Level Zero Heroes: The Story of U.S. Marine Special Operations in Bala Murghab, Afghanistan

Former U.S. Marine Michael “Ski” Golembesky tells the engaging story of his unit, Special Operations Team 8222, in action on the ground in Afghanistan from October to December of 2009 and while it’s not quite military propaganda, it certainly paints an overwhelmingly positive portrait of the U.S. Marines. Golembesky kept a journal in Afghanistan and he wrote this book “as a sort of catharsis.” But his project soon evolved into a mission to showcase the wartime service of his fellow Marines in Afghanistan. To do so, he focuses on a mission in which his 23-member special-ops team (call sign Dagger 22), operating out of Forward Operating Base Todd in the mountainous Bala Murghab River Valley in northwest Afghanistan, went after an entrenched Taliban stronghold. Golembesky vividly depicts the engagement, which became known as Operation Hero Recovery and involved vicious ground combat. There are military acronyms galore and plenty of reconstructed dialogue in this paean to the Marines on the ground doing the grunt work in America’s longest armed conflict. But Golembesky’s condemnation of the “rules with which our nation’s leaders have decided to fight the war in Afghanistan” will prove controversial. (Sept.)