War History Network members realize that not all war stories are set on the battlefield.  “Volunteers” is a memoir of a son and member of the military class.  It is a tale of aspiration and discouragement, deployment and divorce, idealization and disappointment.  Memoirs of home life are interspersed among italicized chapters commencing with a quote followed by combat flashbacks.

Author Jerad Alexander was born to an Air Force couple.  His mother, the daughter and step daughter of Air Force enlisted men  “was in love with the uniform” she wore.  After his parents divorced, his mother married Alan, another airman with a motorcycle that impressed Jared.

 “I was a kid raised by my mom and two dads.  Stepdads and stepmoms were routine around the base.  Officers’ kids never seem to have these problems, but I never bothered to wonder why.” (p. 61) 

His youth was spent at airbases, domestically and overseas, where Jerad watched and listened to planes, enjoyed war movies, played soldier and dreamed of the day when he could take his place in the Wild Blue Yonder.  He visited his father and moved around.

“The cells of the American military, the average servicemembers, are in a state of constant geographic flux, tethered to the country by their uniforms and the towns and counties that had raised them.  No one place is permanent.” (p.73)

Jared grew up, met and left friends who entered and left his world.  Though college “was the natural and assumed direction of nearly everyone in high school”, he chose the Marine Corps.  At first stymied by a hearing test, his recruiter’s counsel that “If you ain’t cheatin” you ain’t trying” got him through the second test and into boot camp.

Expecting to go to war after 911, his first “combat” assignment was to decontaminate the Longworth House Office Building.  His time came.  Trained in Egypt, deployed to Djibouti, he fought and saw death in Iraq.

“Muscles move in the man who has been cut down in the Iraqi street.  The machine gunner, a boyish kid with a mean grin, notices if from the turret of his Humvee.  He calls out that the man he shot might still be alive.

‘So shoot him again!’’ the lieutenant tells him.

”What?”

“I said shoot him!’” (p.261)

“The shrapnel ripped through Steven’s body-through the fabric of his camouflage uniform and into the granular, spinous and basal cell layers of his epidermis…” (p. 152)

Jared does come home, attempts to reconnect with the girl he left behind and evaluates his war.  “Volunteers” ends with an introspection.   “What was all this for?”  He takes his discharge and drives out of camp.

“I looked in the rearview mirror and shot a pair of fingers into the sky-a V for Victory, a peace sign.  I am not sure which.

Maybe both.”

This is not your typical military history work.  Its theme is neither martial glory nor tragic defeat.  It is what war does to the warriors.  It is eye opening.  It can be disturbing.  It raises questions about our national policy and the people who carry it out.  Jared Alexander documents his view through his eyes, not the vision from the White House or the Pentagon.  His is not the whole story, but it is one to be heard.