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A Marine Harrier Pilot's War in Afghanistan
Threshold Editions
June 2010
On Sale: June 15, 2010
304 pages
ISBN: 143919498X
EAN: 9781439194980
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
The first Afghanistan memoir ever to be written by a Marine
Harrier pilot, A Nightmare’s Prayer portrays the realities
of war in the twenty-first century, taking a unique and
powerful perspective on combat in Afghanistan as told by a
former enlisted man turned officer. Lt. Col. Michael "Zak"
Franzak was an AV-8B Marine Corps Harrier pilot who served
as executive officer of VMA-513, "The Flying Nightmares,"
while deployed in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2003. The
squadron was the first to base Harriers in Bagram in support
of Operation Enduring Freedom. But what should have been a
standard six-month deployment soon turned to a yearlong
ordeal as the Iraq conflict intensified. And in what
appeared to be a forgotten war half a world away from home,
Franzak and his colleagues struggled to stay motivated and
do their job providing air cover to soldiers patrolling the
inhospitable terrain.I wasn’t in a foxhole. I was above it.
I was safe and comfortable in my sheltered cocoon 20,000
feet over the Hindu Kush. But I prayed. I prayed when I
heard the muted cries of men who at last understood their
fate.Franzak’s personal narrative captures the day-by-day
details of his deployment, from family good-byes on
departure day to the squadron’s return home. He explains the
role the Harrier played over the Afghanistan battlefields
and chronicles the life of an attack pilot—from the
challenges of nighttime, weather, and the austere mountain
environment to the frustrations of working under higher
command whose micromanagement often exacerbated
difficulties. In vivid and poignant passages, he delivers
the full impact of enemy ambushes, the violence of combat,
and the heartbreaking aftermath. And as the Iraq War unfolded, Franzak became embroiled in
another battle: one within himself. Plagued with doubts and
wrestling with his ego and his belief in God, he discovered
in himself a man he loathed. But the hardest test of his
lifetime and career was still to come—one that would change
him forever. A stunning true account of service and sacrifice that takes
the reader from the harrowing dangers of the cockpit to the
secret, interior spiritual struggle facing a man trained for
combat, A Nightmare’s Prayer brings to life a Marine’s
public and personal trials set against "the fine talcum
brown soot of Afghanistan that permeated everything—even
one’s soul."
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