No True Glory

Finished reading No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah. This excerpt gives a pretty good flavor for the book:

With that he swung inside, followed by his men. The front room where the SMAW round had detonated was empty. M16 at the ready, Amaya eased down a narrow corridor to the rear of the house, the other Marines in single file behind him. He steped into a small room at the rear and flashed the light attached to his rifle around the room.

"Shit, shit, shit!" he yelled. "It's a trap. Out! Out! Out!"

There was a long burst of AK and M16 fire, all mixed up, and Amaya staggered out and collapsed, fatally shot in the neck.

The Marines dragged him outside and around the courtyard wall. The company commander, Captain Tim Walker, came forward with a tank that fired six 120mm shells point-blank into the house. But even after absoring repeated hits, the house didn't collapse. Every few minutes the pop! pop! pop! of AKs challenged the Marines.

Deciding there had to be an underground bunker, Walker called for a D-9 monster bulldozer to crush the house, but no dozer was available. On the roof of the house was a cistern of fuel for heating and cooking. The Marines shot a hole in the cistern and waited until the fuel poured down and collected in a large pool in the corridor where Amaya had been shot. They then pitched in incendiary grenades and burned the defenders to death, listening impassively to the screams.

No quarter given nor asked. The book's conclusion, which analyzes the battle, can be found here. I found the book highly readable -- I only started it yesterday -- and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading about military history. The descriptions of house to house fighting -- sometimes against Chechen fighters and even 13 year olds -- are incredibly vivid. I'm just glad the Marines are on our side.