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held the position for less than a year, having entered First Recon after his return from Afghanistan.
    Platoons are the basic building block of each company. There are twenty-one enlisted Marines in each platoon, as well as a commander and a medical corpsman (who is an enlisted man provided by the Navy). Enlisted Marines—that is, those who are not officers—function within a complex web of hierarchy. Privates answer to corporals, and corporals to sergeants. Above sergeants there are staff sergeants, gunnery sergeants, first sergeants, master gunnery sergeants and sergeant majors. Above them all are officers.
    Yet, as Fick explains, due to the traditional role of First Recon, in which small teams ordinarily function independently behind enemy lines, the men who are most trusted within a platoon are often the enlisted team leaders. Each platoon is divided into three teams, each led by one man, usually a sergeant. These men, like Colbert in Fick's platoon, often have more training and experience than the officers commanding them.
    "The men naturally look up to someone like Colbert/' Fick says. "He's been in the reconnaissance community for years. If you walk in here as an officer and start throwing your weight around based on rank alone, enlisted men will look at you like you've got a dick growing out of your forehead. You have to earn their respect."
    First Recon, according to Fick, contains a heightened level of tensions between officers and enlisted men. "This unit fosters initiative and individual thinking. These guys are independent operators. That's great ninety-nine percent of the time. But the flip side is they don't play well with others."
    Despite the frictions, Fick believes in the men he commands. "I have the best platoon," he says repeatedly. Away from his men, Fick cannot talk about them without smiling.
    It's because of his enthusiasm that I decide to join his platoon for the war. Initially, the battalion had planned for me to spend the invasion riding with the support company in the rear. But in exchange for handing over my satellite phone—severing all contact with the outside world—First Recon's commander, Lt. Col. Ferrando, allows me to move in with Bravo Second Platoon and ride with its Team One, led by Colbert.
    It's after dark when Fick pushes me through the entrance to his platoon's tent to introduce me to his men. Forty-two enlisted Marines sleep here, those from Bravo's Second and Third platoons. It's lit with bare fluorescent light tubes suspended from the tent poles, which turn everyone's skin a different shade of chartreuse. The floor of loose plywood sheeting is piled with crates of rations, gear and weapons, which the men sleep between in cramped rows. In the small amount of open space, two Marines circle in flip-flops, sparring with their bare hands. One guy is in the corner, dealing cards to himself, doing push-ups according to their face values; he does the whole deck a couple of times a day. Others, a couple of whom have black eyes and scraped noses from their constant martial-arts fighting, recline on the floor studying invasion maps or reading dog-eared copies of Sun Tzu, Elmore Leonard, Steven Pressfield's Greek military-historical novel Gates of Fire, and Hustler.
    Before Fick makes his introduction, a couple of Marines stand nearby carrying on a loud reminiscence about great chicks they knew in high school. "Everybody called her One Pound," a Marine in this group is saying. "A pretty little Asian girl. Her eyes were so small and tight you could have blindfolded her with dental floss. We called her One Pound 'cause she always looked like she'd just smoked a pound of weed."
    Fick clears his throat. He is younger than some of the sergeants he commands, and when he addresses the men, he often lowers his voice to a more mature and authoritative-sounding register. He introduces me in this official, Marine-officer voice, then leaves.
    One of the first men to greet me is Navy Hospitalman