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This is a look at combat from someone who was in the thick of it. From June through November of 2009, this Marine kept a daily journal of everything that went on within his squad, his platoon, and his unit. While names have been changed for privacy and security reasons, Farce’s memoir is a true account of what he and his fellow Marines experienced on a daily basis fighting in Afghanistan. The author begins with deployment and ends his tale when his unit returns stateside. Between initial lift-off and subsequent touch-down on American soil, readers are immersed into a world of camaraderie and confrontation in a sometimes bleak, sometimes beautiful, but always menacing land.
Farce writes not only of the peril they faced daily but also of the attitudes and opinions of the warriors themselves. He explores the complex feelings of freedom that combatants share. He explains how the adrenalin rush of danger propels him and many of his volunteer comrades. And he pulls no punches when also confessing that fear and the self-survival instinct are part and parcel of the pack on every soldier’s back. Farce gives intense descriptions of incoming mortars. He describes fierce firefights in 140-degree temperatures that put soldiers in as much danger from dehydration as they are from enemy bullets. He lauds the heroics of his mates while admitting that many, like him, sometimes survive the war only to become victims of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. If you want a view of modern warfare from a participant’s, rather than an observer’s or a commentator’s point of view, you’ll find it on every page of this book.