It is difficult to relive an experience of something as grotesque as the human ambition to end one another and then to write a chronological narrative to that experience. Either you satisfy yourself with the individual events that are now only memory, or you simply fill in the gaps with what you can remember. During the Iraq war, many books have been written either glorifying the war to a Hollywood cinematic conclusion of death, honor, and patriotism or to paint a picture of a bloodthirsty enemy bent on destroying all things democratic. In this book, I try to avoid both of these portrayals of war, if only to tell a story of the men who fought a war within a war. This book stands neither in judgment nor glorification of the events of 2005. Instead, it is written from the personal viewpoint of the writer. It gives no reference to the strategic or operational command staff who were the ultimate prosecutors of this war.

Replacement Marines recounts the Iraq war for an audience that cannot be imagined. For an audience that has watched the last 20 years of America's longest war with patriotism, skepticism, and somewhat indifference. Those who have seen war do not envy the civil pomp of our wartime circumstances as anything but a test of survival. As within any large vessel, if the ship were to sink, it is those left below deck who would bear the Titanic cost of the tragedy. And we were this war's steerage who were caught below deck.