THE WARRIORS OF ANBAR

One of the U.S. Marine Corps’ finest—yet largely untold—stories.

By the fall of 2006, al-Qaida in Iraq had been largely cornered in the western province known as Al Anbar. However, as veteran military writer Darack (War Moments: Images & Stories of Combat in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Beyond, 2019, etc.) writes, they were battle-hardened, well-equipped, vicious, and desperate, and they decided to dig in and throw everything they had at the “invading” Americans. They embedded themselves among the narrow, twisting streets of Haditha (population 25,000) and intimidated the locals into cooperating by murdering anyone they thought supported America. They would place their decapitated victims’ heads on stakes that they planted around the city for the public to see. As one lance corporal recalled, “it wasn’t hell…it was worse than hell. I know it sounds cliché, but nothing could be that bad. It was beyond my worst, most horrific nightmares.” Striking and withdrawing over and over, they also set mines on the roads on which Marine convoys traveled. It was against this background that the 2nd Battalion of the 3rd Marine Regiment arrived with orders to drive out the terrorists, a monumental, highly dangerous task. The author, who has embedded with American troops multiple times in both Afghanistan and Iraq, tells the story battle by battle, often in gripping, brutal, and sometimes-gruesome detail. However, this book is more than a typical war story. To defeat al-Qaida in Iraq, the Marines realized they would have to win the locals’ trust, which they did in imaginative ways. For example, on Halloween, soldiers went trick-or-treating through Haditha neighborhoods and gave candy to children. The only real weakness of the text is Darack’s excessive use of Marine acronyms (TTP, AO, COC, BATS, SVBIED, etc.), which will become tiresome for civilian readers without a military background.

A very human story of “bravery, sacrifice, incredible hardship, horror, and ultimate victory.”