It can't get more first hand. The guy responsible for dropping bombs can see his targets moving each time he asks headquarters for permission to launch. Without pointing fingers (too hard) he lays out how blurred the lines between friend and foe have become in Afghanistan. At the beginning he says rules of combat have become so convoluted you need a masters degree to figure it out. An entire book later you feel you're only made one class into that degree. The incidents get increasingly bizarre. A very interesting look at modern day combat, how we fight a moral war.

It becomes very clear why this conflict has gone on for so long. A big thanks to all the soldiers who put themselves on the line. ( )

Straight to the point writing, this is not another proforma military memoir instead it dispenses with the usual introduction narrating the author military beginnings and also with the play by play description of the rest of it.

A few vignettes of his deployment as JTAC to a remote Afganistan valley and some balanced, definitely nor partisan, comments on the politics affecting the fight on the ground make for an interesting book that won't waste anyone's time. ( )

Focusing on a microcosm of the War in Afghanistan, Level Zero Heroes is a blunt first-hand account of the deployment of a U.S. Marine Special Operations team to the volatile (to say the least) Bala Murghab Valley in northern Afghanistan. Forget theater-level strategy and home-front politicking, this is about the "on-the-ground" reality faced by a handful of highly-trained warriors embedded with forward elements of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division on the vicious front lines.

Author and former MSOT member Michael Golembesky holds nothing back as he recounts the tension, fear, anger and desolation that he and his brothers-in-arms experienced while engaging an enemy that is brutal, conniving, and determined to see Western forces eliminated at any cost. With the aid of co-author and journalist John R. Bruning, Golembesky not only vividly describes life as an American combat soldier deployed beyond the furthest reaches of modern civilization, but sheds an eye-opening light on the politicized hamstringing of our frontline warriors by career-minded field officers and theater commanders - lessons that should have been learned from failures in Vietnam.

Golembesky has not only crafted a page-turning narrative of squad-level combat, but he also offers a thought-provoking examination of the blurred and sometimes morally questionable relationship between American ground forces, Afghan civilian and military leaders, and the Taliban. Given the events described in Zero Level Heroes, the fog of war has likely never been murkier.

A recommended read for those seeking a candid soldier's perspective of the War in Afghanistan, its purpose, and life after combat. ( )