Nathaniel C. Fick is a veteran United States Marine Corps officer. In 1998, after his junior year at Dartmouth College, he attended Officer Candidate School and was commissioned a second lieutenant.  Nathaniel Fick was assigned as a platoon commander to 1st Battalion, 1st Marines and, as a member of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, led his platoon into Afghanistan to support the war on terror. Upon his return, he was recommended for Recon training, and subsequently led a platoon of the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Fick and his platoon were the subject of a series of articles in Rolling Stone by embedded journalist Evan Wright which were turned into a book entitled Generation Kill. Upon his return to the United States, he left the Marine Corps to attend graduate school and received a master's degree from the Kennedy School of Government.  Nathaniel Fick is the author of One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer.

Publisher’s Weekly said of One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer, “The global war on terrorism has spawned some excellent combat narratives—mostly by journalists. Warriors, like Marine Corps officer Fick, bring a different and essential perspective to the story. A classics major at Dartmouth, Fick joined the Marines in 1998 because he “wanted to go on a great adventure... to do something so hard that no one could ever talk shit to me.” Thus begins his odyssey through the grueling regimen of Marine training and wartime deployments—an odyssey that he recounts in vivid detail in this candid and fast-paced memoir.

Fick was first deployed to Afghanistan, where he saw little combat, but his Operation [Iraqi] Freedom unit, the elite 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, helped spearhead the invasion of Iraq and "battled through every town on Highway 7" from Nasiriyah to al Kut. (Rolling Stone writer Evan Wright's provocative Generation Kill is based on his travels with Fick's unit.) Like the best combat memoirs, Fick's focuses on the men doing the fighting and avoids hyperbole and sensationalism. He does not shrink from the truth—however personal or unpleasant. “I was aware enough,” he admits after a firefight, “to be concerned that I was starting to enjoy it.”