s.j. hawley

'The drill instructor’s job was to transform a civilian into a potential killer. It was a traumatic procedure, but essential if a marine was to function on the battlefield. Without the ability to take life, a recruit was useless to the united states marine corps.'

Baghdad, 2004. From landmines to sniper-fire to suicide-bombers, nothing has prepared 19-year old donnie prentice for the trauma of boots on the ground in iraq. From his baptism of fire in nasiriyah’s ‘ambush alley’ to the horrors of hand-to-hand combat in the burning city of fallujah, donnie finds himself in conflict with both the jihadist enemies of the coalition and his own inner-demons as he struggles to survive the killing fields of post-9/11 iraq.

'If the corps represented a cross-section of the american public, that cross-section included the percentage of misfits and hoods and sociopaths encountered in civilian life. More so, in fact. The military was a magnet for the off-cuts of society. The poverty-stricken, fatherless, homeless searching for a reason for being and a place to belong. The walking time bombs looking for an excuse to explode.'