This is a candid, highly informative and sobering account of what a group of Green Berets encountered while deployed in Afghanistan in 2002.

Told by several members of Operational Detachment Alpha 2085, called Beast 85, a direct action assault team of Green Berets, the men who collaborated to tell this story have chosen to not reveal their identities.

Beast 85, a National Guard Special Forces unit, was composed of a group of citizen-soldiers who "hung up their business suits, stopped their everyday lives, left their loved ones, and went to Afghanistan, ostensibly to hunt terrorists".

As Colonel Gerald Schumacher explains in the book's foreword, what the men of Beast 85 didn't realize was that their biggest challenge would not be destroying al Qaeda. Their biggest challenge was "finding how to work with a political/military bureaucracy that defines victory as not having any accidents, incidents, or injuries."

If that weren't enough of a headache, the National Guard Special Forces also faced discrimination at the hands of active-duty units. Although they were often frustrated by the challenges that came from within the "system," these men did their best to get the job done they were sent in to do.

This is their story. The unvarnished, tell-it-as-was narrative may trouble some readers, but this is a tale that must be told. Even with the shield of anonymity, these individuals are running a risk to themselves and their families by sharing this gut-wrenching account of their deployment.

With the current situation becoming even more volatile in Afghanistan, this may help some readers understand what American troops are up against in the war against terror. The narrative is a bit disturbing at times but this is a story that must be told!