As a 17-year-old boy Swofford's answer seemed clear: "I believed I'd enlisted in the Marine Corps in order to claim my place in the military history of my family ...This initial impulse had nothing to do with a desire for combat, for killing, or for heroic death, but rather was based on my intense need for acceptance into the family clan of manhood.

"By joining the Marine Corps and excelling within the severely disciplined enlisted ranks, I would prove both my manhood and the masculinity of the line."

As his training progresses, as the buildup to the Gulf War progresses, however, Swofford--a Marine sniper--experiences doubts about whether military service was his answer to a need to belong. At one point, he considers suicide, his M16 in his mouth, without the faintest idea why: "It's not the suicide's job to know, only to do."

Why? That seems the guiding question Swofford tries to answer throughout his memoir--he takes us through boot camp, into bars and drunken escapades with prostitutes, he takes us into the desert and the waiting and wondering when or if the shooting will start. The troublesome aspect of the memoir is that Swofford never seems to be able to answer his own question. The memoir's last paragraph reflects upon losing the opportunity of possibly getting his first kills--instead of sniping an Iraqi observation post Swofford receives orders to call in artillery: "...I think that by taking my two kills the pompous captain handed me life, some extra moments of living for myself or that I can offer others, though I have no idea how to use or disburse these extra moments, or if I've wasted them already."

The institution that Swofford supposedly joined to become a man, he leaves with a sense of bewilderment. The institution is supposed to be fulfilling, the biggest challenge of courage, of manhood, of honor, of leadership offered one in this life.

Swofford's bewilderment, his search for self while serving as a Marine has received bitter criticism from some fellow Marines--some even extending a sense of betrayal, a sense that Swofford's whole portrait was untrue, a complete fabrication. The serviceman's mythos betrayed.

The sense of betrayal is something I don't understand, and perhaps most civilians wouldn't. The loyalty to an institution no matter what. The loyalty to a way of life.

When I read Jarhead or Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down, I read to understand the military life--a life I've chosen not to share in--because I respect that chosen life. I want to close in on the gulf between the military life and the civilian life. And when I finish reading the books I am not sure I know more about that life. No one can really know why someone serves. We can only respect that service, as I did my father's.