Humbled through warfare

Memorial Day: U.S. Marine commander Donovan Campbell and his unit, Joker One, had a street-level view of war in Iraq | Mindy Belz

Courtesy of Donovan Campbell

In March 2004 Donovan Campbell, then 25, a Princeton grad who decided he'd rather learn leadership skills in the military than in the corporate world, arrived in Iraq with a 40-man infantry platoon called Joker One: late teens and twentysomethings including a Hispanic who read Che Guevara, a tightly wound Filipino, one narcoleptic, and no one who'd seen live combat. They took up their post in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, not knowing it was an explosion waiting to happen—until an April morning when they awoke to loudspeakers blaring "jihad, jihad, jihad!" from the tops of the city's minarets. Campbell had served another tour of duty in Iraq and would go on to serve one in Afghanistan, but Joker One: A Marine Platoon's Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood (Random House, 2009) is his gripping combat story.