Book Recommendations: Part 1

Books we think you should read!

Recommended by Gracie

A Look into War by Jesse

*WARNING: this piece mentions war and injury*

Cracking and crunching underneath my heavy combat boots, the sand that pours into my boots burn and send sharp pains into the bottoms of my rough feet. Every step I take sends pain up through my legs and knees. Every building, short street and alley I pass sends shivers up my spine and the fear of just hearing the sound of a kalashnikov and then black or well the lack of the sound then the darkness. I turned down an ally to a scene of bloody murder, My Lt. (Lt. Mark smith) was hit in the inner thigh and side of the head he was in a pool of his own blood. The sand was stained dark red with a light tone of sand peeking through like a little kid peeking through a window in curiosity at us. I ran up over to him, I slid a tourniquet up his leg, as I got up passed his wound my hands were caked in his thick, warm, dark blood, that stained my tanned gloves a new dark brown colour. Pulling the tourniquet as tight as humanly possible, the inhuman screech that came from him was terrifying. Looking up I see to unknown running towards me and the Lt from down the alley, from what I can remember one of the them has holding what to the time to me a Beretta 9mm pistol in his right hand, I scramble for my rifle, I can't find it and there getting closer, I keep looking, there are getting closer, I scrap the rifle and draw my sidearm and put to rounds in to the first guy, he drops dead right there, I switch focus to the second guy, he's right in front of me, He pounces on me like a starving lion. His heavy fist comes down on my face, I struggle to pull my pistol up, another hit, weirdly his strikes didn't hurt, they just angered me, I finally get my pistol up to the side of his head. Pop his head explodes, my face now covered in hair, brains, teeth, skin and a whole lot of blood. I roll his lifeless corpse off of me and spit out some of his ioney blood onto the hot floor, I move back to the Lt whom is still laying on his back not moving. I check his pulse, airways once, then twice, then again to be sure. 

He was dead, there's no beating around the bush, he was as dead as dead could come. I hear two or three sets of legs rounding towards me from the rear. Their heavy boots replacing the same sound mine made. It was Sgt. Relly Sims, Pvt. Carter Robinsons and Cpl Arron Smiths. They turn the corner in that order and see me covered in two other people's blood and performing CPR to our Lt. My name is Staff Sgt. Ashley West I am a corpsman in the United States Marine corps. I have done four tours of Afghanistan and Iraq from 2003 to 2014. In 2001 when the twin towers fell I joined the Marines because I wanted to help to fight the war on terror. My first deployment was in 2004 in Iraq Al-Fallujah, one of the deadliest battles of the US Iraq war. 

On one occasion we were sent out to find a HVT and secure and capture him, one thing about Fallujah was that there were no civilians in the AO which is not a bad but not a good thing because that means nowhere is safe and we are always in danger. We pulled up to the most Iraqi building you can think of: massive privacy walls, sand-coloured walls, glass on the top of the privacy wall, two stories of pure CQC hell. We stack up on the wall by the gate into the foyer, hearts racing, the faint sounds of Arabic coming from the house, sounds of Kalashnikov being racked. I was in the middle of the stack, at the front of the stack was Spc. Danny Shepherds, he was our breacher, a large kid from Alabamer about 18, well he put his breaching shotgun up to the gate and shot one round into the lock shattering it, and when he turned to kick the large old gate. Ripping through the door large rounds of 76.2 tears holes in him. Three rounds in the head, twelve rounds in the front plate of his vest, eight stopped and four piercing through his right lung, liver, stomach. He dropped to the sandy road like a sack of potatoes, I ran over to him and dragged him to cover. Deafening, our two MG gunners start unloading into the gate with reckless abandon, not caring for who and what is behind the gate. Now back to Shepherds, he was messed up but unluckly alive. Blood covering the floor like a reckless painter, hands, my hands shacking covered in blood, choking on his own blood he lied there struggling to breathe painicing looking to me help. I reach into my medkit just looking for something to ease his pain. Morphe is a drug that contains heroin that is addictive strong but a great pain relief that US Marine corpsman’s have been using since WW2. I find a small vial of morphe in the kit and jap him with the small needle at the end of the vial, he just stops making sound really cripaly, I reach into the med pack again and pull out a chest seal. Ripping his vest off with the velocity of an angry typer typing away. Slapping the seal on, sending blood all over his chest and floor and my pre bloody hands. The terrible blood I just cant get the horrific image out off my head and the image of him just lying there. That was the first time I watched someone die in my hands. I stand up in anger and rip my blue dirty surgical gloves of chucking them next to his lifeless corpse. I pick up my M16A4 rifle and rejoin the stack, we push through the gate. In the courtyard there were two dead enemy combatants still clutching their AK’s looking ready to fight. We push into the house and clear the down stairs in quick succession. Pushing up to the second floor, I lead the stack, coming round the corner at the top of the stairs there was a guy crouched at the end of the hall with a PKM. Perring round, I see him, he starts lighting up the top of the stairs, we retreat down the stairs a bit, I grab a frag from my pouch on my vest. Unpinning it, the nerves disappear and are replaced with feelings of rage and anger, I push to the top of the stairs and chuck the frag down the hall. He screams something in Arabic. The sound of a frag going off in a building is stupidly loud, it literally knocked me back, oh and the ringing was insanely irritating. We push up against the wall of the stairs and we take the hall. That was the most exciting well mover action filled apart to be honest. Me breached the final few rooms with little to no contact and secured the HVT and evicted. 

We were stationed in a little FOB by the edge of the city which luckily didn’t see a lot of attacks. One of the times we were attacked we had an IED in a truck drive up to the gate. At the time we didn't know at the time it was an IED and that was reality of us over there not know enemy from civic, anyways to gate guards walk over to the truck and started to talk to the driver and what about 5 minutes pass, the terrible sound still rings in my ears to this day. I was in our mess ten, about 10 metres away from the gate, eating and just listening to some system of a down I think it was Toxicity. Well yeah I woke up on my back, ears bleeding, god the pain in my back, chest and just everywhere was immense and just archy probably the second worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. After what felt like an eternity, I clamber to my feet and assess the situation that has just unfolded around me, the mess tent was gone, gate gone, half the wall had just dropped down like it had just finished the longest day of work. I’ve never seen a worse thing scones this day, remember the two gate guards well they had been turned it to red mist splattered on the ground like a dropt paint can. I turned to my left and there was my best friend Dave Manrole. He was my best friend since basic training. He was a great man and had a wife and kid we will be missed. He was torn apart by the explose, his right arm was gone, left leg and his guts were on the ground blood staining the floor, I couldn’t feel sad anymore. I sprinted over to the med tent and grabbed whatever I could find and just spirited out again as fast I possibly could. And that when I released something was wrong, sharp shooting pains shot with rapid susecion up my right thigh. At the time it was the least of my problems because we had at least 10 people down. With a head void of feelings and hands full of medical equipment, I started to set up a triage. Green tag there stable/un-unguent, amber more urgent but can wait, red the most unguent will die if not treated, black dead. I give out the tags to our back up meds and start treating the red tagged people. The first red tagged patient was Markes Martens, another 18 year old kid from California, he had a bit of shrapnel logged in his carotid artery in the neck and was missing his right arm, I place a tourniquet around the top of his messed up arm and gave him a shot of morphine and a blood bag and moved on because some how there were people in worst condicons than him. I rush to the next guy, black tag, he's got no eyes his left leg is torn apart like the food of a lion, like someone drop a bowl of spaghetti, it was so desgusting. I moved to the next patient, red tag, he had a large piece of shrapnel lodged in his upper thigh and shrapnel woods all over his face, he bled out. The next patient was Pvt. Michel Watts, he had a red tag, losing a lot of blood he had an arterial bleed missing both right and left arms and his left leg was also missing, there was most definitely more than two pints of blood on the floor, but every time I checked his pulse it was week but by the grace of god still somehow there. I apply a tourniquet to each arm and the left leg to stop the bleeding, then a blood bag that he went through in just under 2 minutes which is radically quick, I then apply a second blood bag and call for a stretcher. I then give him plasma so he doesn’t go into shock, he violently wakes up and just starts screaming, who could blame him he literally just woke up with no arms and one useless leg. After ten long minutes of waiting and me trying to keep Michle still and alive, finally a new Pvt comes sprinting over with a stretcher. We struggle to get him. We finally got his ass on the thing, and we lug him accross the FOB twoards an open space. I leave him there with the Pvt. to wait for a CASEvac helo. Sprinting at the speed of sound, my feet, back, and my knees are destroyed with each pound on the floor. I tell three guys to start picking up the injured and moving them across to the open space so they can be evact.  

That’s when it happened. Cracking through the warm thick air, a round comes flying towards me and nessals itself in my thigh aimlessly. I hit the ground with a thud stopped bead in my tracks, I lay there just thinking two my self, of course. I couldn't just stay there, there are people I need to help, lives I could save. Peering down, I assess my own wound; the round luckily pierced straight through my leg blowing out the back of my thigh. The most annoying part is that it nicked my artery and my blood was pumping strat out on to the sand stroked floor. I painfully apply a tourniquet to my leg and stick myself with a morphine pack and clamber to my feet and use the adrenaline to run towards people and start applying life saving medical care.

That day was one of the worst days I have ever had in that god forsaken country; the only good thing I got for that day was a Purple hurt and was put forward for the Medal Of Honor which I never received but I don't really care because I just did my job. Anyway, about 4 months off of active duty due to the leg injury which luckily wasn't too bad. I was then sent back on my second tour in Iraq around early 2005 in Bagdad. This tour really wasn't exciting thanks to us already having control of the capital. The only interesting thing that happened was we did a mission with Delta force guys which was pretty cool. 

Back home in between deployments was a struggle; my relationship with my wife went to trash and I couldn't sleep, I heard screaming at night, gun fire while driving, nervous twitching, always on edge. I didn’t feel at home. I felt weird and like I didn’t belong. My wife didn’t understand and resented me for keeping her up, having a short temper and shouting at her. The war messed me up theres no other way to put it.

The Dragon Lords by Thomas and Cody

Script Two: 'The beginning of it all' Coming Soon...