Shane Comes Home

[12], 272, [2] pages. Illustrations. Minor sticker residue on back of dust jacket. Rinker Buck (December 29, 1950) is an American author who is best known for his 1997 memoir Flight of Passage. Buck began his career in journalism shortly after graduating from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. His first job was writing for the Berkshire Eagle in 1973. He then served as reporter for New York, Life, Hartford Courant, Adweek and several other national publications. On March 21, 2003, while leading a rifle platoon into combat, Marine Lieutenant Shane Childers became the first combat fatality of the Iraq War. In this gripping personal history, award-winning writer Rinker Buck chronicles Shane's death and his life, exploring its meaning for his family, his fellow soldiers, and the country itself. The gathering of the family for his burial on a Wyoming ranch has all the elements of a classic American tale. From childhood, Shane emulated the ferocious energy and commitment demonstrated by his father, a veteran of two tours in Vietnam and who was taken hostage as a navy Seabee at the American embassy in Tehran. This relentlessly competitive young marine built one of the most exemplary military careers of his generation -- becoming a Gulf War veteran at the age of eighteen, a marine security guard in Europe and Africa in his early twenties, a dean's list student at The Citadel, and so valued that he was among the first sent over the berm into Iraq in 2003. A fascinatingly enigmatic character -- fierce, compulsive, dedicated -- he was also a madcap adventure lover with a deep concern for the world around him. 2nd Lt. Therrell Shane Childers USMC, age 30, was the first American killed with the war with Iraq on Friday, March 21, 2003. He was born on June 19, 1972. He joined the USMC in July of 1990. He served in the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm and following his return to the United States, was stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He then was assigned to Marine Security Guard Duty serving at the American Embassy located in Nairobi, Kenya. He attended the Citadel on the MECP Program. Upon graduation, he was commissioned a 2nd Lt. on June 15, 2001. He was then assigned to the 1st Battalion 5th Marine A Company 2nd Platoon. He was deployed to Kuwait on February 4, 2003 with his assigned unit and was listed as KIA on March 21, 2003. He was America's first casualty in "Operation Iraqi Freedom." He was killed in a firefight while securing an oil platform in the first hours of the war. His family shared that was so proud to be a United States Marine. Derived from a Kirkus review: An affecting portrait of the first American combat fatality in the Iraq war, and of those who suffered his loss. As Hartford Courant staff writer Buck reports, Marine Lt. Shane Childers was "one of a handful of grunts picked every year for promotion from the enlisted to commissioned officer ranks," and for good reason: he excelled at everything he turned his hand to, had grown from redneck to world traveler and would-be French teacher, and was "the kind of soldier whom all the enlisted men and officers boasted about and who was well known throughout the network of Marine bases across the country." His legend will only increase in the wake of his death. Shot down only a dozen hours after assuming command of a rifle platoon while attempting to secure an Iraqi oil-pumping station, Childers was an exemplary soldier; of that Buck leaves no doubt. But there are other noteworthy soldiers in Buck's cast of characters, including the young CACO, or Casualty Assistance Calls Officer, assigned to bring the news of Childers's death to his family. Buck's account of the rituals by which Marines attend to their fallen is very well done. Well done, too, are the character studies that emerge as Buck relates the effects of Childers's death on his small community and his many relatives. Childers's inconsolable Vietnam vet father and his mother wrestle early on with the question.…