From back cover
"Freelance writer and citizen-soldier by day, and secret blogger by night, Randy Brown was preparing in 2010 to deploy as the sole knowledge manager for an Iowa National Guard Unit of 3,000 soldiers. After a paperwork Sanfu dropped him off the list, he retired with 20 years of military service and a previous deployment. He then went to Afghanistan anyway, embedding with his former colleagues as a civillian journalist."

Brown retired from uniformed service Dec. 31, 2010. In May 2011, he traveled to Afghanistan to embed with "Task Force Red Bulls" as a civilian journalist. "More like an 'unofficial unit historian,'" he says.

SHERPATUDE NO. 26: "HUMOR IS A COMBAT MULTIPLIER ..." "Has your war become workaday? Does life on the Forward Operating Base (FOB) now seem commonplace? Armed with deadpan snark and poker-faced patriotism--and rooted in the coffee-black soil and plain-spoken voice of the American Midwest--journalist-turned-poet Randy Brown reveals behind-the-scenes stories of U.S. soldier-citizenship. From Boot Camp to Bagram, Afghanistan. And back home again."