Shop They Called Us "Lucky": The Life and Afterlife of the Iraq War's Hardest Hit Unit by Ruben Gallego in Los Angeles, CA

From the Arizona Congressman, a 21st-century Band of Brothers chronicling the eternal bonds forged between the Marines of Lima Company, the hardest-hit unit of the Iraq War. At first, they were ""Lucky Lima."" Infantryman Ruben Gallego and his brothers in Lima Company-3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, young men drawn from blue-collar towns, immigrant households, Navajo reservations-returned unscathed on patrol after patrol through the increasingly violent al Anbar region of Iraq, looking for weapons caches and insurgents trying to destabilize the nascent Iraqi government. After two months in Iraq, Lima didn't have a casualty, not a single Purple Heart, no injury worse than a blister. Lucky Lima. Then, in May 2005, Lima's fortunes flipped. Unknown to Ruben and his fellow grunts, al Anbar had recently become a haven for al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The bin Laden-sponsored group had recruited radicals from all over the world for jihad against the Americans. On one fateful day, they were lured into a death house; the ambush cost the lives of two men, including a platoon sergeant. Two days later, Ruben's best friend, Jonathon Grant, died in an Ied attack, along with several others. Events worsened from there. A disastrous operation in Haditha in August claimed the lives of thirteen Marines when an Ied destroyed their amphibious vehicle. It was the worst single-day loss for the Marines since the 1983 Beirut bombings.