—Colonel R. Alan King, author,

Twice Armed: An American Soldier’s Battle for Hearts and Minds in Iraq

The “war he always wanted” took him to the front lines of Afghanistan and Iraq as a young infantry officer in the elite 101st Airborne Division. For Lieutenant Brandon Friedman, however, the reality of his war fell far short of his youthful fantasies of combat heroism: he never stormed a beach, he never ducked tracer fire while parachuting onto an enemy-held airfield, and his best buddy didn’t die in Brandon’s arms talking about his mom and the girl back home.

There was nothing Hollywood about it. In a literary style reminiscent of the late Kurt Vonnegut, Friedman helps readers understand the apparent contradiction of soldiers who can reflect upon the worst period in their lives as “a pretty good time.”

From the book: “When the bomb hit, the sound was deafening. It made the air vibrate. For the split second in which the mountainside was alight from the explosion, I could see trees swaying from the shockwave. I could see embers blowing off branches and into the snow. Kneeling, I watched as two more bombs struck the mountain in quick succession, causing the same set of effects. It was then that I noticed Sergeant Collins had moved forward from the back of the column. He was kneeling next to me. When he saw me looking at him through my night vision, he pointed to the mountain. Then he whispered, measuring out each word carefully, ‘A man’s got to know his limitations.’ ”

This is Brandon Friedmans story of coming of age in a world awakening to the horrors made plain on 9/11. With the U. S. Army moving into full-fledged combat operations half a world away against Al Qaeda and their Taliban hosts, Brandon found himself facing an elusive enemy on unfamiliar ground. He tells how, as an infantry platoon leader in the elite 101st Airborne Division, the famed "Screaming Eagles," he and his unit struggled to find their footing in the high valleys of the Hindu Kush while battling radical Islam in operation Anaconda.

A brief respite at their home base in Kentucky, and Friedman and the Screaming Eagles were off to war again, this time in Iraq. In this gripping memoir of a young soldier learning the hardest lessons of combat, we see the terrors and disillusion of war as the insurgency in Iraq spirals out of control. And we see the true valor of character emerging under fire.