We Were Warriors Once

We Were Warriors Once is a military-political suspense novel. It chronicles the careers of four officers from the 1960’s to the 1990’s. Military promotions are based on an up-or-out system—you either progress within specified time frames or you get left behind. Many officers who retire from their military careers at the Pentagon go through the revolving door and return in short order either as defense contract employees or civil servants. Not infrequently, they return to the same office where they worked before retiring. The same holds true for many political appointees. Men who once worked in Washington go off for a period to high-level assignments with defense contractors and return to influential positions in government. These revolving doors can sometimes have unintended negative consequences. President, and former five-star general, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning against the power of the military-industrial complex is well known. However, that complex is actually tri-fold—military, industrial, and political. We Were Warriors Once incorporates revised editions of two previously published novels, Duty and Character and Wrong Enemy, Wrong War, with entirely new material that plumbs deeper into the defense contractors’ influence on national defense policies. The officers who wear the uniforms of the United States armed forces are by in large extraordinarily dedicated men and women. But in the profession of war, sometimes even the best are tempted at times to stray from the straight and narrow.