Read Grunt Life for Free Online

preferred Mack Bolan and Casca books, growing up, and enjoyed immersing myself in anything with guns. Plus, there were some books which were passed around the military that I’d already read. These included Armor , Starship Troopers , The Forever War , Old Man’s War, Ender’s Game, The Mote in God’s Eye, Legion of the Damned, Hammers Slammers and Bolo . But there were a lot I had never read, books by C. J. Cherryh, David Gerrold, Jerry Pournelle, and Robert Buettner, to name a few.
    Still, when I saw the list, it didn’t seem too bad. I’d read enough of them that I thought I could get a head start by answering questions about those I already knew. I must have read John Steakley’s Armor a dozen times. When I’d been working mechanized infantry, it had been all the rage. I remembered it being filled with violent combat scenes, something me and the other guys loved. But I also remembered it having a certain sensibility, as the main character developed almost a reluctance to continue killing an enemy who wouldn’t stop. Was this perhaps why they wanted us to read it? Because they were concerned for our humanity?
    I selected Armor on the tablet, then skipped right to the test. The first question glowed on the screen: DESCRIBE HOW YOU WOULD OVERCOME YOUR LOVE FOR A COMRADE MUCH LIKE FOREST DID FOR KENT IN ORDER TO SERVE THE GREATER GOOD?
    I stared at the question for several minutes. Perhaps I’d exaggerated the number of times I’d read the book. I might have only read it once. In fact, I might not have finished it at all. The idea that I’d actually read it once, much less a dozen times, might have been overly-optimistic. For the life of me I couldn’t remember any character named Kent. I know there was a pirate. And I knew there was a guy in a mech suit doing a lot of cool shit, but that’s all I remembered.
    I tried to select the next question, but I couldn’t get to it without answering the first. I was going to have to read the book. Damn them.
    I chose The Forever War instead. I was sure I’d read that at least twice, once in basic training, and once at a FOB in Iraq. I’d read that the author, Joe Haldeman, had been in Vietnam. There weren’t too many books written by people who’d actually been in war. This was one of them, and I remembered staring into the night and wondering what was out there beyond our position, and if Mr. Haldeman had done the same when he was in Vietnam. Had he had the same thoughts? A menagerie of fast food sandwiches, television shows, songs I used to dance to with a certain girl, and the recent memories of the death of one of my platoon mates, all squished and smashed like a human-sized pizza, but with too much red sauce. Or had he been thinking about writing The Forever War? When a girl I’d been dating for several months between deployments once asked me what my favorite book was, this was the book that came to mind. Whether it was my favorite was up for debate, but it was as good a contender as any of the others. I told her that it perfectly described the inability of a soldier to ever return to civilian life. She looked at me in stunned silence for a moment, then turned and left. It took me a long time to realize that I’d just said that I’d never be able to be with her, never really give my heart and mind to her. I’d basically told her I was broken.
    Which I was.
    The same as I was now.
    I reminded myself that the only reason I wasn’t going bat-shit crazy right now was because of the mystery of it all. The newness of my predicament, the shared predicaments of all of us in the underground bunker, and the idea that even as broken as I was, I might be worth something, someday, if I ever had time to read all the books, watch all the movies, and pass all the tests.
    I found myself looking around my tiny room. I didn’t pretend that I didn’t know why. I knew exactly why. I was looking for something I could use to take my life. Not that I was going to take it right