Writer Jeff Seidel and artist Richard Johnson told the stories of everyday people – soldiers and civilians, the men, women and children – caught in the cross fire of the Iraq war. They filed from four countries – Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraq. They spent time at Central Command in Doha, Qatar, meeting the men and women who would run the war. They traveled aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. During the war, they were embedded with the Marines. They ate with them, slept with them and rode across the Iraqi border with the men and women of the 6th Engineer Support Battalion.
The introduction was written by Joseph L. Galloway, senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder and author of "We Were Soldiers Once … and Young." Galloway writes: "The tradition of Howard Brodie and Bill Mauldin, and of Winslow Homer’s stunning Civil War art from Harper’s Weekly, is alive and well and safe in the drawings of Richard Johnson and the words of Jeff Seidel."