"Street Fight in Iraq" relates with great candor the unvarnished realities of dealing with day to day combat in and around Ramadi, Iraq. You will be shocked, fascinated, outraged and frustrated when you read about the fight for Democracy and Peace in Iraq. This book is about Marines who made the journey to combat and the unbelievable events that made up their seven month combat tour. The language is harsh, the writing brutally honest and the message clear. This is a definite must read for military and civilians alike.

From Pulitzer Prize - winning Washington Post reporter Steve Fainaru comes an unforgettable journey into Iraq's parallel war - a world filled with tens of thousands of armed men roaming Iraq with impunity, doing jobs the military can't or won't do. Fainaru reveals in gritty and shocking detail what drives these men to do the world's most dangerous work.

March 23, 2003: U.S. Marines from the Task Force Tarawa are caught up in one of the most unexpected battles of the Iraq War. What started off as a routine maneuver to secure two key bridges in the town of Nasiriyah in southern Iraq degenerated into a nightmarish twenty-four-hour urban clash in which eighteen young Marines lost their lives and more than thirty-five others were wounded. It was the single heaviest loss suffered by the U.S. military during the initial combat phase of the war. On that fateful day, Marines came across the burned-out remains of a U.S. Army convoy that had been ambushed by Saddam Hussein’s forces outside Nasiriyah. In an attempt to rescue the missing soldiers and seize the bridges before the Iraqis could destroy them, the Marines decided to advance their attack on the city by twenty-four hours. What happened next is a gripping and gruesome tale of military blunders, tragedy, and heroism. Huge M1 tanks leading the attack were rendered ineffective when they became mired in an open sewer. Then a company of Marines took a wrong turn and ended up on a deadly stretch of road where their armored personal carriers were hit by devastating rocket-propelled grenade fire. USAF planes called in for fire support play their own part in the unfolding cataclysm when they accidentally strafed the vehicles. The attempt to rescue the dead and dying stranded in “ambush alley” only drew more Marines into the slaughter. This was not a battle of modern technology, but a brutal close-quarter urban knife fight that tested the Marines’ resolve and training to the limit. At the heart of the drama were the fifty or so young Marines, most of whom had never been to war, who were embroiled in a battle of epic proportions from which neither their commanders nor the technological might of the U.S. military could save them. With a novelist’s gift for pace and tension, Tim Pritchard brilliantly captures the chaos, panic, and courage of the fight for Nasiriyah, bringing back in full force the day that a perfunctory task turned into a battle for survival. "Ambush Alley" is a gut-wrenching account of unadulterated terror that's hard to read yet impossible to put down. London-based journalist and filmmaker Tim Pritchard, who was embedded with US troops during the initial stages of the American-led invasion of Iraq, paints a compelling picture of one of the costliest battles of the Iraq war that will at turns anger, horrify, and sadden, regardless of one's political views." --The Boston Globe

A combat medic reconciles his roles as a soldier, healer, and man of faith in a time of war

The Second Battle for Fallujah, dubbed Operation Phantom Fury, took place over an almost two-month period, from November 7 to December 23, 2004. The Marine Corps’ biggest battle in Iraq to date, it was so prolonged and fierce that it has entered the pantheon of USMC battles alongside Iwo Jima, Inchon, and Hue City. This book offers an in-depth, intimate look into Operation Phantom Fury, the single most significant battle undertaken during the occupation of Iraq. The author, a retired Marine Corps colonel with combat service in Vietnam, conducted personal interviews with combatants, from the division commander in charge of the operation down to Marine infantrymen who did the fighting. The result--illustrated with a hundred action photographs--is a rare firsthand account of the brutal reality of the war in Iraq, how this battle for a key city was fought, and how such a crucial battle looks from positions of command and from the thick of the fight.

The vicious urban battle for the insurgent-controlled city of Fallujah in November 2004 was a turning point in the ongoing counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq. It demonstrated the resolve of the Iraqi government to fight terrorists domestically, using both multinational and Iraqi forces, and its results included a returning population willing to vote in national elections held in January 2005. Ballard tells the story of the Fallujah campaign, beginning with the horrific deaths of the American Blackwater contractors in March 2004, and continuing through the battle, the painstaking reconstruction of the city, and the precedent-setting elections that followed. Based on first-person accounts, interviews, and official documents, this book gives readers rare insight into the significant actions and innovative techniques of the year-long fight for the city. Opening with a historical overview of the initial crisis in Fallujah and the similar coalition battle in Najaf, the book includes a detailed account of the planning and execution of the operation to retake the city. Finally, it describes the political and military lessons proven in Fallujah, including coalition force integration, information operations, urban combat techniques, interagency coordination and innovative reconstruction procedures. This is the story of real combat in Iraq—told in a way every American should understand.

Charlie 1-26 confronted one of the worst neighborhoods in Baghdad and lost more men than any battalion since Vietnam Based on "Blood Brothers", the Michael Kelly Awardnominated series that ran in Army Times, this is the remarkable story of a courageous military unit that sacrificed their lives to change Adhamiya, Iraq, from a lawless town where insurgents roamed freely, to a secure neighborhood with open storefronts and a safe populace. Army Times writer Kelly Kennedy was embedded with Charlie Company in 2007, went on patrol with the soldiers and spent hours in combat support hospitals. During that period, one soldier threw himself on a grenade to save his friends, a well-liked first sergeant shot himself to death in front of his troops, and a platoon staged a mutiny. The men of Charlie 1- 26 would earn at least 95 combat awards, including one soldier who would go home with three Purple Hearts and a lost dream. This is a timeless story of men at war and a heartbreaking account of American sacrifice in Iraq.