Shadows Beyond The Ridge (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798257459634)

Shadows Beyond the Ridge A Combat Memoir from Iraq and Afghanistan

I didn't join the Army for glory or patriotism. I joined because I couldn't afford college.

What followed were two back-to-back combat deployments with the 25th Infantry Division's Wolfhounds. First to the IED-riddled roads and Sunni Triangle towns of Bayji, Iraq, where we learned the true cost of war on Easter Sunday 2009 when an EFP strike killed one of our own and changed everything. Then to the jagged, unforgiving ridges of Afghanistan's Kunar River Valley in 2011 - one of the most kinetic battlegrounds of the entire conflict.

This is not a Hollywood war story. It is the raw, unfiltered truth of infantry life in two of the hardest places on earth: the freezing guard shifts, the dark humor that kept us sane, the split-second decisions under fire, and the moments when the valley tried to swallow us whole.

From air-assaulting onto Taliban-held Ghewi Ridge and fighting for three days with almost no water or ammo, to the Easter blast that took one of our brothers and wounded another, to holding ground against constant pressure in the Kunar Valley, these pages take you inside the daily grind, fear, and brotherhood of combat.

Honest and unflinching, Shadows Beyond the Ridge is the story of ordinary soldiers who answered the call and the heavy price they paid in the mountains and deserts of America's wars.