Prologue

War can change a man in so many ways. I joined the United States Marines when I was a kid, just an eighteen-year-old idiot working under the assumption I knew just about everything there was to know about life. Boy, was I in for the shock of a lifetime.

Boot camp was the first real-life experience of this man’s existence, and it wasn’t one I would soon forget. Paris Island is a beautiful place, or so I’ve been told. I wouldn’t know since I spent much of my time there begging for my life under the heat of an unrelenting summer sun, slick with sweat, and wishing I could take back the moment I signed my life away. It was during those summer days I met my best friend, Jackson Washburn.

Jackson signed on a little later, but no wiser than me. At twenty-two, he’d had his fair share of run-ins with the law and decided he’d better turn his life over to the Marines or end up in prison by his twenty-third birthday. Once, he convinced me to help him sneak out to meet with one of the nurses he’d taken a liking to, but it ended in disaster—for both of us. Two-hundred and forty-three toilets scrubbed to a high shine later, we decided we’d had enough cleaning and would never walk out-of-line again.

Thirteen weeks of pure, unadulterated hell. Twelve weeks is the exact amount of time it takes to make real men and women out of scared teenagers, screw-ups like Jackson, and to weed out the undesirables. Thirteen weeks. They weren’t all the proudest moments of my life, and I’d puked my soul out most days, but by the end, I’d made it. I was one of them. The Few. The Proud. The Marines. A Devildog. Ooh-Rah!

I was proud. For the first time in my life, I’d accomplished something on my own. My parents couldn’t help me, and no amount of begging or pleading would make my life any easier. I had to hunker down and do the work, painful as it was. The funny thing is, after a couple of weeks, you don’t really feel the pain anymore. It sort of absorbs into your soul, you suck it down and make it a part of who you are—a stronger, harder person, and a force to be reckoned with.

When I put on my dress uniform graduation day and stood with my brothers and sisters in arms, I knew I would never be the same. I’d changed my life. For better or worse would remain to be seen, but I was changed, nonetheless.

The Gulf War was my first real foray into the world of war, and what an introduction it was. The days were long, and the nights were longer, but Jackson was by my side the entire time. How we managed to end up in the same unit, I will never know, but I was grateful for it. I had a feeling it had a little to do with our drill instructor, who’d taken a liking to our constant jokes through the pain. He’d never admit it, but he was laughing behind that clipboard he held to his face every time he ordered us another round of torture. He was the meanest man I’d ever met, but after we graduated from training, he flipped a switch and became the best mentor I ever had.

Jackson and I survived that war by the skin of our teeth, experiencing things I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. You hear a lot of things about yourself when you’re a Marine, and you take a lot of ribbing from soldiers—all brawn, no brains as they said—but when the chips are down, and your life needs saving, it’s a Marine you cry for. The Marines have been at the forefront of every American war since its inception for a reason—we get the job done, and we scare the hell out of anyone in our path—If you survive the path of destruction we leave in our wake, that is.

We’re the best at what we do, and we’re not even considered “special forces.” In fact, I once had a member of the elite Seal Team Six challenge me to an all-out brawl. He walked away in pain, never to doubt the tenacity of a Devildog on a mission again.

But none of that really matters in the end. All the training in the world couldn’t have stopped what happened that day… The day everything changed. And nothing could have ruined me the way it did. It was a turning point in my life, one that would take over fifteen years to accept, to begin the healing process, but I’ll get to that part soon enough. You must hear the story first, then how I recovered, so let’s start at the beginning.

Well, maybe not that far back. Let’s go with a few days before the incident. The last normal days of my life. The life of First Sargent Walter Halsey, United States Marine, do or die Devildog, Ooh-Rah ‘til the end.