What does it take to become one of the finest soldiers in the world? Find out in this exciting look inside the U.S. Army's basic combat training.

"War stories meet inspiring lessons in this straight-shooting and darkly funny account of what it takes to survive and thrive on battlefields and in daily lives, from ... United States service members and ... authors Robert O'Neill and Dakota Meyer"--

Brief text, sidebars, labeled illustrations, and humorous cartoons depict life and events during the four years of the Civil War.

Matt Young joined the Marine Corps at age eighteen. The teenage wasteland he fled followed him to the training bases charged with making him a Marine. Matt survived the training and then not one, not two, but three deployments to Iraq. Visceral, ironic, self-lacerating, and ultimately redemptive, Young's story drops us unarmed into Marine Corps culture and lays bare the absurdism of 21st-century war, the manned-up vulnerability of those on the front...

"This intimate memoir by an American GI who served in Vietnam offers a powerful narrative for readers with an interest in the effects of war and violence, American involvement in Vietnam and how trauma can be a catalyst for transformation"--Provided by publisher.