This is the story of a small group of soldiers from the 101st Airborne Divisions fabled 502nd Infantry Regiment—a unit known as the Black Heart Brigade. Deployed in late 2005 to Iraqs so-called Triangle of Death, a veritable meat grinder just south of Baghdad, the Black Hearts found themselves in arguably the countrys most dangerous location at its most dangerous time. Hit by near-daily mortars, gunfire, and roadside bomb attacks, suffering from a particularly heavy death toll, and enduring a chronic breakdown in leadership, members of one Black Heart platoon—1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion—descended, over their year-long tour of duty, into a tailspin of poor discipline, substance abuse, and brutality.Four 1st Platoon soldiers would perpetrate one of the most heinous war crimes U.
