Grunts

'Grunts is hypnotic history writing: honest, savage, heartbreaking, and, ultimately, inspiring.' - RALPH PETERS, AUTHOR OF THE WAR AFTER ARMAGEDDON Advances in weaponry have threatened to render the infantryman obsolete for centuries. Even today, precision-guided munitions, nuclear bombs, aerial drones, computers, and satellites have made victory in modern warfare seem like a simple matter of superior hardware, negating the need for ground soldiers. In truth, even as technology advanced at a dizzying pace throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, ground soldiers, especially infantry 'grunts,' did almost all of the fighting and dying in America's wars. Examining ten critical battles, renowned historian John C. McManus covers six decades of warfare-from the 1944 fight on the island of Guam to modern counterinsurgency combat in Iraq-in which the courage of American troops proved the crucial difference between victory and defeat. Based on years of archival research and personal interviews with veterans, Grunts demonstrates the vital, and too often forgotten, importance of the human element in protecting the American nation, and advances a passionate plea for fundamental change in our understanding of war. 'Reading Grunts is the closest you will get to experiencing actual infantry combat without getting shot at.' - COLONEL JERRY D. MORELOCK, PhD, U.S. ARMY (RET.), AND EDITOR IN CHIEF OF ARMCHAIR GENERAL