Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connections in Modern War (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781640125124)

2023 Gold Medal in Biography/Memoir from the Military Writers Society of America

John Spencer was a new second lieutenant in 2003 when he parachuted into Iraq leading a platoon of infantry soldiers into battle. During that combat tour he learned how important unit cohesion was to surviving a war, both physically and mentally. He observed that this cohesion developed as the soldiers experienced the horrors of combat as a group, spending their downtime together and processing their shared experiences.

When Spencer returned to Iraq five years later to take command of a troubled company, he found that his lessons on how to build unit cohesion were no longer as applicable. Rather than bonding and processing trauma as a group, soldiers now spent their downtime separately, on computers communicating with family back home. Spencer came to see the internet as a threat to unit cohesion, but when he returned home and his wife was deployed, the internet connected him and his children to his wife on a daily basis.

In Connected Soldiers Spencer delivers lessons learned about effective methods for building teams in a way that overcomes the distractions of home and the outside world, without reducing the benefits gained from connections to family.

Author: John Spencer
ISBN-10: 1640125124
ISBN-13: 9781640125124
Publisher: Potomac Books
Language: English
Published: 07/01/2022
Pages: 280
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.81lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.10w x 0.56d