“Shit rolls down,” an old Army phrase, is exactly what happened to the 1st Platoon of the 101st Airborne Division. Black Hearts is a fictional book about soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division of the 502nd Infantry Regiment during deployment to Iraq in 2005. Black Hearts is a book that gives the reader the perspective of the different types of stress a soldier goes through during a deployment. both physically and especially mentally. The book goes in depth and paints realistic events during the deployment and the impact it had on a specific company. In 2005, the Iraq War was one of the worst times for the United States Army in Iraq. The number of IEDS increased and became more dangerous as Iraqi insurgents began perfecting them during the war. The majority of the book is set in Baghdad, Iraq, also known as the Triangle of Death. During this period, direct and indirect fire from IEDs was common and resulted in high numbers of casualties and injuries among U.S. soldiers. This placed a lot of stress on the soldier and showed the different types of reactions caused by stress. Many images and sites that a soldier sees during deployment are disturbing to the soldier and are displayed differently by each soldier. The price of the destructive and disturbing scenario would change the soldiers' lives forever. The soldiers' description when they went on patrol was that he was always tense. He knew there would be an IED but he didn't know if he would take it. An example given by a soldier was if a person who regularly checked the mailbox every day, changed his routine with an explosive that had a one in four chance of being in the mail. The person knows it's there but has to open the inbox. The example describes the anticipation... middle of paper... Lieutenant Britt's body flew into the canal and Lopez's body was annihilated. CPT Goodwin was then devastated. The event traumatized him in words I cannot describe. LTC Kunk heard the news and gave CPT Goodwin a couple of days off in the green zone. The CPT took time to recover from the loss of the soldiers and the decision that ultimately killed them. I ultimately chose CPT Goodwin because of the obstacles it had to overcome. While his decision making was spot on most of the time, he made the one mistake that ended up costing his soldiers their lives. CPT Goodwin was able to overcome the decision and continue his military career. He then discovered the murders and reported them to LTC Kunk. No decision stayed with him and influenced other decisions he made later. He knew that deaths were part of the job description and didn't let it affect him at all.