Ask around your local VFW about what a military police soldier does for a living. The answers will make you laugh, cringe, and sometimes simply lean back at the nonsensical tales we evoke from our comrades in arms. Even to the standard military police soldier, their experiences from one to the next are largely different depending on any number of influences. Whether that is duty station, deployments, specific type of military police.

In this book, you will see the far edge of the combat spectrum for a military police soldier. Every so often, military police get training that enables them to be attached to units conducting missions well outside the purview of a standard military police soldier. For those soldiers, their story goes largely untold. Whether due to the incredulity of the story, or because some stories are hard to talk about. The events in this book are told exactly as they happened. Some have been modified due to security concerns and for the privacy of comrades. Ghosts of the Valley gives a full spectrum recount of the incidents that took place in Afghanistan, and the recovery process that became necessary upon return to the peace of home. The book itself will hopefully serve as a benefit to soldiers who have not yet deployed, civilians who struggle to understand the average combat veteran, and the soldiers who have redeployed that still struggle in their recovery process.

Modern War Institute Podcast: The Spear – A Tough Fight in the Saw Valley

Hosted by the West Point Military Academy