"We Were One"...The Account Of The Marine's Taking Of Fallujah

And we'll review it as soon as it becomes available, but for the time being...

"WITH unprecedented initiative Patrick K. O'Donnell volunteered to live and fight alongside American soldiers and Marines in Iraq in order to construct a real-time, eyewitness history of the fighting. He spent months in battle with the troops, mostly with a platoon from the 3/1 Marines. After every combat action, he spent countless hours debriefing them.

O'Donnell's book focuses on the Second Battle of Fallujah. In part as commemoration, "We Were One" is scheduled to be released in the days preceding the two-year anniversary of that battle (Nov. 9), the Marine Corps birthday and Veterans Day. But the author's most important accomplishment among many is to put a human face on the troops who are fighting against some of the fiercest enemies America has ever encountered.

We meet the Marines who will make this attack. They are all volunteers, of course, several coming back for multiple combat deployments. These are no "dumb grunts," though they bear the title with pride. Prior to deployment, they train constantly, study "a three-foot high" stack of books and manuals and even learn Arabic. Their loyalty is primarily to each other; to the friends they have come to rely on for their lives. The bonding experience of combat can be a tired cliché for readers, but O'Donnell captures it without cheapening it.

O'Donnell shows the strength of these personal relationships as men lie wounded and dead in filthy Grenade Alley, where the mujahedeen tossed so many hand grenades that most of a 12-man squad was wounded.

In Fallujah, the platoon learned that survival depended entirely on the mutual loyalty and support they gave one another - and the whimsy of the gods of war.

Kicking in the doors of as many as 100 stone houses, the men found enemy fighters wired to the gills with a narcotic cocktail of adrenaline, cocaine and amphetamines and learned too well the lesson of the randomness of combat. A Marine moves slightly and the wall where he stood is raked with machine gun fire, while others are killed or wounded by similar twists of fate.
O'Donnell paints a picture of intense bravery. The dehydrated, exhausted platoon maintains focus on their objective of keeping each other alive and killing or capturing the enemy..."