The best Iraq memoir there is and will be, part Slaughterhouse 5, part Book of Nightmares, all real, and still continuing. The ending is not happy or sad, just a statement: this war will go on, here and everywhere, for a long time.

My favorite section:

The Long Walk. Armor on, gird with breastplate and helm and leggings and collar. No one can put on the bomb suit alone; your Brother has to dress you, overalls pulled up, massive jacket tucked, earnest in its careful thoroughness. Eighty pounds of mailed kevlar, face shield down, and then into the breach alone.

There is no more direct confrontation of wills between bomber and EOD technician than the Long Walk. Donning the suit, leaving behind rifle and security, to outwit your opponent nose to nose. The lonely seeking of hidden danger. To ensure no more hazards lie in wait to snatch the next soldier to pass that way, the next EOD Brother or Sister, the next local shopkeeper or taxi driver or child playing in a garbage-laden sewer.

No one takes the Long Walk lightly. Only after every other option is extinguished. Only after robots fail and recourses dwindle. The last choice. Always.

But when the choice comes, when the knife’s edge between folly and reason finally tips, training affords a decisiveness to guide your higher purpose. Castleman went so Keener didn’t have to. So Mengershausen didn’t have to. So I didn’t have to. You take the Long Walk for your Brother’s wife, your Brother’s children, and their children, and the line unborn.

No greater love does one Brother have for another than to take the Long Walk.