Prodigal Soldiers: How the Generation of Officers Born of Vietnam Revolutionized the American Style of War.

• Author: Easterbrook, Gregg

A preponderance of analysis of the Persian Gulf War has focused on Norman Schwarzkopf: an important figure in that conflict, of course, but one who was utterly uninvolved in its actual fighting. Schwarzkopf experienced the Gulf War from an air-conditioned office building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, not being present with any ground unit in combat. (This is standard for a theater commander; Eisenhower wasn't at D-Day, either.) The generals who actually prosecuted the war, such as Barry McCaffrey of the Army, leader of the unit that executed the "left hook" into Iraq, and Charles Horner, who ran the air campaign, have strangely gone unnoticed in the public eye.

Or maybe not so strangely, given how superficially the U.S. media continue to cover military affairs. Schwarzkopf became a press fixation because he looks like a general, says pithy things, and appeared at numerous press conferences in air-conditioned buildings, where he could be photographed conveniently. McCaffrey, on the other hand, had to be tracked down by reporters--a few did, to their credit--while Horner, whose looks suggest your high school wood shop teacher, appears so unlike the stereotype of a general that most journalists would have walked right past him in the hall. It's now almost four years after the war, and the public has heard in mind-numbing detail about the bickering among Schwarzkopf, Colin Powell, George Bush's senior staff, and Congress--but precious lettle about what actually happened to the men and women who fought.

Prodigal Soldiers is among the first books to cover this ground. It concerns the military careers of McCaffrey, Horner, former Tactical Air Command leader Wilbur Creech, former Army Chief of Staff Edward Meyer, and others either involved personally or by influence in the Persian Gulf fighting. By James Kitfield, a longtime military correspondent, Prodigal Soldiers is somewhat top-heavy: All its major subjects are flag-rank officers except for McCaffrey's son, Sean, who also fought in the Gulf. The grunts' view of the Gulf War remains to be written. Nevertheless, Prodigal Soldiers is a solid, admirable work and a welcome change from the big-deal, Washington-based approach to war reporting. Kitfield understands well that what happens in little-known training exercises, in military staff colleges and, most of all, in the personal combat experiences in the early careers of the soldiers who later become generals has far more effect on the ways in which war...