Generation Kill
They were called a generation without heroes. Then they were called upon to be heroes. Within hours of 9/11, America's war on terrorism fell to those like the twenty-three Marines of the First recon Battalion, the first generation dispatched into open-ended combat since Vietnam. They were a new pop-culture breed of American warrior unrecognizable to their forebears - soldiers raised on hip hop, video games and The Real World. Cock, brave, headstrong, wary and mostly unprepared for the physical, emotional and moral horrors ahead, the "First Suicide Battalion" would spearhead the blitzkreig on Iraq, and fight against the hardest resistance Saddam had to offer. Now a major HBO event, Generation Kill is the nation bestselling book based on the National Magazine Award-winning story in Rolling Stone. It is the funny, frightening, and profane firsthand account of these remarkable men, of the personal toll of victory, and of the randomness, brutality and camaraderie of a new American War.
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Ignore the programming/technology part.
Military books (such as "One Bullet Away" by Nathaniel Fick or "Generation Kill" by Evan Wright which was turned into a mini-series on HBO). Field manuals can be interesting and you can learn a lot from them.
Knot books.
"Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War" by Robert Gates is interesting.
"The Art of Intelligence", by Henry Crumpton.
"Diplomacy" by Henry Kissinger is an interesting read. It starts with the balance of power in Europe, raison d'état, Richelieu, "U.S. exceptionalism". It is well written.
- It's not directly related to General Mattis, but I would recommend reading Evan Wright's book "Generation Kill". Which recounts his time being embedded with the 1st Recon Battalion, which was under the command of Mattis (Callsign Chaos) during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The book even goes briefly into a famous moment in the invasion of Iraq were General Mattis fires one of his commanders during a siege of a city.
https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/that-time-mattis-fir...
HBO did a miniseries on the book too which is great.
- One Bullet Away is great. It gives another perspective of the popular book Generation Kill.
- IMO, war is nowhere near as clinical as it would need to be for remote controlled tanks, helicopters and other vehicles to be effective.
I've just finished reading Generation Kill for the second time - I highly recommend it for an idea of what things are actually like.
- Not sure if you read Generation Kill or watched the miniseries, but that is one of the main points. In there, there were two platoon commanders, Lieutenant Fick and Captain America(The book never reveals its name, and I think the series does, but I don't recall at this moment). While Lieutenant Fick was a competent officer that tried to kept the welfare of his troops, he often butted heads with its direct superiors since the order given to him could endanger the lives of his subordinates while not accomplishing nothing of value. In contrast Captain America, was an incompetent officer who gave reckless orders, was ignored by his troops and could have been possibly be charged with war crimes. At the end of the series, when the journalist is interviewing the battalion commander about why Captain America was never disciplined for his actions, the battalion commander answers that the same leeway that he gave to Lieutenant Fick was given to Captain America. In other words if he were to punish Captain America, he should also be punishing Lieutenant Fick. In retrospective is understandable, but when you read or watch it, you wonder why no action is being taken to discipline Captain America and why no one listens to Lieutenant Fick
- "Krigare: Ett personligt reportage om de svenska soldaterna i Afghanistan" (eng "Warriors") [1] by Johanne Hildebrandt[2].
A book about the FS19 deployment of Swedish soldiers in Afghanistan in 2010, written by an experienced war reporter. Some chapters reminded me about Generation Kill, with regards to lack of proper equipment (wrong colour, missing etc...) or purpose of deployment (too much bodyguarding of politicians visiting etc).
1. ISBN: 9789143510737, ISBN-10: 9143510736 https://books.google.se/books/about/Krigare.html?id=LpJjAgAA...
