Jarhead : a Marine's chronicle of the Gulf War and other battles / Anthony Swofford.

Originally published: New York : Scribner, c2003.

When the marines - or "jarheads," as they call themselves - were sent in1990 to Saudi Arabia to fight the Iraqis, [the author] was there, with a hundred-pound pack on his shoulders and a sniper's rifle in his hands. It was one misery upon another. He lived in sand for six months, his girlfriend back home betrayed him for a scrawny hotel clerk, he was punished by boredom and fear, he considered suicide, he pulled a gun on one of his fellow marines, and he was shot at by both Iraqis and Americans. At the end of the war, [he] hiked for miles through a landscape of incinerated Iraqi soldiers and later was nearly killed in a booby-trapped Iraqi bunker. [He] weaves this experience of war with vivid accounts of boot camp (which included physical abuse by his drill instructor), reflections on the mythos of the marines, and remembrances of battles with lovers and family. As engagement with the Iraqis draws closer, he is forced to consider what itis to be an American, a soldier, a son of a soldier, and a man. Unliket