Product Description

Generation Kill is about the young men sent to fight their nation's first open-ended war since Vietnam. Despite the flurry of media images to come of the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, you have never really met any of these people, who serve as front-line troops. For whatever reason, the media simply doesn't get them. As we all know, news accounts of the last two wars focused almost exclusively on battlefield imagery of high-tech weapons wreaking astounding destruction, comply with analysis from retired army grandees and other experts, punctuated by the odd heart-warming patriotic sound-bite. The troops themselves play a role in the media's presentation of recent wars rather like extras in The Triumph of the Will. They are everywhere yet somehow invisible. When they speak you get the sense that what they are saying has been carefully scripted. Now Generation Kill tells the soldiers' story in their own words The narrative focuses on a platoon of 23 marines, many of them veterans of Afghanistan, whose elite reconnaissance unit spearheaded the blitzkrieg on Iraq. This is the story of young men that have been trained to become ruthless killers. It's about surviving death. It's about taking part in a war many questioned before it even began Evan Wright was the only reporter with First Recon, which operated well ahead of most other forces, usually behind enemy lines. They were among the first marines sent into the fight and one of the last units still engaged on the outskirts of Iraq, even after the city centre fell. Generation Kill is not just a combat chronicle but an inside look at how people fighting in war actually experience it. It is both an action narrative like Black Hawk Down and a detailed portrait of a generation at war along the lines of Band of Brothers. It is not a book you are going to forget in a hurry..

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2817 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 359 pages

From the Back Cover
Another nameless town, another target for First Recon. It's only five in the afternoon, but a sandstorm has plunged everything into a hellish twilight of murky, red dust. On rooftops, in alleyways lurk militiamen with machine guns, AK rifles and the odd rocket-propelled grenade. Artillery bombardment has shattered the town's sewers and rubble is piled up in lagoons of human excrement. It stinks. Welcome to Iraq…

First Recon are the special forces of the US Marine Corps, a lean, mean fighting machine trained to perfection and spoiling for action. This is their story as they spearhead the blitzkrieg on Iraq - a story of extreme bravery, borderline lunacy, touching camaraderie and breathtaking violence on the road to Baghdad.

First Recon's thankless task is to race ahead of the main coalition forces to spring enemy ambushes, earning them the nickname 'First Suicide Battalion'. Generation Kill allows an intimate look at how people fighting in war actually experience it, as the voices of soldiers on the front line are heard for the first time.

About the Author
Evan Wright is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine. He spent two months living with a platoon of Marine reconnaissance soldiers during the war in Iraq.

Customer Reviews

Outstanding War Reportage
If in relation to the two Gulf Conflicts, you were left feeling the news coverage (TV and media) and subsequent "military history" copy was too removed from what actually happened on the ground and the few personal stories by actual combatants either were too much ex-SAS adult Boys Own stories or when they were honest depictions of the experience(notably "Jarhead"), were limited in helping you understand the wider context in which events unfolded at the front, then this book is likely to answer your prayers.

The writer was a US journalist on assigment from the unlikely source of Rolling Stone magazine sent to the Gulf before the most recent Conflict occurred. He was allowed to be a full team member of a platoon of the elite US Marine Reconnaissance Group from the beginning to the end of the fighting (for reasons that are not fully explained given his non-combatant experience and the personal risks he would face). This unit was used by the US military command to operate as a mobile Humvee motorised group and continually probe forward of US lines to identify Iraqi military defences and engage them in firefights as the main US forces advanced to Baghdad. This in itself was a role reversal for an elite unit trained as the name implies to operate like the SAS and usually observe in secret enemy positions and only engage in fighting when deemed necessary (which had been their immediately preceding role in Afghanistan).

This book is outstanding for many reasons, including:

1. It is extremely well written by a correspondent who both observed and recorded the many different elements and forces at play, and is thus not just a record of what he saw. In so doing, he succeeds in conveying what it was like to be in the front line in this Conflict.

2. By being a constant passenger in the Platoon Leader's Humvee he saw how the fighting affected the team members plus can provide a unique insight of how command chains operate and decisions get made in the rapid unfolding of such mobile conflicts. Prime targets are the poor ground radio telecommunications systems (despite the hi-tech gloss given to the war in formal military briefings) and a number of more senior staff who for obvious reasons to any reader are referred to by nickname only!

3. He objectively covers the endless military errors and mistakes from chickens imported to detect chemical attacks but who all die in the first sand storms before the fighting started to poor equipment supplies (lubricant for the Humvees main guns given the constant sandstorms faced making them inoperable at several critical times and batteries for the body heat scanning detectors, which all upped the risks for the platoon in fighting) plus the experience of "friendly fire" (both US airforce and artillery) and the CIA's botched effort at using a sponsored Iraqi emigre army sadly reminiscent of the Bay of Pigs.

4. Given how events have unfolded in Iraq (and elsewhere) since this conflict ended, the book shows a number of warning signs that were ignored from the start of the war - the continual disappearing of the Iraqi army into civilians dress whenever they are attacked, with little attempt made to capture them; the main fighting being with foreign Jihad volunteers as a result (with little attempt from the start to try and identify and isolate them as they moved freely around the country) and the immediate collapse of order and ensuing anarchy and domestic violence as the Saddam regime infrastructure was removed at each town and village level.

While not an enjoyable or pleasant story, I have not read such an outstanding example of front line war reportage since Michael Herr's "Despatches" on Vietnam - I hope the book enjoys great success and recognition for its achievements as a result.

A new classic
Rolling Stone contributing editor Evan Wright gets himself embedded --riding in the lead Humvee -- with Bravo Company of the US Marines' First Recon Batallion as they smash their way from the Kuwait border to Baghdad during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The result is probably the best war reporting we're likely to see from that phase of the conflict.

Some of the things that set this book apart is Wright's proximity to the fighting - recklessly close - in addition to his use of First Recon's unofficial nicknames for certain officers, which allows Wright to expose their misjudgements or downright incompetence in some cases.

The battle plan is to put the doctrine of "maneuver warfare" into practice, with First Recon leading the charge straight into and through enemy positions, destroying any resistance and then moving on without bothering to secure the area. The idea is to move quickly and wrong foot the defending forces and in this the plan is a stunning success.

Not that the Marines of First Recon have any idea what the plan is. Wright chronicles a story of chronic equipment failures, constantly changing orders and stimulant-fueled extreme violence. Just make sure you're clean shaven when you enter Bagdhad. There is no plan for what happens after that.

A good compliment to this book is "The March Up" by Bing West and Major General Ray L. Smith, which tells the story of the entire 1st Marine Division's invasion of Iraq and capture of Baghdad from the point of view of a senior career Marine officer.

Keep in mind that both of these books are about the invasion of Iraq. There are hints of the coming chaos of the occupation, but both books end with the capture of Baghdad. Highly recommended.

Generation Inept
After watching the mini series on DVD I ordered this book with no small amount of trepidation, the actual series was fantastic, I was totally enthralled by the characters and the often life threatening situations they found themselves in, so when I ordered the book I hoped it would live up to the series... It did and them some, the level of detail, the realism you could almost taste the ineptitude of the Marine commanders, I found it incredulous that even in a war as hi-Tec as the one portrayed they were forced to endure some officers who were blatantly mad, this is a book I would strongly recommend to anyone with an interest in the American marines or warfare in general, it's one thing to be killed by the enemy it's entirely another to be killed by your own commander because he's an idiot.