Black Hearts One Platoons Descent Into Madness In Iraqs Triangle Of Death

“Riveting. . . a testament to a misconceived war and to the ease with which ordinary men under certain conditions can transform into monsters.”—New York Times Book Review This is the story of a small group of soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division’s fabled 502nd Infantry Regiment—a unit known as “the Black Heart Brigade.” Deployed in late 2005 to Iraq’s socalled Triangle of Death a veritable meat grinder just south of Baghdad the Black Hearts found themselves in arguably the country’s most dangerous location at its most dangerous time. Hit by neardaily mortars gunfire and roadside bomb attacks suffering from a particularly heavy death toll and enduring a chronic breakdown in leadership members of one Black Heart platoon—1st Platoon Bravo Company 1st Battalion—descended over their yearlong tour of duty into a tailspin of poor discipline substance abuse and brutality. Four 1st Platoon soldiers would perpetrate one of the most heinous war crimes U.S. forces have committed during the Iraq War—the rape of a fourteenyearold Iraqi girl and the coldblooded execution of her and her family. Three other 1st Platoon soldiers would be overrun at a remote outpost—one killed immediately and two taken from the scene their mutilated corpses found days later boobytrapped with explosives. Black Hearts is an unflinching account of the epic tragic deployment of 1st Platoon. Drawing on hundreds of hours of indepth interviews with Black Heart soldiers and firsthand reporting from the Triangle of Death Black Hearts is a timeless story about men in combat and the fragility of character in the savage crucible of warfare. But it is also a timely warning of new dangers emerging in the way American soldiers are led on the battlefields of the twentyfirst century.