The Highway War: A Marine Company Commander in Iraq

by Seth W. B. Folsom

****Winner of the 2007 Military Writers Society of America's Gold Medal Award for "Best Memoir"**** The Highway War is the compelling Iraq War memoir of then-Capt. Seth Folsom, commanding officer of Delta Company, First Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, U.S. Marine Corps. Mounted in eight-wheeled LAVs (light armored vehicles), this unit of 130 Marines and sailors was one of the first into Iraq in March 2003. It fought on the front lines for the war’s entire offensive phase, from the Kuwaiti border through Baghdad to Tikrit. Folsom’s thoughtful account focuses on his maturation as a combat leader―and as a human being enduring the austere conditions of combat and coming to terms with loss of life on both sides. Moreover, The Highway War is the story of a junior officer’s relationships with his company’s young Marines, for whose lives he was responsible, and with his superior officers. Folsom covers numerous unusual military actions and conveys truthfully the pace, stress, excitement, mistakes, and confusion of modern ground warfare. The Highway War is destined to be a Marine Corps classic.

Genres: Military Fiction, Military History, Nonfiction

424 pages, Hardcover

First published May 31, 2006

Reviews

[Nick Seney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good look at the chaotic first months of the war.

[Gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent soldier's p.o.v. narrative of the invasion that gives one the sense that the Americans were lucky to pull it off. Folsom conveys the absurdity of the way the higher ups conceived the whole plan of attack--if a shifting, relatively haphazard approach can be termed a plan--and, in his descriptions of being stuck in military traffic jams tens of miles long en route "triumph" in Baghdad, the absurdity of its execution. Reading this alongside "One Bullet Away," one has a strange sense of deja vu--there are duplicates in the cast of characters. Interestingly, the lousy officers always somehow emerge, in whatever narrative, as the same.

[James Denny · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exciting account of the push to invade Iraq from pre deployment to weeks of constant combat. A real life account of the excitement and boredom of war.

[Nicholas · Rating 1 out of 5]

boring.