Patrick K. O'Donnell: We Were One: Shoulder to Shoulder with the Marines Who Took Fallujah

The battle for Fallujah in November, 2004, was the most intense urban engagement fought by the United States since World War II. It was a battle unlike any other in recent history--civilians were used as human shields, or as bait to lure Americans into buildings rigged with explosives; suicide bombers approached from every street corner; and radical insurgents, high on adrenaline, fought to the death.

The Marines were the first to fight in Fallujah, and the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment (3/1) bore the brunt of this epic battle. Within the battalion, Lima Company's 1st Platoon saw the worst of it. At the end of the battle only fourteen of the platoon's forty-nine Marines were left standing. Award-winning author Patrick O'Donnell was "embedded" with this modern band of brothers as he marched--and fought--side by side with the soldiers of the 1st Platoon, and he stayed with them as the casualties mounted.

In riveting prose, O'Donnell captures not only the sights, sounds, and smells of the gritty street fighting, but also the human drama of young men from a close-knit platoon fighting and dying for each other. We Were One chronicles the 1st Platoon's story from its formation in February, 2004, to its near destruction among the smoldering ruins of Fallujah. It is a story of the next "greatest generation"--the valiant Marines who fought bravely and died in the fiercest battle in the Iraq War.