"Nick is dead, Matt and Jamie are missing." I heard the words crackle through my radio, but I wanted to not believe them. I choked on my words as I relayed the message to the helicopter hovering above me: "Scarface, this is Bearshark. One Marine KIA, two Marines missing."
I loaded a fresh magazine into my service rifle and let myself accept, for just a moment, that I was probably not going to walk off that hill. I felt selfish even for the thought — there were still Marines alive who needed me focused — so I pushed it down and went back to the radio.
Afghanistan, 2010. A Marine Recon platoon, deployed with Task Force Raider, holds contested ground in Helmand Province — a valley where everything that matters, terrain, time, information, has to be fought for. Their platoon commander is twenty-nine years old and responsible for all of it.
High Ground is the story of that deployment, told by the man who led it: the planning and the chaos, the brotherhood and the cost — including the day a team was overrun and three Marines were killed in action. It's also the story of what came after: a transition to corporate America, where Kevin discovered the battles change but the leadership doesn't.
Part memoir, part field manual for anyone responsible for other people, High Ground refuses the easy version of both war stories and business books. The lessons in it were not learned in a classroom. They were earned.
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