I came to this book in a surprisingly roundabout and atypical way: a rabbit hole of Wikipedia articles. It started with checking out some recent edits on the page of my former battalion, the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, and eventually led to the page for Elliot Ackerman, himself a former Marine and now an author.
I perused the list of his books and immediately felt a call from The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan. That was my war, Elliot’s war; our war. I bookmarked the page so I’d remember to buy it once I inevitably received at least one Barnes & Noble gift card for Christmas.
Christmas came and I went to the store to pick it up the next day. I started reading it that night and couldn’t put it down. I finished it the very next morning, just an hour ago, in fact.
This is not a recounting of all the events leading up to the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the Taliban, but more of a memoir. The author guides us through his involvement in the efforts made by US citizens and military veterans to evacuate Afghans who would almost certainly be murdered by the Taliban once the US completed its withdrawal.
Juxtaposed against these harrowing tales of fear, hope, and despair are the scenes of the author’s family vacation. While he was touring Italy with his wife and kids, Ackerman was furiously messaging and calling every contact he had and even folks he’d never met, trying to arrange safe evacuation for hundreds of people. It’s a jarring switch every time, to go from scenes of chaos and death to fancy dinners in Rome, but it highlights the absolute insanity of war and in particular this war as it drew to its close.
Ackerman also tells some stories of his time in Afghanistan as a Marine and later as a CIA paramilitary officer. He recalls a few missions, including times when friends fell in combat. These stories spoke to me, of course. My own memories of the war flooded back, and I felt anew all those old emotions.
As I said above, I couldn’t hardly put down the book and I stopped reading only twice. Once, when a picture of a blown-up and bloodied Humvee hit too close to home; I stopped only long enough to dry my eyes and pour a double-shot of Bulleit bourbon. Second, to go to sleep.
I was struck by how many of the author’s emotions and reactions to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan I shared. At points, it felt like I was reading something I myself had written. But this was also reassuring, to know that I wasn’t the only one who felt helpless, who felt guilty for not doing more.
That feeling was the most poignant for me, and my biggest takeaway from the book. Ackerman recounts a personal sense of betrayal when he left the war despite friends continuing in it. It’s a choice all of us make, a choice not forced upon some previous generations. For veterans of World War II, the war was over when the empires of Japan and Nazi Germany formally surrendered and peace treaties were signed; in the Afghanistan War, as Ackerman puts it, thousands of individual peace treaties were signed by the thousands of American participants. The war went on, but we who left had finished with it.
It’s a guilt I still feel from time to time. If I’d stayed in the Marines, or re-enlisted as an Army Ranger like I’d once intended, I could have done more. Perhaps I could have, like Ackerman, developed enough of a contact list with important enough people to make a difference in the evacuation efforts.
But I didn’t, and I couldn’t. I wanted out because it was this very scenario I foresaw. After returning from my first deployment, after we buried our dead and held their memorial services, I realized that ultimately it would all fail. I’d seen enough of the war over there to know that one day we would leave, and on that day the Taliban would take over.
I told myself I could get out after four years and deal with the guilt and sadness of that day when it comes, or fight for another four or eight years, let the war take an even deeper hold of me, and still deal with the guilt and sadness when that day arrived all the same.
I chose the former, and I still don’t know if that was the right choice.
The Fifth Act was a fantastic, highly emotional work that takes you inside the mind of a veteran of America’s longest war as he watched it draw to a bloody, chaotic, and tragic end. It’s only about 260 pages and as I have proven something that can be read in a day, if you so chose.
I highly recommend this one to fellow veterans of the Afghan war, or to civilians who wonder what we may have felt in those harrowing weeks of the war’s end.
Peter Martuneac 