One Bullet Away: The Making of a US Marine Officer

by Nathaniel Fick

The most eloquent and personal story of a young man at war since Geoffrey Wellum's FIRST LIGHT

Until a winter evening in 1998 Nathaniel was just another history student on a comfortable career trajectory of high school to college to white collar job. Then he went to a lecture by a Wall Street Journal reporter who had just published a book on the US Marines. It brought forth a latent desire to break free of the 'seat belt and safety goggle, safety-first' culture: to be a warrior. He passed the gruelling selection course and joined the Marine Corps on graduation. Posted to a Marine Regiment in the wake of 9/11, he took part in the invasion of Afghanistan, then led a platoon of their elite Recon Battalion during the invasion of Iraq.

This is not a book about the Iraq invasion as such: it is an articulate and deeply thoughtful young man's account of what it means to fight in the frontline, to risk not just death or injury, but psychological harm. He reveals some of the awful dilemmas war can bring, horrible problems to which there is no 'right' answer, but a decision had to be made quickly -- by him alone. In combat you are just one bullet away from death -- or promotion. But this doesn't focus the mind: it makes it freeze up -- unless your training is so thorough that you overcome exhaustion and terror.

'Nate' took 65 men to war and came home with all 65. He proved himself an excellent officer and won promotion, but resigned in 2003 to write this book and attend Harvard Business School.

Genres: Military Fiction, Nonfiction, War, History, Military History, Memoir, Biography

397 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Nathaniel Fick was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1977. He graduated with high honors from Dartmouth College in 1999, earning degrees in Classics and Government. While at Dartmouth, Fick captained the cycling team to a US National Championship, and wrote a senior thesis on Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War and its implications for American foreign policy.

In 1998, after his junior year at Dartmouth, Fick attended the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidates School and was commissioned a second lieutenant upon graduating college the following year.

Fick led his platoon into Afghanistan only weeks after 9/11, helping to drive the Taliban from its spiritual capital in Kandahar. After returning to the States in 2002, he was invited to join Recon, the Corps' special operations force. Fick led a reconnaissance platoon in combat during the earliest months of Operation Iraqi Freedom, from the battle of Nasiriyah to the fall of Baghdad, and into the perilous peacekeeping that followed.

Fick and his platoon were the subjects of a series of articles in Rolling Stone and the book Generation Kill by the embedded journalist Evan Wright. The articles won the National Magazine Award in 2003. Generation Kill was adapted by David Simon and Ed Burns into a miniseries of the same name for HBO, in which Fick was portrayed by actor Stark Sands

Fick left the Marines as a captain in 2003 After leaving the Marines, Fick used the GI Bill to attend Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School.

Fick became the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at the Center for a New American Security in 2008 and later was appointed CEO in June 2009.

Endgame's endpoint security platform is widely deployed across commercial and government customers. In 2018, Endgame was named one of the "100 Best Cloud Companies in the World" by Forbes, and Nate was recognized by Fast Company Magazine as one of the "Most Creative People in Business."

He comments frequently in the media on technology and national security matters, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

He appears regularly on business television, including CNBC and Bloomberg TV. Fick has testified before the United States Senate on Iraq and spoke at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver on August 28, 2008, the night Barack Obama accepted the presidential nomination.

Fick was elected to Dartmouth College's Board of Trustees in April 2012. He also serves on the Military & Veterans Advisory Council at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

He resides in Washington, D.C. with his wife, Margaret Angell, and two daughters.

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 5 out of 5]

When a man with an intellectual bent who really wants to be a soldier and get that adrenaline rush from actually fighting and isn't ashamed of it, isn't covering it up with "I want to give back to my country" actually he does, but not enough to matter then you could expect a good read. And that's what you get.

Sebastian Jung's War was the best book I've ever read on understanding why boys want to go to be soldiers, through all the extreme hardships of training, and to fight and maybe lose their lives. But Jung wasn't a soldier. Nate Fick explains it from a soldier's point of view.

It's not quite the full-on detail of the amazing American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History by the tragically murdered Chris Kyle, but it's still plenty of blow-by-blow fighting. The appalling hardships of training are gleefully related. What we see as pain and suffering marines see as proof of their hardness, just how damn macho they really are.

We've all read and seen the documentaries and lately reality tv of the training of marines, but Fick goes one step further and makes you understand by examples exactly what situation the training prepared them for. Even the not-washing and not-changing-clothes for weeks, more than a month, is prepared for. How else could you put up with that?

The book is a bit uneven and there are tedious bit that made my eyes glaze over, but Fick is a wonderful writer, and that lifted the book, one of many military memoirs to a new level.So if a book is the sum of its parts, it's a 4 star, but if it's judged by the overall experience and what I got from it, it's definitely a 5 star.

Short note on reading This is really good. Puts me in mind of Sebastian Junger's War. Not so philosophical and more action though.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Soldiering has one great trap...To be a good soldier you must love the army. But to be a good officer you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love. This is...a very hard thing to do. No other profession requires it. That is one reason why there are so few good officers. Although there are many good men."
-- Michael Schaara, The Killer Angels

My friend overnighted this book to me when I told him I was joining the National Guard. He told me to read it before making a decision. He hoped that by reading it, I would be change my mind. It didn't exactly happen like that; rather, when I finished, I felt kind of bad about myself, like I'd failed some ineffable duty. Still, I didn't join the Guard, but not because of anything I've read. In the end, it came down to the fact that the Guard's loan repayment plan is paltry, and I would've gone underwater on my debt while in training. (There's also a better, funnier story about why I didn't join, which involves a long night at the bar and the Guard physical scheduled the next day, but I won't go into that).

Nathaniel Fick went through with it, though. He joined the Marines, via officer candidacy school, after graduating from Dartmouth. This memoir tells of his journey from lesser-Ivy League (take that, Dartmouth!) English major to OCS to SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, escape) to Afghanistan to Iraq to home. It does a good job of capturing the little details of soldiering, and highlighting the dichotomy between two very separate worlds: that of soldiers and civilians.

The subtitle of the book is "The Making of a Marine Corps Officer." This implies that the book provides some sort of template, which is just not the case. Fick is unlike any soldier I've ever met - and I've lived and been friends with my share of soldiers. He brings to his experiences, and this memoir, a liberal sensitivity (with the requisite lethality, of course) that is missing in most military men. He doesn't join the Marines out of monetary necessity, to pay for college, or because he doesn't have any other options. He joined the Marines because he really believed in their ethos of duty, honor and country. But he's not some Reagan-era-Red-Dawn-Watching-2nd-Amendment-Glorifying-Wannabe-GI Joe. Rather, he seems to be a really smart guy with a fine-tuned sense of duty (and also, I think, a bit of intellectual curiosity about the military). When he enlists, in the far-away days of peace we knew in the late 90's, his father tells him that: "The Marines will teach you everything I love you too much to teach you."

The book is divided into two main sections, Peace and War. The first section is shorter, as Fick breezes through OCS and infantry training. The second half of the book begins with the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks. Fick goes to Afghanistan where, frankly, nothing much really happens. He joins a Marine reconaissance batallion, and then is sent to Iraq. This is where the bulk of the story takes place, as Fick and his recon platoon race towards Baghdad (coincidentally, Rolling Stone reporter Evan Wright was embedded with Fick's platoon, codenamed Hitman 2, and he featured them in his book Generation Kill, making Hitman 2 the most written-about and televised group of soldiers since Easy Company of the 501st, who have been immortalized by Stephen Ambrose in Band of Brothers).

Fick is a fine, easy-to-read writer. He keeps things simple and informative, with a good memory for dialogue (or a good ear for making up dialogue) and a keen sense of telling details. With his Dartmouth degree going to waste, he is fond of literary allusions. He never gives any details of his personal life, save an offhand reference to a girlfriend, so he remains elusive as a person, and a blank slate as a narrator.

That doesn't stop him from giving his opinions, however. Throughout the book, he peppers his story with his personal perspective on events. For instance, after a visit to the site of the former World Trade Center (the so-called "Ground Zero"), he derides the empty patriotism of the SUV-driving-yellow-bumper-sticker-they-won't-destroy-our-way-of-life crowd. During his time in Iraq, he is critical of the blunt instruments of modern warfare, which killed and injured the very civilian populace the American military was trying to "liberate." He also discretely chides his superiors, especially his captain, whom he pointedly does not mention by name.

It's true that every soldier fights a limited war. The things Fick sees are his entire universe, and expand to fill his imagination, even though it is a much smaller part of the whole. In other words, the sense of a soldier is that he is at the center of the war, when in fact, history may relegate him and his companions to the periphery.

To be sure, Hitman 2 is not Ambrose's "Band of Brothers." These are not guys out saving the world. They are not even seriously challenged (the story takes place during the initial invasion of Iraq, before IEDs and quagmires and the long, bloody summer of 2006). This is not to say Fick and his men weren't in danger, because they were, and they faced it bravely; however, he went to war with 65 men, and all of them came home alive. Most of the time, the Iraqi Army does not put up much of a fight. The most memorable incidents of this book take place outside of combat, such as when the platoon comes upon wounded children. There is an especially harrowing scene when Fick's battalion commander, Major Benelli, refuses to evacuate a wounded girl. Breaching his self-imposed rule about not naming names, Fick directly addresses his smirking commander:

I felt impotent, but I wasn't powerless. I had an assault rifle in my hands. I could shoot the motherf****r. I could hold him hostage until he called in that helicopter.

There is also a marvelous scene where Sergeant Colbert, hero of the HBO miniseries Generation Kill, cooly blows up an unexploded RGP round that had landed in a man's yard. Though doing so was against orders, Fick realizes this is an instance to do some lasting good.

Though his men didn't fight any pitched battles, Fick does an especially good job describing modern combat, as in this scene where his men fire on a truck that refuses to stop at a checkpoint:

In slow motion, I watch .50-caliber tracers and Mark-19 rounds arcing over the truck. It closed the gap on the gunners faster than they could lower their guns. For a second, I thought he'd run right into us. The gunners corrected, and grenades exploded against the grille and windshield as armor-piercing incendiary machine gun rounds ripped the cab apart...Still the truck rushed closer...I jammed the rifle stock into my shoulder and flipped the selector level to 'burst'...I aimed low, at the middle of the grille, knowing the shots would float upward toward the windshield. The rifle stuttered, three little kicks at a time.

The end of the book finds Fick returning home and resigning so he can go to grad school (Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government, natch). It's a short, interesting, provocative section. There is Fick swerving as he goes beneath underpasses, because in Iraq, grenades were often dropped from them. There is Fick, answering questions from an admissions officer, who wanted to know about something he'd said that appeared in Rolling Stone ("Do I feel compelled to explain myself to you? I don't"). There is Fick taking a friend to Antietam, which gives him a chance to be ostentatiously rueful about his experiences, and subtly belittle the "civvie" who doesn't understand. There is Fick getting pissed about people who thanked him for his service.

This section really calls to mind a fascinating and important questions about military and civilian roles in a democracy. I've never served in the military. Like I said, the closest I came was that National Guard recruiting office. I respect what soldiers do; and I am also very wary of what they do. Undue deference leads to bad policy, which should go without saying.

I grew a little wary of Fick's mindset, that of superior knowledge, which however natural and psychologically explicable, leads to a growing gulf between the military and the civilian population. The wider the gulf, the worse the policy choices.

In college, I lived with a ROTC student, and I can't even count the number of times my former roomate-now-Army-lieutenant and I got into political debates. Without fail, at some point in the argument (right around the time I had eviscerated him with my slashing logic) he'd riposte to the effect that: "You have no right to say that about the Army because the Army has given you the right to say that."

It's a dangerous bit of self-indulgence on the part of the military to believe they are protecting or even giving us rights, thus giving them some control over them. It smacks of praetorianism. The last section of One Bullet Away shows that even the most enlightened, liberal thinker can fall prey to that reasoning. That should be enough to give anyone pause.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a retired Marine officer myself, I believe this may be the best job I've seen yet of getting inside the mind of a Marine leader. Nathaniel Fick is smart, caring, conscientious, brave, and introspective. Upon leaving the Corps he went to grad school with the goal of getting into politics, and I hope to hear his name a lot in the years to come - he has much more to give our country.
Incidentally, in another book titled Generation Kill, you can get the perspective of a reporter attached to Lt. Fick's unit on his character and performance during the same period Fick writes about in One Bullet Away; he earned that writer's liking and respect too.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer is a narrative on the military and war from an Ivy League liberal arts major. With Lt Nathaniel Fick’s background in the classics, I was hoping for a mix of real experience and historical interpretation of his experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq. He focuses more on the experience and not on the wider view. Still, it was a well-written account of joining the military and going to war from a segment of society that is much more focused on getting rich on Wall Street or joining law firms to make a big killing than serving the nation. Nate Fick’s background made him more open to military service and he joined at exactly the right time to be in the vanguard going to war after 9/11.

I most enjoyed his descriptions of entering the military and his progress through basic and follow on training. I’ve been through enlisted and officer basic training and his description of the purposeful craziness had me rolling on the floor. One thing for sure, Marine training is probably the toughest around.

In the middle of his first sea cruise, 9/11 occurs and his unit is sent to support the Afghanistan campaign. He goes into Pakistan and then into the Kandahar area, supporting but not involved in any of the major actions. Returning from Afghanistan, he is reassigned from command of an infantry platoon to a reconnaissance platoon, extending his opportunity to command at the “point of the spear”. That is where he is when Iraqi Freedom occurs. He takes us through the battles from Kuwait to Baghdad, concentrating on the day-to-day operations. No big picture on this war, just what he and his platoon went through. It was interesting to see his perspective when he finds out his unit was the feint towards Baquoba for a move towards Baghdad. It was a good strategic move but his view on risking his men’s lives for a fake attack was revealing. After returning from Iraq, he leaves the military and gives a clear, simple description of PTSD and how it affected him.

Nate Fick’s view of the Marine Corps is very positive as he looks down the chain at his enlisted force and is mostly negative as he looks up the chain. I have known some excellent Marine officers and have not met the type of “tactical incompetents” he describes. His high opinion of the enlisted force continues to the end, backed up with plenty of examples in combat. This book is not so much about combat post 9/11 but about how tough it is to be in combat and stay alert, focused while observing all the rules of engagement. 5 Stars for the pre 9/11 and 3 stars for the post 9/11, leaving me at the 4 Star level.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nate is one of my favorite characters in Generation Kill, so when I realized that he had written a book of his very own that treated on some of the same events, I snapped it up immediately. I like Nate because he is an officer and a gentleman, a Dartmouth classics major who joined the Marine Corps in a fit of idealism, and one of only two competent officers portrayed in Generation Kill. Why I love Nate can be best understood first hand.

The rules of engagement harked back to my college classes on Saint Augustine and "just war" theory. I couldn't control the justice of the declaration of war, but I could control the justice of its conduct within my tiny sphere of influence. Doing right, I thought, wasn't only a moral imperative but also the most expedient way to lead the platoon."

This book is about Nate's journey from making the decision to join the Corps, through Afghanistan, the Basic Recon Course, and Iraq. It is well worth reading as an excellent first person account of life in the modern military, but I think those who have read Generation Kill may find it most rewarding. The discrepancies between the two accounts are fascinating. Some can be explained simply by the way Fick is more gentle with his fellow officers than Wright was inclined to be--he never, for instance, calls out Captain America for his insane cowardice--but in some places the two stories are genuinely different. As Tim O'Brien teaches us, "there is no such thing as a true war story."

Well written, exciting, thoughtful, informative, and interesting, this book is an absolute must read for anyone who liked Generation Kill, is curious about how exactly the military works, or claimed citizenship in the United States of America during 2002-2003.

[Terri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a terrific book. As good as Generation Kill for me (Generation Kill having profiled Lt N. Fick as one of the Platoon that Evan Wright embedded with). I would highly recommend that if the reader of this review has not read Generation Kill, then read it before or after reading One Bullet Away. The two different perspectives were fascinating.
What Generation Kill never touched on however, was how Lt Nathaniel Fick evolved. The early days of his career. His training, his deployment to Afghanistan, was, upon finishing this book, probably more interesting to me than his time in Iraq.
5 star book, Nathaniel Fick!

[Ron Wroblewski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can really identify with this bool. Nate was a new Marine Lieutenant when 911 hit. He served in both Afghanistan and Iraq as a recon Patron Commander. I served as a New Marine Lieutenant in Vietman.

One difference is t hat he patrolled in Humvees, while I patrolled via helicopters and on foot.

He brough all his men home and so did I.

Excellent read.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this book twice now and I have enjoyed it both times. The author is very good at his narration, and is neither ultra gung-ho nor cynically going through the motions. Mr. Fick is a Marine; a thoughtful Marine and one whose sense of duty is deeply held and not the product of jingoism or testosterone laden "hoo-rah" culture.

In short, I enjoyed the heck out of this book and would heartily recommend it. There are plenty of books that delineate and define how the strategic battles of the Afghan and Iraq wars were lost (I'm looking at you Misters Rumsfeld and Franks), but few who put into perspective the squad level view on the ground of these conflicts.

[Julia Chenoweth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-reading. This was the book was convinced me to stay at usna and commission back in the marine corps. Now I think it convinced me to get out.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a former Marine officer's account of the early war on terrorism through two combat tours in the Middle East. It covers the training and deployments cycles that occur in the military. It also highlights the small percentage of Marines who are more concerned with playing the political game. It does a decent job of showing the need to care for those below you and training them to be able to replace you which is an old Marines Corps standard. Semper Fedelis.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A first hand account experience of a young Officer with a Marine Recon Unit in the invasion of Iraq after 9-11. The author sounds authentic, believable, and his account jives with that of friends of mine who also were there. As a fellow servicemember I salute him for his good and faithful service to our country. I passed this book on to my Marine Son-in-law and he enjoyed reading it, too.

By the way... that's a great title isn't it?

[John Beck · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://www.andalittlewine.blogspot.com/2012/08/book-review-one-bullet-away-by.ht...

In his memoir One Bullet Away, Nate Fick shares his story of joining the Marine Corps as an officer, and deploying just before the September 11th terrorist attacks.

Fick's story, told in ways that are both too glib and too frank, confuses the hell out of me.

I understand the call to serve. I understand the frustration that clearly mounts as he is thrust into war zones, in Afghanistan and again in Iraq, that his training did not fully prepare him for by commanders more interested in jockeying for promotion than in the safety of Fick's platoon.

But I don't understand who Fick was writing for. Who does he think will love his book?

Fick starts off with a glorification of war, of the Marines, of martial life that is, to me, off-putting. "The grunt life was untainted," he writes. "Being a Marine... was a rite of passage in a society becoming so soft and homogenized that the very concept was often sneered at." I could spend all day trying to unpack what Fick means by "soft," but I think the quote shares the flavor of the opening chapters, and the hard-soft motif resurfaces throughout the memoir's nearly 400 pages.

Fick handles death lightly. All of his platoon members survive his tour in Iraq, though some are wounded or killed later. The people who die are enemies, othered, and largely nondescript. Threats among the Marines to kill each other if they screw up, as Fick does when one of his men offers to blow an undetonated bomb, are common. But the story lacks the grittiness, the nastiness of military memoirs that have lately been turned into successful movies.

But as much as Fick loves the Marines, his platoon, his life as a soldier, he ultimately leaves the Corps because of its seemingly mindless bureaucracy. He leaves because he can't imagine putting himself back in harms way if he is surrounded by the kind of people he served his first Iraq deployment with- the idiots who drive down every road with guns blazing, endangering allies and civilians, or the ladder climbing fools who want to call in air support strikes simply become another company had called one earlier. So the book is not written, I think, for the military enthusiast.

Fick makes a compelling case for the re-assessment of American readiness. "I was noticing a trend in my career: train to lead a rifle platoon, but get a weapons platoon; train to raid the coastline in rubber boats, but go to war in a landlocked country; train to jump into patrols via parachute, but use boots or Humvees in the real world." Fick chooses to see this train for Plan A, fight with Plan B as "a tribute to flexibility," but given the dysfunction evident throughout his dealings with military command, it smacks of mismanagement.

[N · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nate Fick seems like a classy guy and this is a classy, classy book. After graduating with a degree in Classics from Dartmouth, Fick joined the US Marine Corps as an officer candidate. While his friends when to med school, law school or became “consultants” (as Fick points out, what exactly can a 22-year-old consult on?), he became a peacetime officer who was abruptly thrust into wartime after September 11.

After serving in Afghanistan, Fick joined the infamously-tough First Reconnaissance Battalion. One of the book’s most powerful sequences involves Fick’s training to become the so-called ‘point of the Marines’ spear’. He deliberately marks down water-based training as his last pick – and, of course, because a First Recon Marine must be trained to do exactly what he hates, he spends a couple of weeks being forced to perform tasks underwater or in stormy seas, until the fear of drowning is beaten out of him.

The final part of Fick’s memoir, recounting his experience as a first lieutenant during the 2003 Iraq invasion, will be familiar to readers of Evan Wright’s Generation Kill. Fick gives a more personally-focused (and more balanced) account of what happened, which is, perhaps inevitably, less interesting.

I enjoyed this book a lot – though I found the military experiences rather blended together, especially due to the sheer size of the book (hint: it’s long). I preferred Fick’s more personal and philosophical reflections to the raw action of the book, but that's probably just because I’m more interested in people than warriors. ;)

The fact that Fick is a former Classics student gives the book a genuine lift. Fick’s prose is always meditative and frequently beautiful. That said, Fick remains carefully neutral on most political subjects, which makes for slightly frustrating reading – sometimes you just want Fick to stand up and give a candid opinion.

[Judy P. Sprout · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started this book a while ago, maybe a couple years after it came out. Abandoned it halfway through and sortof kindof meant to get back to it, maybe, when I felt like it.

Then I got recruited for a position at some rando network security company, clicked around their website, saw their CEO was some dude named Nathaniel Fick and did a serious double-take. Not that Nathaniel Fick, surely. Oh, but yes. So I started over from zero & pushed past the place where I left off, somewhere in Afghanistan.

Fick captures what it's like to try to be honorable in a situation that's gone toe-up. He is clearly smart and articulate, lays it out well. And you might never know that what he wrote is inadequate until you read Generation Kill, a much stronger retelling of the beginning of Iraqi Freedom. In contrast and hindsight, One Bullet Away is wan, boring. Idealist boyscout shit.

You should read it anyway.

NOTE: Rejected whole idea of job; culture mismatch.

[Michael Flanagan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book that for some reason did not quite gel with me. After watching the T.V series Generation kill this book offered the story from a marines point of view. While the book was an engaging read for me it lacked spark that makes a good book a great one.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

A direct and clearheaded account of one man's transformation from civilian to marine officer, layered alongside vivid descriptions of the tip of the spear's combat experience immediately post-9/11. Fick's journey is in many ways unique; he's selected for one of the rarest occupational specialities in the marines (a rare feat in and of itself) months after graduation from Darmouth, not the usual pipeline for military careers. Fick's closest friends were preparing for graduate school and consulting jobs while he was packing up for Quantico, and this disconnect alone makes his perspective on his journey unique. Throughout the book, but especially in the early chapters, Fick reflects on the ostensible disjuncture between his background and his career interests. This reflection is not self-pitying nor is it disparaging of the classmates, family, and friends whose reactions range from incomprehension and shock to bewildered but steadfast support. Fick's ability to simply describe his consequential sense of cognitive dissonance as he straddles two very different worlds is admirable and refreshing, and his feelings of quiet solitude (but not alienation) ring true. He doesn't attempt to draw any grand conclusions about the state of civil-military relations, but rather sticks to laying out his personal goals, struggles, values, and an examination of how all three change, conflict, and evolve.

Fick's thoughts on leadership are similarly simple, but powerful, as the actions he recounts prove their validity. He describes how the marines under his command expected "competence, courage, and consistency" from their leaders. Throughout the events described in the book, Fick meets these expectations and exceeds them, persistently noting "we can't control the missions we get, only how we execute them." Fick's ability to elevate others' needs over his own and to make difficult calls in the midst of chaos show how, especially in the Marine Corps' context of decentralized command, an individual's actions and values matter.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book came to my attention after Generation Kill (both the landmark work of war reportage by Evan Wright and the equally-acclaimed narrative miniseries by Susanna White and Simon Cellan Jones). Nathaniel Fick was a key figure in both, being the commander of the platoon with whom Wright was embedded in 2003. Whilst not essential, I’d recommend getting the immediate context in which Fick is writing - that is, one in which Wright’s book (which reports some of the same events from a different angle) has quickly become a bestseller.

I am about as ardently anti-militarist as it is possible to be - it is more than likely that most of those who accompanied Fick on his tours of Afghanistan and Iraq would not think particularly highly of me. Fick himself probably wouldn’t be full of praise for my perspective on the nature of ‘comradeship’ which does a lot of the motivating work here. From the outside looking in, it appears fundamentally exploitative, despite (or perhaps because of) the bonds it forms through extreme psychological duress. Many veterans I am sure would disagree. That doesn’t matter - what I appreciate here is the honesty of intention behind this book. It reads as an account imbued with self-reflection, which attempts to face up to what happened to the person who graduated college to join a group of men he saw as ‘warrior-heroes’. It is human, and humanising. To a remarkable extent, it avoids employing a moralising meta-narrative, and leaves the people of Iraq as they appeared to Fick himself: hidden from view, except from flashes of suffering, anger, fear.

Fick does not hide his confusion about what he did - nor does he attempt to hide the pride and loyalty he feels towards the military, however chilling it appears to us. I do think, as another reviewer has mentioned, that as the book continues we see more and more of the hubris, bordering on arrogance, that Jack Nicholson’s Col. Jessup most famously articulates in A Few Good Men (1992):

“I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.”

Compare Fick’s encounter with a graduate admissions officer:

“You’re quoted as saying, ‘The bad news is, we don’t get much sleep tonight; the good news is, we get to kill people.’ […] Could you please explain that quote for me?”
“No, I cannot.”
“Well, do you really feel that way?”
“You mean, will I climb your clock tower and pick people off with a hunting rifle? […] No, I will not. Do I feel compelled to explain myself to you? I don’t.”

Not identical, by any means. But Fick’s response is worrying - a question he later derides as motivated by ‘ignorance’ is one which touches the very heart of his own avowed motivations in understanding the experience of military service. It is a question to which there is a very, very simple answer - and the fact that he refuses to provide it speaks volumes. Acknowledging the author’s own uncertainty is the true strength of One Bullet Away, but sometimes that strength conspicuously fades.

The only thing that’s missing now is Tony Espera’s book - one day, perhaps.

[Caitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't put this book down, but I didn't want it to end. Captain Fick gives equal attention to the tactical and logistical challenges of war, and the moral and ethical ones. A classics major with all the historical and philosophical lessons and ideas of a first-rate liberal arts education in his thinking, he is also a highly trained warrior. He shows a belief in and dedication to the highest ideals of the Marine Corps, with a practical grasp of all the ways in which the reality can and sometimes does fall short of those ideals. His perspective was fascinating, candid about the ugliness and the terrible allures of war, and heartening in some ways, but also illustrated the importance of good and conscientious leadership to the well-being of all. If all the decision-makers shared more of Fick's qualities, I think we'd all be better off.

[Kayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Give me a new appreciation for being a Platoon Commander. Wasn’t overly motivational or fake where I cannot relate to it. I enjoyed learning about those original pushes into Afghanistan and Iraq from this level of leadership and seeing how some things will never change in the Corps. Throughout all, it is evident how much he trusted his GySgt and how much he loves his Marines. I appreciated the thoughtful reflections on each of his decision and the raw honesty of having to decide on the spot and later question your own decisions. As well as having to disagree with senior officers to protect those you’re entrusted to lead. He captured the loneliness of being an officer, and not being able to completely relate to those that you lead but doesn’t dwell on it. Overall so many aspects of leadership that don’t get talked about enough in military books, true or fiction. Garrison or combat.

[Ana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had great hopes for this book after hearing an interview with the author on NPR. The book is pretty long and after having it for 6 weeks from the library, I couldn't bring myself to finish it. The book does a good job in describing the training of Marines and officers, and a partially good job in describing what they go through in battle, but otherwise it's slow and somewhat boring. It's unsettling to find out just how dumb a lot of the Marine commanders are.

I would not recommend this book although it's not horrible. I hope there are better books out there on this subject (an interesting one to me) who are a better read.

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the account of Nathaniel Fick in "Generation Kill", so was thrilled to see this autobiography. He comes across as a thoughtful, moral person in GK and that's backed up by what he's written here; it starts before Fick has even thought of joining the armed forces, and blends pretty seamlessly with the GK account.

It's not hard to see why Evan Wright wrote of the affection and trust soldiers had for Fick. Character shines through on the page, and his writing feels honest and analytical in all the best ways.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining read, but written by someone with an obviously over-inflated opinion of himself. As a Marine Infantry Officer myself, I can assure you his accomplishments, particularly while in training at TBS and IOC, are not as glorious as he makes them out to be. It's an easy and entertaining read, but best read with the understanding that Fick's picture of himself is embellished by his own delusions of grandeur.

[Susie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't think I liked this book so much at first, but when I reached the last chapter I started having an ache in my stomach. By the last pages it had reached the level of full on grieving. I don't know why, I guess it really got to me; the people, their choices and the honesty of it all. The guy is very reflective, and though I feel I would have liked to know even more about some parts, I'm still impressed with how much he remembered. All things considered.

I'm gonna go reread it now.

[Jon Koebrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

One Bullet Away is a candid, descriptive, and well-written book about an intelligent person becoming a marine officer and his tour of duty. Fick is an impressive fellow and his telling is a must read for those wanting to comprehend life as a marine and experiencing modern combat. Fick does an especially good job in articulation of the choices military leaders must make at the ground level. 4.25 stars.

[Deven · Rating 5 out of 5]

My friend Scott W. suggested I read this book, and wow, was I impressed. It is an excellent book on what it takes to be a Marine Officer. I was an Army Officer, I see a big difference. A great book on the struggle to excel and survive. If your into the military this is must read.

[Tristanb18 · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought this book was great before I joined the Marines. Now, I can't believe some of the things said in the book.

[Oceana2602 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Note: I've read this book a couple of weeks and my review is based on the notes I took while reading it.

Review:
I have no doubts that "One Bullet Away" by Nathaniel Fick is going to be one, if not the best book, I'm going to read this year. After I finished it, it took me along time to stop thinking about it (actually, I still haven't), and it moved me in a way I didn't expect. And that was before I watched the excellent HBO TV series "Generation Kill", which I highly recommend, btw.

As you may remember, I read and reviewed Evan Wright's "Generation Kill" some time ago. For those of you who don't know the connection, "Generation Kill" covers Wright's time as an embedded journalist with a platoon of recon marines, whose commanding officer was Nathaniel Fick, the author of "One Bullet Away". While I enjoyed "Generation Kill" very much, I also judged it as a book written for an MTV audience - young people with a short attention span and a (however misled) desire for action.

"One Bullet Away" is very very different from "Generation Kill", and not only because it covers Fick's personal journey to becoming a Marine officer and some of his missions before the events in "Generation Kill". It is different, because Fick's accounts, compared to GK, are so, well, unspectacular. He is all rational, planning, calm - where Evans is the terrified and fascinated journalist who sees the heroics of the single man, and not the camaraderie of the team that is so evident in everything that Fick describes. Where Evans watches and describes, Fick thinks (and writes. And people who can truly think are so rarely found these days. (*sigh*)

I was fascinated and confused by the lack of information that Fick describes. He knows, has been taught by the Marine Corps, that you can never have all the intel, so you must act and plan with what you have. For the reader, at least for me as a reader, this was rather unsettling - how can these men make the decision they have to make when they lack so much important information? Hell, I can't even order a pizza if I don't know what kind of cheese is going to be on it!

Fick doesn't describe this lack of intel so much as he just lives it - this became most apparent to me on his first mission to Pakistan and Afghanistan - he and the others around him seem to live in an information vacuum onboard their ship -opinion building? Following the press? Not happening. Nowhere else did it become so evident to me that we have to overcome the (heroic) idea that fighting for one's country means fighting for what one believes in. Fighting for one's country means following orders, making the best of the information one is given - fighting for a policy that in the best case scenario you stand behind, but most of the time, you won't even know. What you have to believe in is the idea of serving your country, although Fick doesn't outright say that in this book (but he does so in later articles).

And I'm not saying this to make it worth less - the opposite is the case. But it is a truth, and I think it is an important truth to know in order to be able to understand any kind of war. And it makes perfect sense from a military POV: you can't have everyone doing what they think is best - you need them to do what they are told to do. Fick doesn't complain about this, in fact he doesn't seem to object to this. What does make him decide to leave the Corps in the end is the price you pay for being part of the chain of command - you send men to war and they will get killed, and as a commanding officer, no matter how little information you've been given by your superiors, no matter if you believe in the policy you are fighting for or not - this is going to be your responsibility.

This had quite an impact on me, the fact that for Fick, for anyone else right there, it's not about good or bad or right or wrong - it's about survival. It's as basic as that.

And honestly, I don't know how this makes me feel - there are people fighting out there who are excellent at their jobs - but all they do depends on the words of some policy makers in Washington- What if the policy is wrong? Fick doesn't answer this question -he doesn't even ask it. But I don't think you can read this book without thinking about it.

That is not to say that Fick is uninformed. On the contrary -even though he skips the details, Fick mentions and describes again and again the meticulous planning that goes into preparing missions and giving orders: the intelligence gathering, the officer meetings, the ordering, assembling and (re-)checking of equipment -all parts that are virtually non-existent in Evan's book. Where GK sometimes seems to be about a bunch of guys who took an armed roadtrip in Iraq for their Spring break, OBA shows that - overall agenda or not (see above) - these people actually seemed to know what they were doing. And in addition to his excellent personal descriptions of his life as a Marine officer, the book also provides a lot of factual information of the work of the Marine Corps and its officers.

And then there is the fact that from everything else I've read not about, but from Nate Fick since then (for those who don't know, he's the CEO of the think tank CNAS), he seems to be one of the more intelligent people out there, and I agree with mostly everything he says (plus he writes so compellingly that I would happily read his shopping list, and enjoy doing so), and I could never resist really good, intelligent reasoning. It turns me on. Yes, really. (but that's beside the point, maybe)

Anyway, I found this book very very impressive. It is well-written and informative, but it is also personal and heartfelt. I am a bit ashamed to admit that I didn't expect Fick to be such a good writer (I only read his other articles and interviews after I read OBA) and was therefore surprised that I liked this book even better than I had hoped to like it. I have since learned that OBA is required reading for many Marine officers, and I find that decision fully justified.

An important book that I highly, HIGHLY recommend to everyone who is even the least bit interested in the subject.

[Anita · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Marines win the battles in front of them with an inner fight running through them."

This is an intriguing book, a memoir of Nate Fick's journey from Marine OCS to combat in Afghanistan to the end of his tour of duty and his time in Marines.

When I was going into undergraduate school(back in the Jurassic Era) the only thing on earth I wanted was to be a Marine combat officer. Alas, as a female this was NOT going to happen. Reading 'One Bullet Away' I have decided that I would probably have washed out of OCS (YIKES! during the snake encounters in the swamp!) - it's a tough row to hoe.

Fick didn't wash out and his account reads, in many ways, like an account of a marriage. It starts with the starry-eyed couple (Fick and OCS), chronicles the highs and lows of the realities of Life in the Corps (especially during wartime) and ends in bittersweet fashion, with a lot of love still extant but the understanding that it isn't going to have a HEA.

I'm glad to have read it.

[Shannon Callahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only a Part.

I think this book and the author were excellent and how he put it into words. It hit the heart of mine because my uncle was also a Recon Marine himself. He went to the first Gulf War deep in the heart of Iraqi territory. He doesn’t talk too much about it and this book gave me some insights. This made me appreciate my uncle even more even if we don’t talk much. As for this book, I appreciated how he wrote throughout from the beginning to the end. Especially how the amount of unfiltered details that he gave...not many former soldiers do that much recently.

[Laura Akers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unless you achieved and survived what this author did in the Marine Corps and afterward, the only rating for this book should be the highest. Viewed from a time long past these events, and knowing what came to light, this visceral account makes what the author lived through even more poignant. His unvarnished accounting is a captivating look at the bravery of his Force Recon platoon.