Fobbit, by David Abrams, is an attempt at describing a wartime tour from different perspectives, including soldiers and support personnel. Chapter by chapter our viewpoint rotates within this cast of characters. Indeed, for every three infantrymen, five soldiers are required in forward deployed locations to cook, care for wounded, file paperwork, et cetera. Abrams himself performed such a support role as a public affairs officer deployed to Baghdad in 2005. Spending most of his time on Forward Operating Bases or FOBs, Abrams was one of many Fobbits, a kind of GWOT technocrat, fighting the war from behind a desk.
Two characters feature in the narrative, the Fobbit Staff Sergeant Chance Gooding and the infantry captain Abe Shrinkle. Gooding is a public affairs officer; he spends most of his time on the FOB, drafting press releases: ‘With his neat-pressed uniform, his lavender-vanilla body wash, and the dust collected around the barrel of his M16 rifle, he was the poster child for the stay-back-stay-safe soldier.
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