of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood . . . . . .

And while you’re at it, they’re told, try winning over the hearts and minds of the populace, too.

Vague visions of military glory vaporize on Joker One’s first forays into Ramadi’s hardscrabble neighborhoods, where everyone lives within walled compounds and even the smiling kids who take the Marines’ candy quickly turn around and pelt them with stones.

Campbell, a deft writer who must be an obsessive diarist, recounts his unit’s 7 ½ -month tour in powerful, exacting detail, from a U.S. major’s babbling incoherency after an attack to the way a rocket-propelled grenade skipped down the street before finally hitting something solid enough to detonate it.

He tells it all with lyrical grace.