Joker One Sparknotes

In Donovan Campbell’s Joker One: A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood, he concentrates on the themes of love and unity. He focuses on his experience as an infantry leader during the war in Iraq. The book revolves around Campbell’s leadership over his forty-man platoon. Joining for patriotism and a desire to lead, Campbell explores the emotional attachments he felt through the journey of war.
The book opens with Campbell on his first day as a platoon leader. His group of men was small for a platoon at first, but Campbell soon got word that he and his platoon would be sent to Iraq in a matter of months. Due to this, tens of men were sent to him fresh out of school. The youthful Marines were newly-enlisted and inexperienced. Here, Campbell faced his first challenge: transforming these brand-new soldiers into an effective combat unit. When meeting the men he would be working with, he had to learn their strengths and weaknesses so that he could assign them to positions. Some of the first men he met were “The Ox,” an executive officer, Corporal Chris Bowen, the third-squad leader, and Lance Corporal Nick Carson, the third fire team leader. The Ox
Working to block threats and support citizens, Campbell recounts the difficulties in overcoming what seemed like endless challenges. As the head of the platoon, Campbell felt responsibility over his men’s lives. Before every combat mission, he would gather his men and pray. It was usually a twenty-word passage from the book of Corinthians. The men spent the next seven months traveling street-to-street and door-to-door in rescue units. Campbell speaks in detail of his thought process and how he went about executing daily tactics. By the end of 2004, around half of Campbell’s platoon was injured. Many were killed. A couple of weeks after Campbell and his men withdrew, the forces in Ramadi tripled. Unlike many of the surrounding cities, Ramadi never