The book Black Hearts by Jim Frederick is an in-depth account of the 1st Platoon, Bravo Company 1-502nd Infantry 101st Airborne Division deployed to Iraq in 2005. Leadership Failures documented in this book, they range from general officer level down to the lowest soldier level. General Ricardo Sanchez did not understand the climate his command group was entering while deployed to Iraq. From that point on, all the leadership failures continued to pile on top of each other, with a lack of time to plan. It is customary to have a period of six months to get a good helping hand when preparing to take over an AO from another unit. To compound this problem, the entire time the 502nd was in pre-deployment training, it was preparing for the rigors of urban combat. In reality, they had six weeks to reconnoiter their new area of ​​responsibility and were heading into a campaign designed by heaven for guerrilla warfare. As Colonel Ebel said in his book: “This will not be an easy road. They're not even sure what they have in the area. It just hurts. We can expect a real fight. » The book summarizes the struggles that Bravo Company faced from the beginning, even before its deployment. The unit was initially sent to JRTC at Fort Polk, Louisiana, and made many tactical errors during its rotation. The 1st Platoon captured many individuals early on, and the leadership automatically decided that Captain Goodwin would be incompetent for the next deployment, while LTC Kunk would be difficult to work with for the coming year. Once out of the JRTC, Bravo Company and Charlie Company were both given the most difficult missions. Bravo Company was assigned to the most dangerous AO in what is called the triangle o...... middle of paper ...... book to characters from other novels, you begin to see the leadership styles that are used and the effectiveness they can have on a person's character and ability to accomplish a mission. I feel that if a consistent leadership style had been put in place from the start of their deployment and followed the necessary standards, then the soldiers would have been incapable of committing the crimes they committed during their deployment. On the other hand, I feel that if more capable leaders had existed during the tumultuous period of deployment, they would have been able to adapt to the situation and control the soldiers for whom they were responsible, regardless or the difficulty of deployment. Despite the fact that 11 of the original 33 leaders of 1st Platoon were removed from command at the end of the deployment, a strong leadership duo could have prevented the actions that took place..