Having read books by many of the great war correspondents like Hemingway, Pyle (The Story of GI Joe), and Herr (Dispatches), and similar books by Bradley (Flags of Our Fathers) and Ambrose (Band of Brothers) I can now include Evan Wright in this mix. Evan does what these others did so well, covering the war where the sufferring and hardship really occurs. He does not portray war as a glorious adventure or soldiers as great warriors. The grunts in 1st Recon are no different from Pyle's dogfaces attacking Monte Casino. They are dirty, hungry, cold, and doing a job. Like Herr his soldiers have a hipper edge but they still do their job.

The scariest theme we see in all these books is the sheer incompetence of leadership. In all them we see very little true leadership and competence above the level of sergeant. In Herr's Viet Nam Encino Man and Captain America would have been fragged. Maybe the best lesson the "brass" can learn from this well written account of young men doing their jobs well in spite of their incompentent commanders is that they need to fix their leadership problem.