WYNNE'S WAR by Aaron Gwyn
Published in 2014 Wynne's War is a war story and a western with a bit of A Few Good Men thrown in as well. It starts out in Iraq where Army Ranger Elijah Russell is filmed rescuing a horse during a firefight and becomes a YouTube sensation. Russell and his buddy are taken out of Iraq to a remote base in Afghanistan. Russell is tasked with training horses for a special forces unit to use against Taliban fighters. They want horses because they are quiet compared to any motorized vehicle, can go places where four-wheelers can't and never need to be re-fueled so long as there is available grass. Russell grew up breaking horses and a great deal of the first third of the book is about Russell thinking about his childhood and detailing his "horse whisperer" style of breaking horses. The charismatic leader of this special forces unit, Captain Wynne, is a mystery and so is his real goal with these horses. Russell can't quite figure him out and when he and his buddy