One Afghan village and one Marine platoon add up to high casualties and a gripping tale

In the preface to “One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War,” Bing West announces that “this is my sixth and final book about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

If so, West has clearly left the best for last: a gripping, boot-level account of Marines in Afghanistan during the bloody struggle with Taliban fighters over an obscure village called Sangin.

When the longest war in U.S. history is finished (or at least U.S. involvement in it), “One Million Steps” may well stand as the classic grunt’s account of that war, assigned each day to find the elusive enemy and kill him.

West knows the Corps. A Marine officer in Vietnam, he was an assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration. His style is narrative, almost novelistic, capturing personalities of individual Marines and their roles in the platoon. His reporting comes from patrols in an area infested with buried bombs and “murder holes” cut into mud houses by Taliban snipers.

We meet 3rd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment, which suffered more than any other Marine battalion in Afghanistan: 25 killed in combat, more than 200 wounded (resulting in two dozen amputations) from fall 2010 to spring 2011.

West’s respect for the young Marines is balanced by a withering disdain for much of their top commanders.

“The platoon had depth of leadership,” West writes. “Like wolves, they become accustomed to the routine of the hunt. When a leader goes down, another must step forward, be accepted, and be followed.”

As casualties mounted, the defense secretary offered to allow the Marines to withdraw. Marine generals refused.

A sergeant explained: “It didn’t matter how hard the next fight was. Our attitude was, you killed one of us, we kill 20 of you.”

“One Million Steps” is shorter than some of West’s other books, including “No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah” and “The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan.” His approach here is pointillist, sharp colors that blend into a cohesive picture.

To West, the U.S. strategy of nation-building, of winning hearts and minds, and trying to buck up the Afghan government is folly.

Sangin is a Taliban stronghold where farmers grow the poppy crop used to make heroin and provide profits to support the insurgency against the government in far-distant Kabul. Taliban fighters enjoyed sanctuary in nearby Pakistan. According to West, “Sangin was the inevitable overreach of a strategy blindly willful and excessively ambitious.”

He predicts a quick collapse by the Afghan army once the United States departs on the timetable declared by the president: “What a tangled web we weave when we deceive ourselves. The war didn’t end because Mr. Obama quit.”

West’s gloomy prediction aside, “One Million Steps” is not about foreign policy. It’s about young men like Sgt. Matthew Abbate, 26, a sniper who fought bravely, “always leading from the front,” but who was killed by friendly fire and posthumously awarded the Navy Cross.

“Any grunt who is not a fatalist is foolish,” West writes. “Death is as random as it is unexplainable. If you’re very skillful — like Matt — you might tilt the odds a little, but not much.”

This story was originally published November 14, 2014 at 6:00 AM with the headline "One Afghan village and one Marine platoon add up to high casualties and a gripping tale."