Gina Cascone
Mrs. Kappa
Honors American History
3 June 2015
The Long Road Home Every day a child gets on the bus for school, a man or woman gets on a plane to be deployed in the army. Every second someone takes a fresh breath of air, somebody else is taking their last after being shot in combat. Most people would say they have an ordinary lifestyle. They wake up next to the love of their life, head off to their nine to five jobs and come home to a pleasant and delicious dinner. Others, on the other hand, wake up in the middle of a jungle and are lucky to get a letter from their partner from the opposite side of the world and maybe a meal that day. This is the type of routine, common people don’t see typically. In Martha Raddatz’s novel The…show more content… She strived to show the parts of war that average citizens would never believe could happen or comprehend how. The brutal and violent images that have scarred these men will now be seen. Many of Raddatz character in the novel were part of a platoon in the 1st Cavalry Division. It took place during the Iraq war, around the time Saddam Hussein began to take over. This division started with a group of military men working on a sewage disposal. However, things changed drastically as this innocent platoon got caught up in a massive attack. This is when the hostilities began as well as the constant fear these soldiers felt…show more content… She displays to her readers that the soldiers are not the only ones experiencing both physical but also emotional pain. One man in the book by the name of Stephen Hiller, also known as Dusty, went off to war the night he had found out his wife was pregnant with their first son. After Dusty was killed, military officers showed up at Dusty’s wife’s house. She opened the door and before any of the officials could get a word out, she began to scream. She claimed they got the wrong house and shut the door. She and neither does anyone else, want to hear about the death of their loved ones. As one reads, they begin to feel empathy as they understand the pain of these
