Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death »

JIM FREDERICK is a contributing editor at Time magazine. He was previously a Time senior editor in London and, before that, the magazine’s Tokyo bureau chief. He is coauthor, with former Army Sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins, of The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea. He lives in New York City.

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 so-called 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 near-daily 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 year-long 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 fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl and the cold-blooded 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 booby-trapped with explosives.

Black Hearts is an unflinching account of the epic, tragic deployment of 1st Platoon. Drawing on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with Black Heart soldiers and first-hand 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 twenty-first century.

The Washington Post - Chris Bray

…a meticulous look at an ill-fated platoon that served in the Iraq war…the book demands to be read, particularly by military leaders.

Prelude: March 12, 2006 1

Summer 2005

1 "We've Got to Get South Baghdad Under Control" 11

2 The Kunk Gun 24

October 2005

3 "This Is Now the Most Dangerous Place in Iraq" 41

4 Relief in Place, Transfer of Authority 51

5 1st Platoon at the JS Bridge 65

6 Contact 77

November 2005

7 Route Sportster and Bradley Bridge 93

8 Communication Breakdowns 108

9 The Mean Squad 119

10 "Soldiers Are Not Stupid" 125

December 2005

11 Nelson and Casica 135

12 "It Is Fucking Pointless" 148

13 Britt and Lopez 161

14 Leadership Shake-up 170

January 2006

15 Gallagher 185

February 2006

16 February 1 203

17 Fenlason Arrives 223

March 2006

18 Back to the TCPs 241

19 The Mayor of Mullah Fayyad 251

20 The Janabis 258

21 Twenty-one Days 271

April-June 2006

22 "We Had Turned a Corner" 285

23 The Alamo 301

24 Dilemma and Discovery 310

25 "Remember That Murder of That Iraqi Family?" 316

July-September 2006

26 The Fight Goes On 333

27 "This Was Life and Death Stuff" 340

Epilogue: The Triangle of Death Today and Trials at Home 350

Postscript 365

List of Characters 371

Military Units and Ranks 375

Acronyms and Abbreviations 377

Acknowledgments 379

Notes 385

Selected Bibliography 417

Index 431