Heroes Behind Headlines

Marine Recon Sniper’s Gritty Account Of Time In Iraq

Heroes Behind Headlines Season 5 Episode 14

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0:00 | 1:16:47


Growing up in the New Hampshire mountains, country boy Brennan Morton couldn’t wait to join the military, and when 9/11 occurred, it provided the final push for enlistment. Brennan loved every minute of the training as a Marine recon sniper, and was surprised as physically superior candidates washed out. But then he was deployed to Iraq with his unit, and the reality of what he’d sought hit home. Sent into a brutal fighting environment he saw his comrades brutally harmed by IEDs without any visible enemy to directly fight.

His acclaimed memoir "Valhalla Boys: Marine Recon Sniper in Iraq" has Brennan Morton hailed as one of the most powerful and literary war memoirs of the post-9/11 generation. "Valhalla Boys" has been called a raw, reflective, and often poetic meditation on combat, brotherhood, and the darkness that war leaves behind. Drawing comparisons to Tim O’Brien, Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut, Morton invites readers not just into the battlefield at the height of the Iraqi insurgency, but into the mind of a Marine Recon sniper struggling to make sense of a war with no clear front lines—and no clear purpose.

 




Heroes Behind Headlines
Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo
Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com