In 2005, the 150th Combat Engineers of the Mississippi National Guard was a true melting pot, representing nearly all of what America had to offer. The soldiers of the 150th were also the vanguard of a new National Guard. Amid the transformation of the US military in the 21st century, no longer were they destined to be weekend warriors tasked mainly with local disaster relief.
This new Guard was to spearhead military operations. As America readied for an expanded conflict in Iraq, the 150th was one of the first National Guard units sent to the battlefront as a test of this new American way of war.
But the Guard is uniquely different to the rest of the Army. Soldiers grow up in the same communities, play sports, and serve together. As Dogwood reveals, this provides a singular advantage, but also deeply intensifies loss. Defying poor equipment, lack of specialist training, and heartbreaking losses, the 150th endured combat at their forward operating base Dogwood in an area grimly nicknamed “the triangle of death.” Despite these hardships, the 150th implemented its own homespun counterinsurgency policy that turned an insurgency hotbed into a thriving community – one of the war’s few success stories.
Set within the context of a changing military, an evolving strategic situation, and an unpopular war, Dogwood is an unflinching history which lays bare the harsh reality of combat through countless firsthand accounts.