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Another nameless town, another target for First Recon. It's only five in the afternoon, but a sandtorm 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...Within hours of 9/11, America's war on terrorism fell to those like the 23 Marines of the First Recon Battalion, the first generation dispatched into open-ed combat since Vietnam. They were a new breed of American warrior unrecognizable to their forebears-soldiers raised on hip hop, Internet porn, Marilyn Manson, video games and The Real World, a band of born-again Christians, dopers, Buddhists, and New Agers who gleaned their precepts from kung fu movies and Oprah Winfrey. Cocky, brave, headstrong, wary, and mostly unprepared for the physical, emotional, and moral horrors ahead, the "First Suicide Battalion" would spearhead the blitzkrieg on Iraq, and fight against the hardest resistance Saddam had to offer. Generation Kill 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.
354 pages, Paperback
First published June 17, 2004
“Their wild fire continues. Then the voice of Captain America comes over the radio, quavering and cracking. ‘Enemy, enemy! They’ve got us on both sides!’
‘Oh, my God!’ Person says. ‘Is he crying?’
‘No, he’s not,’ Colbert replies, cutting off what will likely be a bitter tirade about Captain America. In recent days, Person has pretty much forgotten his old hatreds for pop stars such as Justin Timberlake—a former favorite subject of long, tedious rants about everything that’s wrong with the United States—and now he complains almost exclusively about Captain America.
‘He’s just nervous,’ Colbert says. ‘Everyone’s nervous. Everyone’s just trying to do their job.’
‘We’re going to die if we don’t get out of here!’ Captain America screams over the radio. ‘They’ve sent us to die here!’
‘Okay,’ Colbert says. ‘Fuck it. He is crying.’”
(p. 293-294)