Back in the Fight: The Explosive Memoir of a Special Operator Who Never Gave Up
In October 2005, Kapacziewski, a U.S. Army Ranger on duty in Iraq, sustained an injury that would have taken most soldiers out of combat forever: an enemy’s hand grenade bounced through his vehicle’s open hatch and exploded, nearly destroying his right leg below the knee. After dozens of surgeries, Kapacziewski kept his leg, but because he wasn’t able to use it the way he wanted to, he opted to have it removed, replaced with a prosthetic, so he could return to active duty. Although he probably could have written an entire book about his injury and recovery, he chose instead to write about his career as a Ranger, taking us back to basic training and showing how his military career shaped him, turned him into the kind of man who would choose to have his own leg amputated. The injury itself occurs about two-thirds of the way through the book, which makes perfect narrative sense: we need to understand who Kapacziewski is if we’re to understand the decision he made. Readers of combat memoirs should be urged to seek this one out. --David Pitt