tail debate are left to other publications. Additionally, the chapters are designed to complement one another rather than build sequentially, creating a thematic rather than cumulative narrative. Most of the content focuses on the operational level of war, with one chapter addressing the industrial base.

One of the book’s most significant contributions is its presentation of logistical “muscle memory” lost by the U.S. military since the end of the Cold War. This loss has profound implications as the military faces the challenges of great-power competition in the 21st century.

The book’s strength lies in its multidisciplinary approach, blending historical analysis, doctrinal insights and speculative scenarios. The diverse perspectives of its contributors make the book both informative and engaging. However, its dense content and reliance on military jargon may pose challenges for readers unfamiliar with logistics or military operations.

In conclusion, Professionals Talk Logistics is an essential read for military professionals, policymakers and scholars interested in the intersection of strategy and logistics. It not only underscores the critical role of logistics in achieving strategic objectives but also inspires discourse in adapting logistics to future challenges. The book is a testament to Gen. Omar Bradley’s adage: “Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics.”

Col. David Dworak, U.S. Army retired, is the provost of the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. He is a career logistician and has taught graduate-level courses in operational planning, military history and supply chain management. He has a doctorate in history from Syracuse University, New York.