Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad

David Zucchino

Grove Press, 2004 - History - 345 pages

Based on reporting that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Thunder Run chronicles one of the boldest gambles in modern military history. Three battalions and fewer than a thousand men launched a violent thrust of tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles into the heart of a city of 5 million people and in three days of bloody combat ended the Iraqi war. Thunder Run is the story of the surprise assault on Baghdad--one of the most decisive battles in American combat history--by the Spartan Brigade, the Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division (Mechanized). More than just a rendering of a single battle, Thunder Run candidly recounts how soldiers respond under fire and stress and how human frailties are magnified in a war zone. The product of over a hundred interviews with commanders and men from the Second Brigade, Thunder Run is a riveting firsthand account of how a single armored brigade was able to capture an Arab capital defended by one of the world's largest armies.

Contents

• CHARLIE ONE TWO: 1
• THE RIGHT THING: 18
• DOUBLE TAP: 31
• PUPPY LOVE: 46
• THE PLAN: 67
• A COVERT BREACH: 86
• THE PALACE GATES: 102
• SUICIDE AT THE GATES OF BAGHDAD: 117
• THE PARTY IS ABOVE ALL: 133
• GOD WILL BURN THEIR BODIES IN HELL: 149
• GOING AMBER: 162
• CURLY: 177
• BIG TIME: 195
• CATFISH: 211
• MOE LARRY: 231
• PLAYING THE GAME: 247
• COUNTERATTACK: 261
• THE BRIDGE: 276
• EPILOGUE: 308
• AFTERWORD: 325
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: 329
• APPENDIX: 331
• NOTES ON SOURCES: 340

About the author

Award-winning journalist David Zucchino graduated from the University of North Carolina. He works for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 and was later nominated for a second. His book, Myth of the Welfare Mother, won the Harry Chapin Media Award for Best Book in 1997. Mark Bowden has been a reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer for twenty-one years and has won many national awards for his writing. He is the author of "Black Hawk Down," "Bringing the Heat," "Doctor Dealer", "Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw." and, more recently, The Finish: "The Killing of Osama bin Laden", and Hue 1968: A Turning point of the American war in Vietnam. Bowden has also written for Talk, Men's Journal, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone and Playboy, among others. The original series of articles which became "Black Hawk Down" earned him the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award, and made him a finalist for the NBA in nonfiction.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad
• Author: David Zucchino
• Contributor: Mark Bowden
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Grove Press, 2004
• ISBN: 080214179X, 9780802141798
• Length: 345 pages
• Subjects: History / Military / United States; History / United States / General; History / Wars & Conflicts / General; History / Wars & Conflicts / Iraq War (2003-2011)