Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connections in Modern War

2023 Gold Medal in Biography/Memoir from the Military Writers Society of America

John Spencer was a new second lieutenant in 2003 when he parachuted into Iraq leading a platoon of infantry soldiers into battle. During that combat tour he learned how important unit cohesion was to surviving a war, both physically and mentally. He observed that this cohesion developed as the soldiers experienced the horrors of combat as a group, spending their downtime together and processing their shared experiences.

When Spencer returned to Iraq five years later to take command of a troubled company, he found that his lessons on how to build unit cohesion were no longer as applicable. Rather than bonding and processing trauma as a group, soldiers now spent their downtime separately, on computers communicating with family back home. Spencer came to see the internet as a threat to unit cohesion, but when he returned home and his wife was deployed, the internet connected him and his children to his wife on a daily basis.

In Connected Soldiers Spencer delivers lessons learned about effective methods for building teams in a way that overcomes the distractions of home and the outside world, without reducing the benefits gained from connections to family.

Author: John Spencer
Publisher: Potomac Books
Published: 07/01/2022
Pages: 280
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.81lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.10w x 0.56d
ISBN13: 9781640125124
ISBN10: 1640125124
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Military
- History | Wars & Conflicts | Iraq War (2003-2011)

About the Author
John Spencer is the chair of Urban Warfare Studies with the Modern War Institute, United States Military Academy. He also serves as a colonel in the California State Guard with assignment to the 40th Infantry Division, California Army National Guard, as the director of Urban Warfare Training. He served twenty-five years on active duty in the U.S. Army as an infantry soldier and is a highly decorated combat veteran.