WE WERE ONE: Shoulder to Shoulder With the Marines Who Took Fallujah.

Author Patrick O’Donnell has written the story of 1st Platoon, “Lima” Company, 3d Battalion, First Marine Regiment as it fought its way through the worst part of Fallujah in November 2004. This is a well-written book whose low-key and personable style belies the intensity and strength that these Marines personified in taking the city.

Fallujah was the worst urban combat the Marine Corps has seen since the Battle of Hue City in Vietnam, and has been the most difficult and bloodiest single battle of the war in Iraq. While Bing West’s book “No True Glory” provides the reader with a better overview of the battle for Fallujah, “We Were One” is the best snapshot written to date that details the ferocity of the house-to-house fighting that took place that week.

Starting from their urban combat training in Camp Pendleton, Calif., the author focuses on the personal relations within the platoon and how the Marines come to trust and rely on each other. O’Donnell takes the reader into the private world of a Marine infantry platoon where the young Marines work to build the trust and confidence in their mates that is so necessary in combat. His vivid descriptions of their training and their liberty succeeds in setting the tone of trust and apprehension in each Marine as 1st Plt, Lima Co leaves in June 2004 for Iraq.

Shifting to the area of operations, 1st Plt loses its first member within the month of arrival, and O’Donnell’s prose reflects the rising tensions and stresses that the Marines encounter. He also discusses the rules of engagement (ROE) in effect, and how the Marines are hamstrung by rather naïve ROE as promulgated by the headquarters of Multi-National Force, Iraq-West. O’Donnell clearly and accurately describes the coalition and Iraqi government’s inept political machinations of September and October 2004 that led to Regimental Combat Team 1’s finally being tasked to clear the city.

In the early days of the battle, author O’Donnell was embedded with another unit, but is eventually shifted to 1st Plt. He covers the final days of the fight as an embed with 1st Plt and gets right up in combat with them; his descriptions of the Marines clearing houses, fighting the heavily doped-up insurgents, as well as the physical, mental and emotional toll it takes on the Marines are among the most descriptive and heart-breaking accounts to come back from the Iraqi front.

O’Donnell succeeds in personalizing each of the Marines. The reader gets to know each one—how he thinks, who is his buddy, what is his role in the daily fighting. His description of each individual lets us mourn the loss of each Marine, as his prose is sufficiently vivid to let the reader walk the streets with 1st Plt.

For those who think that an embedded reporter has his own agenda, this book may well change their minds. For those  who want to begin to understand the deadly nature of fighting in an urban environment, the determination of the enemy, as well as the inherent problems in 4th Generation Warfare—as well to begin to understand the determination and dedication to their fellow Marines of those young men who are doing the fighting—then this is the book for you.

WE WERE ONE: Shoulder to Shoulder With the Marines Who Took Fallujah.

By Patrick K. O’Donnell. Published by Da Capo Press.

244 pages. Stock #0306814692.

$22.50 MCA Members. $25 Regular Price.