Here is the reality of military life as Crane sees it: the constant wariness, bred in Vietnam, that Crane wears like a second skin; the grueling training in the Mojave Desert, where he watches raw young recruits learn state-of-the-art warfare. Then comes the call to the Gulf and the weeks of tedious waiting in the cold, barren Saudi desert ("Wall-to-Wall Fuck All" they name it), weeks that culminate at last in the exhilarating, terrifying dash across the sands into the teeth of battle, moments that change the men forever, especially those who witness the unspeakable spectacle of two thousand Iraqi soldiers buried alive by U.S. earthmovers.Here, too, is the story of First Sergeant Dee Crane, member of a vanishing breed, caught between the uncompromising traditions of Fort Riley's legendary history, from Custer to Patton, and the changing needs of a society that too often derides and discards the soldiers who protect it. And here is the face of modern war itself - its mask of high-tech marvels disguising the bedrock reality of grunts who must take and hold ground as they always have: with blood and bravery.Through it all Stroud weaves the distinguished fighting history of the Big Red One, christened in the fiery crucible of the First World War, tempered by its massive defeat at the Kasserine Pass in the Second World War, battered in the grinding carnage of Vietnam, and resurrected with the strategies of Air Land Battle that proved so devastatingly effective in Desert Storm. Read Less