Thunder Run

The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad

David Zucchino

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN:
  9780802141798
• eBook ISBN:
  9781555847647
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

"A Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter provides a brilliant account of the harrowing drive into Baghdad by an American armor brigade." — Seattle Post-Intelligencer
 
Based on reporting that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Thunder Run chronicles one of the boldest gambles in modern military history: the surprise assault on Baghdad by the Spartan Brigade, the Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division (Mechanized). Three battalions and fewer than a thousand men launched a violent thrust of tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles into the heart of a city of five million people—and in three days of bloody combat ended the Iraqi war.
 
More than just a rendering of a single battle, Thunder Run candidly recounts how soldiers respond under fire and stress and how human frailties are magnified in a war zone. The product of over a hundred interviews with commanders and men from the Second Brigade, it is a riveting firsthand account of how a single armored brigade was able to capture an Arab capital defended by one of the world's largest armies.
 
"The best account of combat since Black Hawk Down." — Men's Journal

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Map
• CONTENTS
• FOREWORD
• ONE CHARLIE ONE TWO
• TWO THE RIGHT THING
• THREE DOUBLE TAP
• FOUR PUPPY LOVE
• FIVE THE PLAN
• SIX A COVERT BREACH
• SEVEN THE PALACE GATES
• EIGHT SUICIDE AT THE GATES OF BAGHDAD
• NINE THE PARTY IS ABOVE ALL
• TEN GOD WILL BURN THEIR BODIES IN HELL
• ELEVEN GOING AMBER
• TWELVE CURLY
• THIRTEEN BIG TIME
• FOURTEEN CATFISH
• FIFTEEN MOE, LARRY
• SIXTEEN PLAYING THE GAME
• SEVENTEEN COUNTERATTACK
• EIGHTEEN THE BRIDGE
• EPILOGUE
• AFTERWORD
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• APPENDIX
• NOTES ON SOURCES