Customer Reviews

Once a Marine: An Iraq War Tank Commander's Inspirational Memoir of Combat, Courage, and Recovery

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Length:: 3:38 Mins

This is a Hollywood-style book trailer for "Once a Marine: An Iraq War Tank Commander's Inspirational Memoir of Combat, Courage, and Recovery," by Nick Popaditch with Mike Steere (Savas Beatie, October 1, 2008).

Make sure you watch to the very end for a "special" photo message from "Gunny Pop" Nick. I know you will appreciate seeing him.

Nick "Gunny Pop" Popaditch is a former marine Gunnery Sergeant, a Silver Star winner, a 15-year veteran of the USMC, and was widely known around the world as "The Cigar Marine:" (Google it.). His tanks captured Firdos "Saddam" square in April 2003 and pulled down the hated statue. Nick was severely wounded one year later with an RPG to the head, which was captured live by a media news crew. He had to fight his way through an incredible odyssey of turmoil, heartbreak, and bureaucracy to recover everything he had lost. His website is www.onceamarine.com.

I've read a lot of books written about and by Marines and I rank this as one of the best. In the first place, it's very well written and edited so as to make it a great read that's tough to put down. In the second place, Nick's story is told with candor and humor that will strike a familiar chord with any former Marine. It reads like you're in the same room with him. Lastly, it paints a vivid picture of Nick's ordeal to recover from his wounds and drive on. Not many of us will ever have to endure what Nick has, thanks to him and thousands of other brave men and women who put their lives on the line for our Freedom. This book gives us a glimpse of their world and will make us more thankful for their sacrifices. I highly recommend this book.

I met Nick Popaditch at Book Expo America (the largest book industry trade show in the USA) in Los Angeles last May. Imagine the vast halls of a major convention center jammed with people hawking books. Banners and balloons fly, people run to meet celebrities, bands play. It's wild. Nick and his lovely wife, April, happened to be down the aisle from my publisher. I was wandering around the halls with the herd and ran into their booth.

Meeting Nick and April was a shock. My dad was a member of one of the first UDTs--underwater demolition teams--in WWII. He was a highly decorated war hero. Running into Nick was like running into his reincarnation. The stance, the physique, the totally present mental attitude, the energy. I was raised by a warrior and finding another one right in front of me brought back lots. My father was killed by a negligent and probably drunk driver in 1964, surviving the war to be mowed down on the road. Thanks, Nick, for being who you are and letting me have that glimpse of my dad again.

This book is an introduction to the state of the warrior. The essential learning it offers is nonpolitical and of value regardless of how you feel about Iraq or the election. I write about spirituality and becoming who you really are--the flowering of your soul. I've got a couple of books out, on spiritual practice and a sci-fi look at the richest man in the world meeting a great Native American shaman. What I get excited about in a book is the spiritual teachings and lessons it imparts.

This entire book is a spiritual teaching. Watch Nick as he tells his story. He's right there, in the moment, as present as your own breath. (He's that way when you meet him in life, too.) Notice what he does as he prepares to ship out. "Getting straight with God." Notice his attention to detail. Notice how clean and morally upright his life and relationships are. Notice that he doesn't dwell on the negative or failure. This is a man of spirit.

My meditation master once said something like, "You must do your duty. If your duty includes killing, you must be prepared to kill." Nick's job as a Marine in combat was killing. He did his duty well and with innovation. Notice his lack of ego--it's not, "Me! Me! Me! I did it." It's teamwork and following protocol, and innovating with his fellow warriors in a brilliant way.

This is a book for all types of readers, not only the military community and the right end of the political spectrum. I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, being able to see where it would lead. Even so, I completely support Nick and his fellow warriors. I'm glad he and they were on our side and applaud their efforts. I'm glad I got to look at Iraq and the Iraqis through Nick's eyes.

This isn't a totally Rah! Rah! book either. Parts disturbed me deeply. My deepest prayer is that the United States of America does right in the treatment of our returning warriors. I know we're in an economic crisis, but the moral imperative of providing medical care and rehabilitation to those damaged in the war takes precedence. I'm including mental wreckage--PTSD and other trauma-induced psychological damage--in the treatment package. Read this book.

Readers will no doubt get an accurate, matter of fact point of view from Pop. He tells it like it is. Always has, always will. Semper Fi.

This book was an excellent read. To hear Sgt. Popaditch's story of his life as a Marine is truly inspirational. His focus however is not on himself, but on the men he trained, trained under and served with. The injuries he survived and writes about, again focus on all of those who came to his aid, from his tank crew at the time of his injuries, up to the medical team at the "Blind Hospital," teaching him how to live life visually impaired. Throughout this book you read not only of "Gunny Pop's" heroism, but of the committment and sacrifice of all Marines. Reading a book about a selfless hero in a time when there is so much selfishness in the world gives me hope and thanks that there are Americans like Sgt. Popaditch spreading the values of the United States Marine Corps to all of us.

Nick shares his incredible journey of courage, struggle, support and revelation by writing straight from the heart with no holding back. To read about what he went through with such courage, along with the support of his devoted wife, is an amazing journey for the reader.

I want to recommend a great book about a true American hero to you. Gunnery Sergeant Nick Popaditch enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1986 and served his country with great honor for 18 years. A photographer snapped his photo in Baghdad in 2003, smoking a victory cigar, with the downed statue of Saddam Hussein behind him. He became known as the "Cigar Marine" as a result of that iconic photograph, which appears on the dust jacket of the book.

In 2004, while commanding a tank in Fallujah, Iraq, Gunny Pop, as he's known, stopped a rocket propelled grenade with his face and lived to talk about it. Although he was awarded a Silver Star for his valor that day, Nick lost an eye and was critically wounded, but he survived. He was medically discharged from the Corps in 2005.

Gunny Pop has written an amazing memoir of his ordeal titled Once a Marine: An Iraq War Tank Commander's Inspirational Memoir of Combat, Courage, and Recovery that was recently published by Savas-Beatie. Because of my relationship with Ted Savas, I've known about this forthcoming book for quite a while, and had the good fortune to read the manuscript before it was published.

I can't say enough good things about this particular book. Fast-paced and extremely well-written, Gunny Pop has written a simultaneously fascinating and incredibly moving narrative that details his military career and the ordeal of his wounding and recovery from that horrible wound. A husband and father, his memoir tells all about how that day in Fallujah affected his life and the lives of his loved ones. Gunny Pop represents the best that the United States Marine Corps has to offer, and we all have much to learn from the lessons of his life.

The story of Nick Popaditch's combat performance, wounding and recovery ia a inspiring story of love of family, country and Marine Corps. It is a story without regret for the events that changed his life. These same events have caused some to wither in the face of those challenges.

Gunny Pop uses humor and raw Marinese to tell his story. I feel everyone should read this book, especially those who are facing adversity.

It is a trigger puller's story that points out that once you pull the trigger, you can't get the round back, you live with the results.

Gunnery Sergeant Popaditch's experience, attitude, and willingness to share it is something amazing. He goes into great detail about how his career in the United States Marine Corps, his experience in combat, his family, friends, doctors, and his injuries come together to shape who he has become. This story is compelling and was difficult to put down once I started it. I found it to be a "page turner" while I was up late at night needing to go to sleep but wanting to read more.

His story is one that anyone with an interest in what is going on in the middle east and how it is affecting people that are injured must read. I just wanted to recommend: "buy it, read it, and share it with someone else" to everyone out there, especially those that enjoy military books. And to POP I wanted to say thank you for sharing the amazing story of you and your family and your recovery from your injuries.

(Posted by Savas Beatie LLC)

Collaborator's Note: Working with "Gunny Pop"

Once a Marine reads a mite loud and in-your-face because that's the Marine Gunnery Sergeant manner of communication, and it is true to the spirit and voice of Gunny Pop. It's also the way we put this book together.

Most of the time we really were in each other's faces, Nick reliving and retelling his tale, and me running it through my mental story processors and writing, and then reading it back to Nick. After our back- and-forth sessions we had our finished copy. Literary live fire, you might call it, because the words flying around hit the page right then and there. Now they're hitting you, with very little change.

This is one weird way to produce a book. And it is not necessarily recommendable because very few collaborators could stand being stuck in a room for six or eight or even ten hours at a shot. But in our case--for me, anyway--prolonged proximity never got old. Nick's a good guy to hang out with. To our sessions he always brought his A-game and moto- Marine discipline and energy. No time went to waste and, unless non- book life got in the way, we didn't quit until our IQs tanked and we started putting out drivel we both knew we would throw out and write again.

Even if we had gotten on each other's nerves, it wouldn't have mattered, because we took our orders from this big, demanding, merciless SOB that didn't care about anything but the mission. By that I mean Nick's great story. Very early in our collaboration it started yelling to be told, and anything less than max effort, as Nick would say, was not acceptable. It's strange and wonderful how creative projects take on lives of their own and put themselves in charge. This one you did not want to disappoint.

Our work consumed seven months, starting with just one or two sessions a week and building up to four- and five-day brain burners at the end. As the final days of work approached we pulled a few marathon phoners, putting out whole chapters before we hung up. By then, though, we were so hardwired into the project that physical presence no longer mattered. If we were working, we were there. And mostly we really were, in San Diego where Nick lives or at my place in Los Angeles.

Some days we made huge, easy gains; some were like MS Word root canal. But we always ended up with something worthwhile. Throughout we carried on in Nick's Marine way--straight toward the objective. One session that probably should have been interrupted shows the sort of roll we were on, and just how dialed in we really were. Not long after Nick arrived on the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner from SD, I got a call from my four-year-old daughter's preschool. Ellie, they told me, was sick and needed to be picked up. On the way home she was so weak she could barely lift her little head. Anyone in such shape needs watching, but the mission was calling--hard. Pages needed writing, deadlines loomed, and Gunny Pop was there with his A-game. I made Ellie a little warm blanket nest on the floor by Nick and me, and we went back to work as if she wasn't there. Somehow she slept comfortably through all the back and forth and give and take. Thank God neither of our wives witnessed this. The next day Ellie bounced back, as four-year-olds do, and we turned out all the pages we would have if the preschool had not called.

And then we were there. Nick was (and still is) surprised with how good his story is, but he will never say that out loud. It is simply not his way. For my part, I am astonished at how well we were able to tell it. Once a Marine is so true to Nick himself and the incredible events in his life that mark him as a father, a husband, a Marine, and a damn good man.

Human truth is always bigger and better than the mortals privileged to work in its service.

by Mike Steere (Los Angeles, California)

(Posted by Savas Beatie LLC)