Introduction

''Once we passed the checkpoint at the border, it hit me. I was like, Holy Shit, this is it, I''m entering a combat zone. Cool!''

At twenty-six Colby Buzzell, unemployed and living at home, decided to join the US Army. Within months he was in Iraq, a machine gunner in the controversial Stryker Brigade Combat Team, an army unit on the cutting edge of combat technology and the first of its kind.

Trapped amid ''guerrilla warfare, urban-style'' in Mosul, Iraq, Buzzell was struck by the bizarre and often frightening world surrounding him. He began writing a blog describing the war - not as being reported by CNN or official briefings - but as experienced by the soldier on the ground. His story is a brutally honest and hard-hitting account of the absurdities of modern war. These are the real stories of the war: a firefight where the resistance came from ''men in black''; a night spent chain-smoking in the guard tower counting the tracer bullets being fired over the city; and the hesitation of a young soldier who had been passed around from platoon to platoon because he was too afraid to fight.

My War is a powerful story of a young man and a war, unlike any you have read before.