By Tori Muir
Elm Staff Writer
Nathaniel Fick’s “One Bullet Away,” an intellectual retelling of one man’s experience in the Iraqi War, seemed to be fairly popular among the incoming freshmen class at Washington College this year. The author came to campus Sept. 20 to discuss leadership. The talk, entitled “One Bullet Away: Leadership Lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq” took place in Decker Theater at 4:30 p.m.
“One Bullet Away,” which was chosen as this year’s First Year Book, was one of the focuses of the event. Students held decidedly mixed opinions about this selection.
Freshman Grace O’Connor said she enjoyed “the gritty, wonderful moments” of the work, and fellow freshman Paisley Frost “really enjoyed the book.”
Freshman Corinna Vaca-Moran, conversely, said that she “did not [find] it engaging or relatable to the average person. It seemed as though it ostracized civilians in an attempt to include them.”
Fick said the discussion of his book would include whatever the students wanted to ask about. “Nothing is taboo, nothing is off-limits,” he said.
He discussed how he started writing the book because he wanted to share the experience of being on the front lines. The journalists and the media can only cover it to an extent, he explained, and the entire situation is cast in a different light by the actual individuals employed to accomplish the task.
Fick also said that he felt the loss of his hand-picked successor strongly and viewed the book as a platform to write about someone he cared about, one of the few people who understood exactly what he had been through and what he had seen
The first part of the talk, however, dealt with the leadership lessons he learned through his experiences in Iraq. He said that leaders are responsible for “demonstrating courage, learning and changing, and serving.” Leadership is inherently a lonely and dangerous position, Fick told the crowd, and demonstrating courage in face of this is often remarkably strenuous. Putting oneself at a “decisive point,” as Fick called it, is a willingness to advocate for what aligns with strong personal beliefs. Courage is willpower, he reminded the audience.
Fick then addressed the mistaken notion that leaders have all the privileges. Being a good leader, Fick said, “means waking up earlier, sleeping less, and exposing yourself to more danger.”
Fick also spoke about moral versus legal authority, and how the former matters more. Fick illustrated that this lesson can be applied to college students because there is the opportunity to amass a lot of authority even from the bottom of the totem pole. An important part of moral authority is setting a good example, which is also something students can do. Fick ended this section of the speech by saying, “officers eat last.”
Frost said this speech helped “bring the book to life with [Fick’s] own perspective and humanity.”