Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America - The New Face of American War | Military History Book for War Enthusiasts & History Buffs

One of the new aspects of the war in Iraq this time around was the army practice of "embedding" reporters with various units. These reporters followed the soldiers or marines as they fought, ate, slept, and travelled across Iraq, and then were at some point allowed to report on what they'd seen, who they'd met, and the personnel that they'd observed. Evan Wright was one of the reporters who was embedded during the war. Wright is a reporter for Rolling Stone Magazine (of all things) and he was selected to march with the First Reconnaisance Battalion of the First Marine Division. This was a pretty choice assignment: Recon Marines are as elite as Marines get. Historically, the USMC doesn't have elite units as such (though they've recently agreed to begin training a unit to serve in the Special Forces Command) so Wright drew what, in reporting terms, is a prime assignment, and he took full advantage of the opportunity. Although there were originally two reporters assigned to the unit Wright was the only one to see combat with them.Wright has a wonderful ability with words, and is a very good observer of things that happen around him. He's also careful in his judgements, and given the publication he writes for, nowhere near as negative about the war and its participants as I expected him to be. He seems willing to look at both sides of any issue, and look at situations from the point of view of the participants, something civilians sometimes have difficulty with. While his view of the Marine Corps isn't always positive, by any means, he does portray things honestly. Interestingly, he appears to have a good understanding of military terminology, and seems to have absorbed a great deal of knowledge. I have read a lot of books by reporters trying to explain what's happened in wars, and few have had fewer mistakes than Wright. One notable exception is when an exploding Iraqi tank sends shrapnel "hundreds of kilometers" away from itself, and some of it wounds other men in the units. I suspect Wright meant meters, not kilometers.This is, however, a very very good book. The author pretty much completely avoids discussing the larger issue of whether we should have invaded in the first place, and skirts things such as whether the strategies used were correct or not. Mostly, he's interested in the marines he's with, their comrades in other units: what they do, think, say, and (as much as they tell Wright anyway) feel. The impression you get is of a bunch of American kids trying to do the best they can under difficult circumstances, with a lot of bad people shooting at them. I highly recommend this book.