Shadow of the Sword

Staff Sergeant Jeremiah Workman is one of the Marine Corps’s best-known contemporary combat veterans. In this searing and inspiring memoir, he tells an unforgettable story of his service overseas—and of the emotional wars that continue long after fighting soldiers come home.

In the Iraqi city of Fallujah in December 2004, Workman faced the challenge that would change his life. He and his platoon came upon a building in which insurgents had trapped their fellow Marines. Leading repeated assaults on that building, Workman killed more than twenty of the enemy in a firefight that left three of his own men dead.

But Workman’s most difficult fight lay ahead, in the battlefield of his mind. He returned stateside, was awarded the Navy Cross for gallantry under fire, and was then assigned to the Marine base at Parris Island as a drill instructor. Haunted by the thought that he had failed his men overseas, Workman suffered a psychological breakdown in front of the soldiers he was charged with preparing for war.

In Shadow of the Sword, a memoir that brilliantly captures both wartime courage and its lifelong consequences, Workman candidly reveals the ordeal of post-traumatic stress.