Not Quite Home: A Soldier’s Search for Belonging

There is a brotherhood, formed in the crucible of battle, which brooks no other path to membership. Created in the incapacitating fear of incoming fire that no training can ever simulate, those fraternal bonds are stronger than the blood that is shed to form them. James B. Morgan spent twenty-four years in service to his country, rising from an enlisted soldier to Lieutenant Colonel. His memoir examines being a soldier in a way that goes beyond life on the battlefield and peers into the souls of that combat brotherhood. Morgan studies the mind of his soldiers using his own experiences as the thread that ties the narrative together. From feeling obligated to volunteer for deployment to feeling guilty about doing so, from taking pride in a successful battlefield mission to wondering about the families mourning the losses he caused, Morgan speaks plainly about why so many Soldiers struggle to belong.