They called us "lucky" The life and afterlife of the Iraq War's hardest hit unit

Arizona congressman Gallego and DeFelice (coauthor, American Sniper) deliver a powerful, grunt's-eye view of modern combat and the struggle to readjust to life back home. After his parents' divorce, Gallego, a Democrat, was raised by his mother in Illinois, where he and his three sisters lived in an apartment "so tiny that I slept on the floor of the living room rather than a bed." He dedicated himself to getting into Harvard, but "flamed out" and was on an "enforced 'pause' " in 2000 when he made the impulsive decision to enlist in the Marines Corps Reserves. His unit was deployed to Iraq in 2005, and though unscathed by the first two months of combat, Lima Company's luck soon changed for the worse; 23 company members were eventually killed in action. Gallego vividly documents the deaths of friends and comrades, and his own brushes with death, including the time his amphibious assault vehicle failed to trigger an IED. Combat scenes alternate with Gallego's desperate race in 2007 to get help for a fellow Lima Company veteran before he attempted suicide. Gallego also details his own struggles with PTSD, and calls out deficiencies in military planning and equipment that he believes cost lives. This searing autobiography leaves a mark. Agent: Dave Larabell, Creative Artists Agency. (Nov.)

A Marine-turned-politician recounts his time under fire in Iraq. An ambitious but poor youngChicagoan, Gallego worked his way to a Harvard scholarship--and then, as he readily allows, partied hard enough to be asked to leave. Aimless, he joined the Marine Corps after 9/11 and was packed off to boot camp, where he tried to keep the Harvard connection quiet. His drill instructor found out and upbraided him: "Why the hell aren't you an officer?...Are you stupid?" The author's well-reasoned response in this agile memoir is to note that the division between Marine recruit and Harvard undergrad isn't the political one of conservative versus liberal but instead a more abiding one of class and, to some extent, ethnicity. "Statistically," writes Gallego, "you won't find many young Latino males raised by single women in households with sketchy backgrounds getting college degrees, let alone from Harvard. The odds were far better that I'd be in prison, or even dead." By the odd logic of the Marine Corps, Gallego was assigned to a reserve unit in New Mexico and sent to Iraq, where, for a time, his company was dubbed "Lucky Lima" for not having taken casualties. That luck soon ran out. Toward the end of Gallego's tour, Lima "had the dubious honor of being the hardest hit unit in the Marine Corps since the bombing at Beirut." Gallego writes affectingly of his friendship with a young Navajo man who died there, one reason that, now a liberal Democrat and Arizona congressman, he takes an active legislative interest in Native American affairs. Condemning the Iraq misadventure as a political stunt--of a visiting Dick Cheney, he writes, "This asshole pushed us into a war that we didn't need and then didn't get us the armor that we did need"--the author notes that his training has helped put discipline in his life. It also saved others on Jan. 6, when he and fellow veterans helped their congressional colleagues escape the insurrectionary mob. A deeply felt, swift-moving account of war and its complex aftermath. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.