What’s it like to be a reporter embedded in the real vanguard of the American invasion of Iraq? Evan Wright knows. He wrote a book about it. Here’s how it goes.
There is embedded (Geraldo mugging with pistols bared) and there is embedded: Riding in the back seat of the lead Humvee of the lead platoon of the First Marines Reconnaissance Battalion — the elite Marines spearheading the assault on Iraq, nicknamed “First Suicide Battalion” — Evan Wright was embedded. Wright won a lottery and ended up in the front seat of a deadly, hyperspeed war machine, a seat other invited journalists declined to take. He often found himself in deadly battle miles ahead of any military support units, let alone cell phones, and totally reliant on the competence and composure of the handful of Marines in his Humvee. The combination of characteristics that punched Wright’s ticket to Baghdad — luck, bravery, commitment and a unique ability to seamlessly infiltrate the edgy margins of our society — are the very ones that made him the right reporter to bring back the first comprehensive, unsentimental, ground-eye view of the war.
