Excerpt
"My father had two Purple Heart medals and a Silver Star we kept on display in the living room. The story of the price he had to pay to get those medals had many variations, but they all came back to the scars on his ribs and thighs and the wide open drugged-out eyes he carried around in his head everyday. I’d turned seventeen in November and had been hearing about the wonderful benefits of enlisting right out of high school for months now, from the poster boy for service in our nation’s armed forces. The peacetime Army is different, he said, and I didn’t even bother pointing out that we were at war in the same place he earned his medals twenty years ago, and may be there forever. "
from My First Handgun