Book Review: 'In the Company of Soldiers: A Chronicle of Combat'
© 2005 Picador Books. Book cover photo credit: © Benjamin Lowy When the U.S. 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Division crossed the border between Kuwait and Iraq on the morning of March 20, 2003 as part of the Army's V Corps at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Washington Post reporter Rick Atkinson was one of the media pool members "embedded" with Maj. Gen. David Petraeus' headquarters. At the time, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author ( An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa 1942-1943 ) was still a senior editor at the Post and was chosen to observe the legendary division that had participated in many famous campaigns since its creation as a parachute unit during the Second World War. Now, having traded in their airplanes for helicopters as far back as the Vietnam War, the Screaming Eagles were on their way north to Baghdad, 12 years after the end of the first Persian Gulf War. Atkinson was no stranger to either the Army or reporting about the military. His fa