Jarhead by Anthony Swofford

I have just finished this book and I can highly recommend it.

Swofford goes to war in the gulf as a green 19 year old scout sniper and comes back as a vet who has seen too much. The book shows what is left after war has stripped away a person's humanity.

Life as a marine is described in terms of raw emotions and relationships all with the beat of war drums in the background.

As a marine your only job is to be an effective killing machine to follow orders and to get the job done. War isn't as simple as that even if you have spent years preparing for it, the desert is a different place than boot camp but in the end the people around you can make it the same place.

Is war, a battle with the enemy guns or with the people around you and the person you are or may become?

"Remarkable. A scathingly honest and bleakly powerful book. A hugely disturbing insight into the minds of the very young men who long to go to war"

-William Boyd