This book is the personal account of two combat tours in the Gulf War by Robert Serocki. People often comment about how the Gulf War wasn't a "real" war, and even though the loss of life on the side of the United States was miniscule compared to involvement in other wars, people still died. People still watched their friends die. People still ran around in the middle of the desert- hot, tired, and hungry. They still left their families and homes for months at a time, not knowing if they would come back. War is war. War is not a pleasant thing, no matter if people are dropping like flies or not. I think a lot of people are just ignorant of what war experiences are like, and what the aftermath of those experiences can do.

I love a book about personal experiences, and as someone interested in military history/war memoirs, I assumed I would love this book. I really appreciated the candor of this book. There are three groups of people, really. One group glorifies military members and the government to deity proportions. The other group can't stand either. There is a small spattering of people who understand that service members do that work for a multitude of reasons, respect them for that, and wish them well when they come home. That same small spattering also realizes that the government most often has some shady reason for doing something and uses live people as pawns in their schemes. It's especially tragic when someone we love experiences traumatic things and comes home and ultimately takes their own life from the mental and physical toll that this line of work took on them. (Which is part of the reason I have avoided getting my unread war books read that have anything to do with Iraq/Afghanistan or Marines.) This was a deeply moving book to me, and I really suggest reading this if you are interested in what goes on in war. I also learned a bit about the Gulf War in general, because I am not really knowledgeable on that specific war.