Wright, Evan

They were called a generation without heroes. Then they were called upon to be heroes. Within hours of 9/11, America's war on terror fell to those like the Marines of the First Recon Battalion, the first generation dispatched into open-ended combat since Vietnam. They were a new breed of warrior unrecognizable to their forbears---soldiers raised on Hip-hop, Internet porn, and video games, a disparate band of born-again Christians, dopers, Buddhists, and New Agers who gleaned their precepts from kung fu movies and Oprah Winfry.

A narrative on the lives of twenty-three First Recon marines who led the attack on Iraq describes their training and the physical and psychological challenges they faced in skirmishes leading to the fall of Baghdad.

The author describes the two months he spent with the twenty-three marines of First Recon, the first platoon in the ambush spots from the invasion of Iraq until the fall of Baghdad, beginning March 20, 2003, and examines the physical, emotional, moral, and spiritual challenges of men trained to kill.