Reddit mentions of Rage Company: A Marine's Baptism By Fire

Rage Company by Thomas Daly. It's the best book written about the Iraq war, and, in the humble opinion of this connoisseur of military history, one of the best books ever written in the field.

Why? Most military history falls into one of two traps - 1) it's either an ant's-eye view of the day to day grind of an individual in combat, with no reflection of the larger scheme of things, or 2) it's written by someone in the higher command, giving a good overview of the strategies involved, but with no feel of the struggles and hardships of the individual soldiers involved.

Rage Company bridges these two perspectives very nicely. Lt Daly was an FO assigned to a detached Marine company operating with the Army in Ramadi. Since artillery wasn't really being used in counterinsurgency operations in the city, he sort of fell into the ad-hoc role of company intel officer. As such, he was involved with both the day-to-day operations and the planning of such operations at the battalion and regimental level. He does really just an excellent job giving you the nitty gritty details of daily patrol and clearing operations, and, more importantly, placing those operations in the operational scheme of maneuver.

The Anbar Awakening happens during his tour. The first Ex-Iraqi army folks show up and start to work with the Marines. There's mistrust and miscommunication. And results. Spectacular results.

The last 20 pages or so are AQI's retaliation. There's a car chase, surveillance by drone and Apache, and a surprise twist that beats anything I've ever read in a Tom Clancy novel. It had me up reading until 4:00 AM.