Fallujah Memoirs

A Grunt's Eye View of the Second Battle of Fallujah

By: Alexander Saxby

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The Second Battle of Fallujah was a watershed moment in the Iraq War. US Marines recaptured the city in some of the heaviest fighting since Hue City. Put yourself in the midst of the action with the Marines during the most significant and bloodiest battle of the war! This first hand account gives readers a front row seat to modern urban combat with Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines. Picking up Fallujah Diary, readers will find out exactly what it takes to fight house to house in the deserts of Iraq. This is not a story written from the perspective of generals, commanders, or academics. This is written by a grunt with a grunt's eye view. Join Lance Corporal Alex Saxby and the rest of 3rd Platoon as they prepare to deploy, then follow them through Al Anbar Providence and ultimately the Second Battle of Fallujah. This book is an in-depth, first person view of the heaviest urban fighting the Marine Corps has fought since the Vietnam War.

Honest ground-truth account of modern urban warfare.

The actual storyline of this book is very well laid out, and articulated in a concise yet coherent manner. The key flaw in this book has nothing to do with the text whatsoever, rather, the “virtual voice” narration of it shows the glaring ignorance of military conventions and language usage. Even the non-servicemen will probably be as bothered as I was by the consistent misuse of acronyms and/or letter strings to describe the status of individuals or their weaponry. One example, when the author does, as he should, in listing the Marines or Navy Corpsmen who are injured or killed in combat, the darn virtually interpreted status is not “W “I” “A” - Wounded In Action, or “K” “I” “A” - Killed In Action, but rather it sounds like two girls and or Korean cars are injured or killed… Kia or Mia. That was more than off putting, it was at some level disrespectful of the sacrifice. I’ve come to learn, after having read well over 500 hard-copy texts on military history, strategy, tactics, and combat, and at least another 150 audio treatments of various books, the only true non-starter for me these days in terms of listening to a book is whether the title is read by a human or a machine. I will no longer pay anything for a book that’s “read” (misread) by a computer generated voice. Just not worth the distraction and aggravation. Nevertheless, this book was “free” with my Audible subscription, so it wasn’t as upsetting as if I’d put sown extra money to hear it. In short, if you can suffer through the poor use of military jargon, much of which is actually in common use among the general population, it’s worth a listen. More to the point, unless reconfigured to have been read by a human, I’d suggest actually purchasing the text itself. The story is good, important, and provides a grunt’s eye view of modern street warfare.

Good story

good story not as detailed as others I've read but still good

side note who ever let this narrator read this book and not tell him how to pronounce simple military acronyms is ridiculous. Most non military vetrans known what KIA WIA and IED means and could probably read them correctly idk who is to blame the narrator or the producers but it's just lazy and it detracts from the stpry.