Focusing on a remarkable soldier named Crane, a first sergeant in the famed Big Red One Infantry Division, here is the unsanitized story of how soldiers really live, think, fight, and sometimes die. Through "lifer" Crane, we learn about the reality of the wartime military: the constant wariness, bred in Vietnam; the grueling training on the Mojave Desert; the call to the Gulf and the tedious waiting for orders and the exhilarating moments of battle. Gritty, vivid, and unrelentingly honest, this grunt's eye view of the military and of modern warfare is by turns moving, funny, irreverent, and elegaic.