"Without luck in war, we're all dead." This chilling truth, shared by Rep. Ruben Gallego (D., Ariz.) in his debut memoir, They Called Us 'Lucky' (coauthored with Jim DeFelice), comes as the U.S. marks the 20th anniversary of the War on Terror. An outstanding entry in the field of military memoir, Gallego's colloquial narrative stays on target throughout his many grim experiences with Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines in the Iraq War. Known as "Lucky Lima" for its lack of casualties in the first two months of its deployment, the nickname became ironic when the only luck "Lucky Lima" had was bad: the unit lost more men than any other in the war.
Gallego's journey from Harvard undergraduate to Marine Corps reservist ("one of the most important and consequential choices of my life") is rife with a candid humor that immediately endears him to readers. But the memoir takes a darker turn when Gallego's reserve unit is activated in early 2005, ordered to patrol for arms caches and insurgents. When luck ran out, it ran out in a big way: one day their platoon sergeant; the next day, Gallego's best friend. His grief is punctuated with obsessive reflections on the fickleness of "luck"; by his count, he escaped death 11 times while others fell around him. PTSD features prominently as part of Gallego's "afterlife" of war, serving as a sober reminder that "we have a duty not just to understand the ugliness of war, but to think of its context, implications, and effects on those who fight it." --Peggy Kurkowski, book reviewer and copywriter in Denver, Colo.