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A Marine's Journey Of War, Heroism, And Redemption
Presidio Press
September 2009
On Sale: September 15, 2009
272 pages
ISBN: 034551212X
EAN: 9780345512123
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
Awarded the Navy Cross for gallantry under fire, Staff
Sergeant Jeremiah Workman is one of the Marine Corps’
best-known contemporary combat veterans. In this searing and
inspiring memoir, he tells an unforgettable story of his
service overseas–and of the emotional wars that continue to
rage long after our fighting men come home. Raised in a tiny blue-collar town in Ohio, Jeremiah Workman
was a handsome and athletic high achiever. Having excelled
on the sporting field, he believed that the Marine Corps
would be the perfect way to harness his physical and
professional drives. In the Iraqi city of Fallujah in December 2004, Workman
faced the challenge that would change his life. He and his
platoon were searching for hidden caches of weapons and
mopping up die-hard insurgent cells when they came upon a
building in which a team of fanatical insurgents had their
fellow Marines trapped. Leading repeated assaults on that
building, Workman killed more than twenty of the enemy in a
ferocious firefight that left three of his own men dead. But Workman’s most difficult fight lay ahead of him–in the
battlefield of his mind. Burying his guilt about the deaths
of his men, he returned stateside, where he was decorated
for valor and then found himself assigned to the Marine base
at Parris Island as a “Kill Hat”: a drill instructor with
the least seniority and the most brutal responsibilities. He
was instructed, only half in jest, to push his untested
recruits to the brink of suicide. Haunted by the thought
that he had failed his men overseas, Workman cracked,
suffering a psychological breakdown in front of the men he
was charged with leading and preparing for war. In Shadow of the Sword, a memoir that brilliantly captures
both wartime courage and its lifelong consequences, Workman
candidly reveals the ordeal of post-traumatic stress
disorder: the therapy and drug treatments that deadened his
mind even as they eased his pain, the overwhelming stress
that pushed his marriage to the brink, and the
confrontations with anger and self-blame that he had
internalized for years. Having fought through the worst of
his trials–and now the father of a young son–Workman has
found not perfection or a panacea but a way to accommodate
his traumas and to move forward toward hope, love, and
reconciliation.
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