Rage Company: A Marine's Baptism by Fire

One Marine's gripping story of the bloody battles, the Surge, and the Awakening of Sunni tribes that changed the tide in Iraq's Anbar province

Seven minutes into the first patrol a firefight erupts. Quickly, the Marines of Rage Company became acquainted with the nature of counterinsurgency. Every day, more IEDs were planted than the Marines could clear. They avoided taking the same route twice, they never walked out in the open, and they steered clear of roads that hadn't been "swept" in the last hour. They were in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province and one of the deadliest cities in Iraq.

In November 2006, then First Lieutenant Thomas Daly arrived as part of the "surge" in Ramadi, to take part in Operation Squeeze Play, a division-size effort to remove al Qaeda from Anbar province. In this powerful memoir, he describes the successful clearing of southern Ramadi's Second Officer's district, the Qatana, and the uprising of local citizens against al Qaeda on the eastern edge of the city (the result of an unlikely alliance between Daly's company and Thawar al Anbar). From the first patrol to the last in the spring of 2007, he takes you inside the daily successes and struggles of the operation and the stressful challenge of trying to discern who was a terrorist and who was a civilian. He tells the powerful and very human story of a people who want to free their country, yet have no basis on which to trust the American forces in helping them succeed.

Filled with on-the-ground details and insights on military operations and strategy, Rage Company cements the accurate history of the unlikely alliance that redirected the Iraq War and set the course for operations in the future.

"So vivid are Daly's descriptions that the reader can sense the tipping point and can anticipate that al Qaeda in Iraq will strike back savagely. What a tale Daly tells! You won't read this in textbook theories about counterinsurgency."

—Bing West, author and retired Marine general, from his foreword to Rage Company

"Rage Company will stand apart from the many Iraq memoirs and histories already published."

—Nathaniel Fick, author of the New York Times bestseller, One Bullet Away

"Tom Daly captures the uncertainty, chaos, fog and friction inherent in all combat. . . . In particular, he provides an inside, street-level look at the emergence of the Anbar Awakening. . . . Definitely belongs on the bookshelves of professionals."

—T. X. Hammes, Colonel, USMC (Ret) author of The Sling and the Stone