Time Well Wasted:

 

 

In the winter of 1992, while away on a training mission, the men of 1st Platoon, 10th MP Company learned that they were first in line to be deployed to Somalia, Africa as a part of Operation Restore Hope. Before there was a Black Hawk Down, there was Time Well Wasted: The Story of 1st Platoon, 10th MP Company in Somalia, a nonfiction account of the lives of the men in 1st Platoon, on the ground in Somalia.

 

Strung out and worn down from multiple back-to-back deployments, the men of 1st Platoon find themselves shipping out for a real world mission. Violently thrust into a theater of operations, thousands of miles from home, after driving out of the back of a low-flying troop transport, the platoon quickly discovers it is business as usual, left to fend for themselves in a country without hope, and on a mission without a purpose. They are forced to adapt to substandard living conditions, contending with disease, khat addicted and heavily armed militiamen, stone throwing children, African wildlife and in the end their own chain of command.

 

Incorporating the platoon leader's day-by-day journal, as well as the recollections of the men who served, Time Well Wasted: The Story of 1st Platoon, 10th MP Company in Somalia is a classic war tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.