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Volunteers: Growing Up in the Forever War
“Riveting and morally complex, Volunteers is not only an insider’s account of war. It takes you inside the increasingly closed culture that creates our warriors.” — Elliot Ackerman, author of the National Book Award finalist Dark at the Crossing
As a child, Jerad Alexander lay in bed listening to the fighter jets take off outside his window and was desperate to be airborne. As a teenager at an American base in Japan, he immersed himself in war games, war movies, and pulpy novels about Vietnam. Obsessed with all things military, he grew up playing with guns, joined the Civil Air Patrol for the uniform, and reveled in the closed and safe life “inside the castle,” within the embrace of the armed forces, the only world he knew or could imagine. Most of all, he dreamed of enlisting—like his mother, father, stepfather, and grandfather before him—and playing his part in the Great American War Story.
He joined the US Marines straight out of high school, eager for action. Once in Iraq, however, he came to realize he was fighting a lost cause, enmeshed in the ongoing War on Terror that was really just a fruitless display of American might. The myths of war, the stories of violence and masculinity and heroism, the legacy of his family—everything Alexander had planned his life around—was a mirage.
Alternating scenes from childhood with skirmishes in the Iraqi desert, this original, searing, and propulsive memoir introduces a powerful new voice in the literature of war. Jerad W. Alexander—not some elite warrior, but a simple volunteer—delivers a passionate and timely reckoning with the troubled and cyclical truths of the American war machine.
As a child, Jerad Alexander lay in bed listening to the fighter jets take off outside his window and was desperate to be airborne. As a teenager at an American base in Japan, he immersed himself in war games, war movies, and pulpy novels about Vietnam. Obsessed with all things military, he grew up playing with guns, joined the Civil Air Patrol for the uniform, and reveled in the closed and safe life “inside the castle,” within the embrace of the armed forces, the only world he knew or could imagine. Most of all, he dreamed of enlisting—like his mother, father, stepfather, and grandfather before him—and playing his part in the Great American War Story.
He joined the US Marines straight out of high school, eager for action. Once in Iraq, however, he came to realize he was fighting a lost cause, enmeshed in the ongoing War on Terror that was really just a fruitless display of American might. The myths of war, the stories of violence and masculinity and heroism, the legacy of his family—everything Alexander had planned his life around—was a mirage.
Alternating scenes from childhood with skirmishes in the Iraqi desert, this original, searing, and propulsive memoir introduces a powerful new voice in the literature of war. Jerad W. Alexander—not some elite warrior, but a simple volunteer—delivers a passionate and timely reckoning with the troubled and cyclical truths of the American war machine.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published November 9, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
April 7, 2024
This is a unique memoir, where the author is not a special ops warrior or a high ranking officer who commanded troops during the War on Terror, but just a normal young man who volunteers to experience war.
The book follows Alexander from his days growing up on military bases across the globe and how being surrounded by the American military leads him to his decision to enlist for various reasons, but mainly to experience what it is to be in action. It is an interesting look into the lives of ordinary service members and what motivates them and how the experience serving their country. In the end Alexander ends up in Iraq at the end of his eight year service in the Marines, and he end up being disallutioned by his experiences.
The book is very well written and the events is vividly deacribed throughout. The ending of the book is a bit abrupt and anti climatic, and left me wanting a bit more out of the read.
The book follows Alexander from his days growing up on military bases across the globe and how being surrounded by the American military leads him to his decision to enlist for various reasons, but mainly to experience what it is to be in action. It is an interesting look into the lives of ordinary service members and what motivates them and how the experience serving their country. In the end Alexander ends up in Iraq at the end of his eight year service in the Marines, and he end up being disallutioned by his experiences.
The book is very well written and the events is vividly deacribed throughout. The ending of the book is a bit abrupt and anti climatic, and left me wanting a bit more out of the read.
December 11, 2021
The Best of All Possible Worlds
Jerad Alexander grew up on American military bases. These are not unlike American middle class suburbs (except that they are significantly safer). They share a similar uniformity of design, a similar social system, and a similar lack of any discernible aesthetic or intellectual interest. Residents in both are fed similar cultural diets - through formal education, public ritual, and conventional popular wisdom - which are meant to convince them that they are the most fortunate people on earth. America is promoted to itself in these places as both an exception to the norms of governance found elsewhere in the world, and as exceptional in its benign execution of its capacity for violence. America, it is claimed, is exactly as described by the 17th century philosopher Leibniz - the best of all possible worlds.
The consequence of this insistent propaganda since the country’s foundation is a profound but naive conservatism which goes far beyond the political or religious aspects of life. Among other things, it establishes a deeply held class consciousness by the upper and lower middle classes. The tension between the two manifests in as a neurotic compulsion to belong, to be attached to something that marks them as special in a society that values conformity to this principle of superiority above all else. Eccentricity, like irony, is notably lacking in the American character.
In American society one either accepts the economic and social cards one has been dealt; or tries frantically to get a new deal. The latter has always been available only for the few; and despite the hype, even fewer break through than ever before. But even for those who strive to overcome class conservatism, the established game, the implicit acceptance of middle class divisions as a cultural fact, is evident. Both groups are motivated chiefly by fear, one of falling into relative poverty, the other of becoming entirely destitute. This fear was seen clearly by James Baldwin regarding race but I think that it also is generated by an acute class consciousness.
Alexander is a self-identified product of this American class system. Apparently his entire life has been dominated by the military distinction between the officer and enlisted classes. Enlisted men and commissioned officers inhabit entirely separate worlds. This is the foundation of military society, but it is also a model for American social structure. The officer and enlisted classes offer opportunities for advancement but only within the class structure. Movement between classes is rare and not encouraged. Officers lead, direct, command, and decide. Enlisted personnel make, repair, obey, and suggest (they also sweat and suffer inordinately in military life). This is precisely the division of labour in the corporate world that dominates American society. The shop floor simply does not rise to the boardroom.
Alexander’s reported experience is of the lower ranks of both the military and the wider society. This, I think, is the real subject of his memoir. It is a depiction of a culture that is stifling in a very particular, one might say exceptional, way. There is a subtle but pervasive resignation that emanates from its rigid class divisions. Paradoxically this resignation does not show up as despair but as a kind of unthinking fatalism. The resulting behaviour is an obsessive search for somewhere to feel special, to belong, to become a recognised part of the social machine within the boundaries laid out by class. This is so for both classes and not just in the military. And as Alexander describes in detail, these two classes despise and fear each other. That this is articulated more by military personnel than civilians is a consequence of the formality of the arrangement in the former not any substantive differences.
Alexander was indoctrinated virtually from birth into a culture that not only marked him as second class but also prepared him for a gruelling love/hate relationship - with his country as well as the military - that would keep him in his place despite the obvious inequity in status, position, and prospects. His subsequent life in the Marines (indeed his ambition as per his class) was one of hard drinking, vacuous talk, artificial camaraderie, and pain casually received, not from an enemy but from his own superiors. He was taught by rote and repetition to respond instinctively - to orders, defined situations, and the prevailing childish machismo of his colleagues.
What Alexander found in the Marine Corps was a place of refuge from The Real World, that is, American society outside the Marine Corps. The Corps is to American society, according to Alexander, as American society is to the rest of the world. The Marine is superior, elite, incomparable, a hero by virtue of membership. He is the apotheosis of the American Dream - he has a definite place, no matter how humble, in the military corporate hierarchy. Collectively the Marines constitute a community of true believers. They are the clerics of Americanism, rowdy, boisterous, hard-nosed monks who are committed to some vague idea of spiritual superiority. Wherever they go, they remain Marines and proud of it, apparently for the rest of their lives.
Yet they are treated abominably by the officer class, not only initially but throughout their service, especially when they are in combat. They complain constantly about this while simultaneously professing total commitment to an abstract ideal. The factory line worker in constant danger of becoming unemployed by ‘corporate level’ decisions is no less suspicious, even hateful, toward his/her own management officer class. Yet this same factory worker will proclaim the superiority of corporate capitalism and his/her fear of any possible reform with equal vigour.
Marines, like many other Americans, carry with them an insulating shell of resistance to assimilation wherever they travel. This can be perceived as naïveté but it is in reality an active defence mechanism that prevents dilution of commitment, and therefore belonging (the British Empire had a similar programme to prevent the horror of ‘going native’). It is the most obvious manifestation of American conservatism - if anything new were worth knowing we would already know it and already have it. Strife between the middle classes may be tedious but it’s a tradition at the heart of American conservatism. Each class polices the other.
Another more mordant way of saying this is that most Americans are trained to remain children. They have never been taught how to learn anything beyond conventional wisdom. Learning itself is often thought a subversive activity that threatens The Dream. The class system promotes a sort of permanent infantilisation. They love guns (actually all explosive ordnance) because they’re adult toys; religion because it supplements belonging and feelings of existential superiority; conspiracy theories because secret knowledge gives them confidence of their self-worth and judgmental acumen; and passionate awkwardness about anything proposed by their own leaders because they are convinced that others are as incompetent as they are in dealing with change, which of course they are.
Near the end of his personal saga, Alexander reveals his own growing recognition of the dodgy bill of goods he has been sold. In a chapter epigraph from John LeCarre, he signals an important recognition: “war is nothing if not a return to childhood.” He then presents what can only be called an epiphany, too late for the victim but a crucial sign of maturation that appears to be rare among his colleagues. It’s as if the con of his entire life was finally revealed:
Alexander says, “War stories are the bookends of the American story.” But they are really more than that. The way America fights its wars has always been a reflection of the way America lives. And the way it lives is within a rather rigid even though unacknowledged class structure which is maintained by a bogus mythology, including a pervasive fear about anything which might undermine the mythology.
Consequently America as a nation learns nothing from its experience. Alexander’s book could easily be about The American War in VietNam of more than a half century ago or about the War in Afghanistan which has recently ended. And Alexander himself is indistinguishable in the long line of other enthusiastic children who have simply ignored the lessons of the past and doesn’t understand that he typifies his society despite his atypical experience. I have no doubt that his memoir will be similarly ignored by future generations of Americans. The motivation to learn seems lacking when one lives in the best of all possible worlds.
Jerad Alexander grew up on American military bases. These are not unlike American middle class suburbs (except that they are significantly safer). They share a similar uniformity of design, a similar social system, and a similar lack of any discernible aesthetic or intellectual interest. Residents in both are fed similar cultural diets - through formal education, public ritual, and conventional popular wisdom - which are meant to convince them that they are the most fortunate people on earth. America is promoted to itself in these places as both an exception to the norms of governance found elsewhere in the world, and as exceptional in its benign execution of its capacity for violence. America, it is claimed, is exactly as described by the 17th century philosopher Leibniz - the best of all possible worlds.
The consequence of this insistent propaganda since the country’s foundation is a profound but naive conservatism which goes far beyond the political or religious aspects of life. Among other things, it establishes a deeply held class consciousness by the upper and lower middle classes. The tension between the two manifests in as a neurotic compulsion to belong, to be attached to something that marks them as special in a society that values conformity to this principle of superiority above all else. Eccentricity, like irony, is notably lacking in the American character.
In American society one either accepts the economic and social cards one has been dealt; or tries frantically to get a new deal. The latter has always been available only for the few; and despite the hype, even fewer break through than ever before. But even for those who strive to overcome class conservatism, the established game, the implicit acceptance of middle class divisions as a cultural fact, is evident. Both groups are motivated chiefly by fear, one of falling into relative poverty, the other of becoming entirely destitute. This fear was seen clearly by James Baldwin regarding race but I think that it also is generated by an acute class consciousness.
Alexander is a self-identified product of this American class system. Apparently his entire life has been dominated by the military distinction between the officer and enlisted classes. Enlisted men and commissioned officers inhabit entirely separate worlds. This is the foundation of military society, but it is also a model for American social structure. The officer and enlisted classes offer opportunities for advancement but only within the class structure. Movement between classes is rare and not encouraged. Officers lead, direct, command, and decide. Enlisted personnel make, repair, obey, and suggest (they also sweat and suffer inordinately in military life). This is precisely the division of labour in the corporate world that dominates American society. The shop floor simply does not rise to the boardroom.
Alexander’s reported experience is of the lower ranks of both the military and the wider society. This, I think, is the real subject of his memoir. It is a depiction of a culture that is stifling in a very particular, one might say exceptional, way. There is a subtle but pervasive resignation that emanates from its rigid class divisions. Paradoxically this resignation does not show up as despair but as a kind of unthinking fatalism. The resulting behaviour is an obsessive search for somewhere to feel special, to belong, to become a recognised part of the social machine within the boundaries laid out by class. This is so for both classes and not just in the military. And as Alexander describes in detail, these two classes despise and fear each other. That this is articulated more by military personnel than civilians is a consequence of the formality of the arrangement in the former not any substantive differences.
Alexander was indoctrinated virtually from birth into a culture that not only marked him as second class but also prepared him for a gruelling love/hate relationship - with his country as well as the military - that would keep him in his place despite the obvious inequity in status, position, and prospects. His subsequent life in the Marines (indeed his ambition as per his class) was one of hard drinking, vacuous talk, artificial camaraderie, and pain casually received, not from an enemy but from his own superiors. He was taught by rote and repetition to respond instinctively - to orders, defined situations, and the prevailing childish machismo of his colleagues.
What Alexander found in the Marine Corps was a place of refuge from The Real World, that is, American society outside the Marine Corps. The Corps is to American society, according to Alexander, as American society is to the rest of the world. The Marine is superior, elite, incomparable, a hero by virtue of membership. He is the apotheosis of the American Dream - he has a definite place, no matter how humble, in the military corporate hierarchy. Collectively the Marines constitute a community of true believers. They are the clerics of Americanism, rowdy, boisterous, hard-nosed monks who are committed to some vague idea of spiritual superiority. Wherever they go, they remain Marines and proud of it, apparently for the rest of their lives.
Yet they are treated abominably by the officer class, not only initially but throughout their service, especially when they are in combat. They complain constantly about this while simultaneously professing total commitment to an abstract ideal. The factory line worker in constant danger of becoming unemployed by ‘corporate level’ decisions is no less suspicious, even hateful, toward his/her own management officer class. Yet this same factory worker will proclaim the superiority of corporate capitalism and his/her fear of any possible reform with equal vigour.
Marines, like many other Americans, carry with them an insulating shell of resistance to assimilation wherever they travel. This can be perceived as naïveté but it is in reality an active defence mechanism that prevents dilution of commitment, and therefore belonging (the British Empire had a similar programme to prevent the horror of ‘going native’). It is the most obvious manifestation of American conservatism - if anything new were worth knowing we would already know it and already have it. Strife between the middle classes may be tedious but it’s a tradition at the heart of American conservatism. Each class polices the other.
Another more mordant way of saying this is that most Americans are trained to remain children. They have never been taught how to learn anything beyond conventional wisdom. Learning itself is often thought a subversive activity that threatens The Dream. The class system promotes a sort of permanent infantilisation. They love guns (actually all explosive ordnance) because they’re adult toys; religion because it supplements belonging and feelings of existential superiority; conspiracy theories because secret knowledge gives them confidence of their self-worth and judgmental acumen; and passionate awkwardness about anything proposed by their own leaders because they are convinced that others are as incompetent as they are in dealing with change, which of course they are.
Near the end of his personal saga, Alexander reveals his own growing recognition of the dodgy bill of goods he has been sold. In a chapter epigraph from John LeCarre, he signals an important recognition: “war is nothing if not a return to childhood.” He then presents what can only be called an epiphany, too late for the victim but a crucial sign of maturation that appears to be rare among his colleagues. It’s as if the con of his entire life was finally revealed:
“Our mythologies have formed our ideologies, our ideologies have led us to patriotism, and our learned violence as an expression of that patriotism has led us to volunteer for this, and now we stand in a circle and look down at the dead man… ”
Alexander says, “War stories are the bookends of the American story.” But they are really more than that. The way America fights its wars has always been a reflection of the way America lives. And the way it lives is within a rather rigid even though unacknowledged class structure which is maintained by a bogus mythology, including a pervasive fear about anything which might undermine the mythology.
Consequently America as a nation learns nothing from its experience. Alexander’s book could easily be about The American War in VietNam of more than a half century ago or about the War in Afghanistan which has recently ended. And Alexander himself is indistinguishable in the long line of other enthusiastic children who have simply ignored the lessons of the past and doesn’t understand that he typifies his society despite his atypical experience. I have no doubt that his memoir will be similarly ignored by future generations of Americans. The motivation to learn seems lacking when one lives in the best of all possible worlds.
December 6, 2021
One of the blurbs said it was “riveting and complex.” It was none of those for me. However, it was eloquent and introspective. I expected this to be a thoughtful book that would not be a paean to war but a sober assessment of it in all its many faces.
But it was not the book I thought it was going to be. It’s not so much a memoir of war as it is about a boy embracing his destiny and discovering himself and his family.
Alexander is an Air Force brat growing up all over- Utah, Japan, California, Georgia. His narrative alternates back and forth between his Marine Corps experience. His younger years proceed chronologically but his Marine years are a muddle time wise.
He did two enlistments and was based for the most part at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He was infantry. Did a Med float with a MEU. Missed OIF but was seconded to the CBIRF that combed the Rayburn Office Building for anthrax spores. Re-enlisted for combat correspondent in 2003. Does a tour in Djibouti in that role. Then he’s back in the infantry along the Syrian border in Iraq in Husaybah.
This book has been in the author for awhile. It’s an honest and thoughtful account of his love hate relationship with the Marine Corps, a relationship that is perfectly normal. He did his duty. Saw the elephant. His observations and musings are accurate and worth a read.
But it was not the book I thought it was going to be. It’s not so much a memoir of war as it is about a boy embracing his destiny and discovering himself and his family.
Alexander is an Air Force brat growing up all over- Utah, Japan, California, Georgia. His narrative alternates back and forth between his Marine Corps experience. His younger years proceed chronologically but his Marine years are a muddle time wise.
He did two enlistments and was based for the most part at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He was infantry. Did a Med float with a MEU. Missed OIF but was seconded to the CBIRF that combed the Rayburn Office Building for anthrax spores. Re-enlisted for combat correspondent in 2003. Does a tour in Djibouti in that role. Then he’s back in the infantry along the Syrian border in Iraq in Husaybah.
This book has been in the author for awhile. It’s an honest and thoughtful account of his love hate relationship with the Marine Corps, a relationship that is perfectly normal. He did his duty. Saw the elephant. His observations and musings are accurate and worth a read.
October 24, 2022
When our son was a boy, he suddenly dropped his obsession’s over dinosaurs, which had followed his interest in trucks, for a new interest. He had watched The Audie Murphy Story and became obsessed with war. He read books on tanks, ships, planes, and war machines of all kinds. Then, he saw The Longest Day, then read the book by Cornelius Ryan on which the film was based. He read about WWII and later 20th c wars and as a teenager became as much an expert on them as he had been on dinosaurs or trucks.
One day at school a boy accused him of liking war. No, he responded, I hate war; I am interested in it. And I was quite grateful that we had talked with him about what he was reading and seeing as Desert Storm played out on the television. That he did not idealize war as heroism and cool.
Jerad W. Alexander was obsessed with war as a child growing up on Air Force bases, surrounded by jet planes flying overhead and men with cool uniforms and weapons and war stories. His boyhood games were war based. He joined the Civil Air Patrol, a civilian auxiliary arm of the air force created in the late 1930s.
Alexander dreamed of one thing in life: to serve in the infantry. To see active duty. He joined the Marines after high school. He went through training and was assigned noncombat duty. When he finally got to a war zone, it changed everything. And after he was discharged, he floundered, his girlfriend broke up with him, and it took Alexander years to process what he had experienced.
The result is this memoir.
No one in my family has served in the military since my great-great-great grandfather was drafted into the Confederate militia and my great-great-grandfather fled Russia to escape service in the czar’s army. Things are different now with an all-volunteer army. Today, young people are not forced to serve, they chose to serve. They are volunteers.
Alexander describes his mother’s role as a military wife. She and his father were in the Air Force, but she left the military when she became a mother. “The military spouse lives in a perpetual state of aggressive compromise beyond the basic demands of marriage,” he writes; “The military is a third partner in the house, a jealous one, and its whims trump the needs and desires of anyone tethered to it.”
Alexander writes about his disillusionment and doubt about the purpose of his time in the Marines. What was accomplished? Inside, you see the cracks and flaws in the system.
Alexander excels at describing his infatuation and idealization, the experience of war, the confliction over killing. Interjected into the backstory are memories of combat.
Disillusionment. Few of us escape it. Our childhood imaginings of grown up life rarely meet expectations, our idealism crashes into the windshield of reality, leaving us confused or broken or disoriented. Alexander’s memoir is an important contribution.
I received a free book from Algonquin. My review is fair an unbiased.
One day at school a boy accused him of liking war. No, he responded, I hate war; I am interested in it. And I was quite grateful that we had talked with him about what he was reading and seeing as Desert Storm played out on the television. That he did not idealize war as heroism and cool.
Jerad W. Alexander was obsessed with war as a child growing up on Air Force bases, surrounded by jet planes flying overhead and men with cool uniforms and weapons and war stories. His boyhood games were war based. He joined the Civil Air Patrol, a civilian auxiliary arm of the air force created in the late 1930s.
Alexander dreamed of one thing in life: to serve in the infantry. To see active duty. He joined the Marines after high school. He went through training and was assigned noncombat duty. When he finally got to a war zone, it changed everything. And after he was discharged, he floundered, his girlfriend broke up with him, and it took Alexander years to process what he had experienced.
The result is this memoir.
No one in my family has served in the military since my great-great-great grandfather was drafted into the Confederate militia and my great-great-grandfather fled Russia to escape service in the czar’s army. Things are different now with an all-volunteer army. Today, young people are not forced to serve, they chose to serve. They are volunteers.
Alexander describes his mother’s role as a military wife. She and his father were in the Air Force, but she left the military when she became a mother. “The military spouse lives in a perpetual state of aggressive compromise beyond the basic demands of marriage,” he writes; “The military is a third partner in the house, a jealous one, and its whims trump the needs and desires of anyone tethered to it.”
Alexander writes about his disillusionment and doubt about the purpose of his time in the Marines. What was accomplished? Inside, you see the cracks and flaws in the system.
Alexander excels at describing his infatuation and idealization, the experience of war, the confliction over killing. Interjected into the backstory are memories of combat.
Disillusionment. Few of us escape it. Our childhood imaginings of grown up life rarely meet expectations, our idealism crashes into the windshield of reality, leaving us confused or broken or disoriented. Alexander’s memoir is an important contribution.
I received a free book from Algonquin. My review is fair an unbiased.
November 14, 2021
We would do well to always bear in mind that there is the Romance of war (the spangled stars, the erotic thump of mortar shells, the foxhole brotherhood) and then there is the Reality of war (bodies turned inside out by those same mortars, the selfish small-minded decisions of politicians, the Long Suck of military duty). In his new memoir VOLUNTEERS, Jerad W. Alexander so perfectly, and so beautifully, describes a life raised under the red-white-and-blue banner of military pride where enlisting in the armed services was practically a given, an inevitable tradition of service. As a young boy living next to an Air Force base, he was raised on the intoxicating perfume of jet fuel and the sweat of hard work in the military families he saw all around him. He knew someday he would be a full-fledged Combat Soldier. But what happens when the starry-eyed kid meets the reality of the Forever Wars of Iraq and Afghanistan? Jerad Alexander takes us on an illuminating trip through an American life struggling to find the balance between peace and war. As he writes, shortly after shooting at a man on an Iraqi street, "it all felt remarkably useless and wasteful and hollow."
If you've been snacking on nothing but Patriotism most of your life, you owe it to yourself to read this book. It will open your eyes and your mind.
If you've been snacking on nothing but Patriotism most of your life, you owe it to yourself to read this book. It will open your eyes and your mind.
February 3, 2022
Most of this book is not a war memoir -- although there's bits of that -- but is mostly his life in a military culture. The first half of the book is about his upbringing as a military brat during the 1980s and 1990s: his stepfather is an active-duty Air Force enlisted man and the author grew up in dependents' on-base housing, for the most part. It's a clear-eyed look at an insular culture -- in a way, the title says it and he admits he read a lot about the Vietnam War, the last one fought by US conscripts, and he is well aware that after the end of the draft in 1973, an all-volunteer military would grow and turn inward. In that sense, he was an alert witness to how its culture would establish and grow, and this is a good social history in that regard.
It's not a spoiler to say that he grew up with the sense that he would enlist one day, and we even, given this backstory, understand his choice of the US Marine Corps. And it would be enlistment: he already well knew the gulf between officers and enlisted and what his place was. His decision takes a number of pages to unfold, however, his account of boot camp, Marine infantry training and his first postings to Camp Lejeune and Djibouti (Horn of Africa) is terse. 9/11 comes and goes, he volunteers for service in Iraq after the invasion, but we get to this at page 267.
It's worth noting that he has flashback (or flash-forward) excerpts, in italics, previously in the book, of incidents he witnessed in combat, in a battalion headed by a commander he names as Rebel Six. His subsequent account of his time there, in the final part of the book, describes the chaos and his own disillusionment: he talks about it but the reader may find the explanation in his past. It's not a spoiler to say he survives intact but estranged, especially once he leaves the service and enters civilian life -- in a way, for the first time.
His writing is excellent, the prose clear. He is well aware of historical context and his part in it. As a marker of a period in US military culture -- now closed, perhaps, by the fall of Afghanistan in August 2021 -- this book might serve as a cultural and social reflection.
(Read in first edition via the Amazon Vine program.)
It's not a spoiler to say that he grew up with the sense that he would enlist one day, and we even, given this backstory, understand his choice of the US Marine Corps. And it would be enlistment: he already well knew the gulf between officers and enlisted and what his place was. His decision takes a number of pages to unfold, however, his account of boot camp, Marine infantry training and his first postings to Camp Lejeune and Djibouti (Horn of Africa) is terse. 9/11 comes and goes, he volunteers for service in Iraq after the invasion, but we get to this at page 267.
It's worth noting that he has flashback (or flash-forward) excerpts, in italics, previously in the book, of incidents he witnessed in combat, in a battalion headed by a commander he names as Rebel Six. His subsequent account of his time there, in the final part of the book, describes the chaos and his own disillusionment: he talks about it but the reader may find the explanation in his past. It's not a spoiler to say he survives intact but estranged, especially once he leaves the service and enters civilian life -- in a way, for the first time.
His writing is excellent, the prose clear. He is well aware of historical context and his part in it. As a marker of a period in US military culture -- now closed, perhaps, by the fall of Afghanistan in August 2021 -- this book might serve as a cultural and social reflection.
(Read in first edition via the Amazon Vine program.)
February 12, 2024
I rate all autobiographies 5 stars.
I thought this was a really interesting perspective and story about someone who grew up in military bases, joined the military and ultimately grew to distance himself from the military.
I thought this was a really interesting perspective and story about someone who grew up in military bases, joined the military and ultimately grew to distance himself from the military.
May 19, 2023
The actual writing in this book was pretty good. I found the adult version of the author much less likable than his younger self. This was presented as the story of the average soldier, but since the author’s mom, dad and step dad were all in the military before him, was it really the story of the average volunteer soldier? I don’t think so. A story worth telling for sure, just not what I expected. Strangely, 9/11 was almost completely missing from this book. That’s a major factor in the story of the truly average soldier from this time period.
January 21, 2023
A well-crafted memoir, with an eloquent writing style. I thoroughly enjoyed the details from his childhood, his words and descriptions place you viscerally into the scenes of his life. I would recommend this book to anyone seeking insight into military culture from childhood through adult life.
June 7, 2025
“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.
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.
January 4, 2023
And every once in a while, along comes a book so we'll written that after you read the last word, you already miss it.
This is one of them.
Now, I have read many many books in my ears and I have read many memoirs or nonfiction books on military experience but this one, volunteers, has got to be one of the best books on the subject I've ever read.
There are so many quotes in this book that I would love to share but here's one that kind of struck me pretty hard:
"Four has entrenched itself into the larger Americans landscape, something I've come to see in the decades after 9/11 as a default position, and assumed state entirely normalized in the American narrative, it's components to still into the culture as a fashion trend, both literally and figuratively. Politicians use the service of it's volunteers as props. Dewy eyed stanchions in uniforms sell Auto insurance on television. Tactical backpacks are used as book bags by school children. Retired US Navy seals are hired as motivational speakers to deliver pick me up speeches to sales teams; they're placed arm and arm with celebrities and in some cases are championed like sports heroes for their body counts. Or criminals have become politicians and consultants for news cable news. armored vehicles built for mechanized warfare roll to American streets, helmed by police who have come to equate their roles as with those of soldiers fighting in kabul. Hard right militaries and armchair Patriots have a doctor the cheap poster image of the soldier as a vehicle to intimidate or Express superiority over those exercising their freedoms of speech through protest, and worse, they're used dubious nativism against those Americans should help. The war everywhere."
This is one of them.
Now, I have read many many books in my ears and I have read many memoirs or nonfiction books on military experience but this one, volunteers, has got to be one of the best books on the subject I've ever read.
There are so many quotes in this book that I would love to share but here's one that kind of struck me pretty hard:
"Four has entrenched itself into the larger Americans landscape, something I've come to see in the decades after 9/11 as a default position, and assumed state entirely normalized in the American narrative, it's components to still into the culture as a fashion trend, both literally and figuratively. Politicians use the service of it's volunteers as props. Dewy eyed stanchions in uniforms sell Auto insurance on television. Tactical backpacks are used as book bags by school children. Retired US Navy seals are hired as motivational speakers to deliver pick me up speeches to sales teams; they're placed arm and arm with celebrities and in some cases are championed like sports heroes for their body counts. Or criminals have become politicians and consultants for news cable news. armored vehicles built for mechanized warfare roll to American streets, helmed by police who have come to equate their roles as with those of soldiers fighting in kabul. Hard right militaries and armchair Patriots have a doctor the cheap poster image of the soldier as a vehicle to intimidate or Express superiority over those exercising their freedoms of speech through protest, and worse, they're used dubious nativism against those Americans should help. The war everywhere."
January 8, 2022
I feel like Jerad Alexander and/or Algonquin Books pulled a bait and switch on me with Alexander’s memoir: VOLUNTEERS: Growing Up in the Forever War. The cover features a marine, in full military gear (except for his helmet), cigarette dangling from his lips, standing on sandy ground. The back cover and inside cover blurb repeatedly mention “war.”
Most of the book, however, is 190 pages or so of a fairly shallow, unmotivated Alexander growing up from a tyke in a military family on military bases to a high school graduate. I came away thinking my relatively normal, mundane life between five and eighteen years old was more interesting than his.
Around page 190 he enlists in the Marines. For the next 70 pages or so, stationed away from Iraq, mainly in the USA, he drinks, smokes and wishes he could go to the war in Iraq.
Finally, on page 267 he gets to Iraq, and for the next twelve pages, his tone changes. He reveals his inner torment and disillusionment with the military, the war in Iraq, and the USA’s purpose being there. He writes of fear turning to anger to the point he almost kills an innocent old man.
Then he’s home, his enlistment ends, and he enters the “Real World.”
I don’t know if the “Growing Up” in the title means growing up in a military family; or growing up emotionally while in the Marines. I guess it doesn’t matter.
Rating: 2.5 stars rounded down for the bait and switch aspect.
Most of the book, however, is 190 pages or so of a fairly shallow, unmotivated Alexander growing up from a tyke in a military family on military bases to a high school graduate. I came away thinking my relatively normal, mundane life between five and eighteen years old was more interesting than his.
Around page 190 he enlists in the Marines. For the next 70 pages or so, stationed away from Iraq, mainly in the USA, he drinks, smokes and wishes he could go to the war in Iraq.
Finally, on page 267 he gets to Iraq, and for the next twelve pages, his tone changes. He reveals his inner torment and disillusionment with the military, the war in Iraq, and the USA’s purpose being there. He writes of fear turning to anger to the point he almost kills an innocent old man.
Then he’s home, his enlistment ends, and he enters the “Real World.”
I don’t know if the “Growing Up” in the title means growing up in a military family; or growing up emotionally while in the Marines. I guess it doesn’t matter.
Rating: 2.5 stars rounded down for the bait and switch aspect.
February 7, 2022
In VOLUNTEERS: GROWING UP IN THE FOREVER WAR, Jerad W. Alexander offered an honest, candid and thoughtful account of what started out as a deep-seated, thorough-going love and dedication to the military and joining the military and representing the United States. Being part of the military was all he thought about and all he wanted for his life.
What propelled me forward in reading were Alexander’s eloquent writing and memory for significant details in his life. Some of the recollections were from early childhood periods. For example, when he was only six, during early morning hours, he recalled hearing the jet fighters flying and trying to figure out a way to get to his bedroom window to see them fly, without getting caught out of bed.
The process of finding out the military and military life wasn’t what he grew up believing was gradual and trying.
Without giving any spoilers, I’ll say this: Alexander’s introspection of his life as a member of a military family and as a participating military serviceman was sobering and difficult. He shared a deeply personal experience that was introspective, thoughtful, and brave.
I highly recommend reading this book. It isn’t just some pre-written narrative he was told to share. It gives a well-informed view of war, what it means, and what we’re fighting for. It shows us good reason to rethink what it means to “support our troops.”
What propelled me forward in reading were Alexander’s eloquent writing and memory for significant details in his life. Some of the recollections were from early childhood periods. For example, when he was only six, during early morning hours, he recalled hearing the jet fighters flying and trying to figure out a way to get to his bedroom window to see them fly, without getting caught out of bed.
The process of finding out the military and military life wasn’t what he grew up believing was gradual and trying.
Without giving any spoilers, I’ll say this: Alexander’s introspection of his life as a member of a military family and as a participating military serviceman was sobering and difficult. He shared a deeply personal experience that was introspective, thoughtful, and brave.
I highly recommend reading this book. It isn’t just some pre-written narrative he was told to share. It gives a well-informed view of war, what it means, and what we’re fighting for. It shows us good reason to rethink what it means to “support our troops.”
September 16, 2022
Highly recommended book. Told from a deeply first-person perspective, VOLUNTEERS takes readers along the complex journey that led the author into war. But it is more than that. Although intimate, nostaligic and humorous at times, filled with details of childhood memory and key moments which served as guideposts toward becoming a Marine… the author does something different here: he lets you in.
By quietly weaving in a sense of self-reflection and mindfulness (within the greater historical context of The Cold War, late 20th-Century America, and the Global War on Terror), Jared Alexander gives the reader an experience that subtly transcends the immediate story at hand into something else. As a reader, I often found myself pausing to consider the very nature of our psychological motivations, human society, cultural values, the structures and institutions that define our experience within our time in history. The author never overtly led me in this larger philosophical direction—and perhaps this is more a commentary on my own existentialist propensities—nevertheless, I frequently visited that nuanced path between the pages, wondering about the curiosity of life.
Recommended for civilians (like me) who may want to hear the story of a soldier, as well as for anyone who would traverse along a deeply personal, intellectual and honest journey during one of the most significant periods in human history.
By quietly weaving in a sense of self-reflection and mindfulness (within the greater historical context of The Cold War, late 20th-Century America, and the Global War on Terror), Jared Alexander gives the reader an experience that subtly transcends the immediate story at hand into something else. As a reader, I often found myself pausing to consider the very nature of our psychological motivations, human society, cultural values, the structures and institutions that define our experience within our time in history. The author never overtly led me in this larger philosophical direction—and perhaps this is more a commentary on my own existentialist propensities—nevertheless, I frequently visited that nuanced path between the pages, wondering about the curiosity of life.
Recommended for civilians (like me) who may want to hear the story of a soldier, as well as for anyone who would traverse along a deeply personal, intellectual and honest journey during one of the most significant periods in human history.
November 30, 2021
I received a copy of this book through the Amazon Vine program in exchange for an honest review.
This is such a unique book!
Alexander writes about his experience growing up in a military family and his experience enlisting. Each chapter has stories about his deployment, along with somewhat linear stories of growing up. This is a very unique book not just for the poetic prose, but the focus is largely on Alexander's childhood and youth instead of his deployment. We see very little of his life in and after the military in comparison.
There's also the exploration of Alexander's childhood and the way that he was raised. It becomes very clearly that he enlisted because he felt an obligation, but not in the way of a lot of military personnel. It's interesting to peak into his life and see this experience play out.
There's also a good amount of reflection and thoughts on his experiences. It's an interesting read overall!
This is such a unique book!
Alexander writes about his experience growing up in a military family and his experience enlisting. Each chapter has stories about his deployment, along with somewhat linear stories of growing up. This is a very unique book not just for the poetic prose, but the focus is largely on Alexander's childhood and youth instead of his deployment. We see very little of his life in and after the military in comparison.
There's also the exploration of Alexander's childhood and the way that he was raised. It becomes very clearly that he enlisted because he felt an obligation, but not in the way of a lot of military personnel. It's interesting to peak into his life and see this experience play out.
There's also a good amount of reflection and thoughts on his experiences. It's an interesting read overall!
May 15, 2022
Gruff, naturalistic memoir told ambitiously with a heavy handed yet ambiguous theme.
I enjoyed most seeing from a child's perspective as remembered by an adult: an overwrought search for glory and triumph laced with inherent camraderie and true heroism.
As other reviewers have stated, the author uses literary strategies that may confuse simplistic readers such as weaving the threads of asynchronous anecdotes and magnifying moments for greater resonance.
The overall experience isn't overly cinematic but does lead in that direction with some scenes earning vibrant description and evocative verbage. Yet, Alexander also goes "vertical" by exploring the emotional effects of tours away from home, family and friends.
Less trial-laden than Goggins and less adventurous than Chris Kyle, Alexander's journey to the military was through tradition and self-improvement. This journey is recounted in a jaded voice embued with earned pride but otherwise resembles a literary loner like Chris McCandless whose similar escapism was unfulfilling and aimless though seemingly noble.
I enjoyed most seeing from a child's perspective as remembered by an adult: an overwrought search for glory and triumph laced with inherent camraderie and true heroism.
As other reviewers have stated, the author uses literary strategies that may confuse simplistic readers such as weaving the threads of asynchronous anecdotes and magnifying moments for greater resonance.
The overall experience isn't overly cinematic but does lead in that direction with some scenes earning vibrant description and evocative verbage. Yet, Alexander also goes "vertical" by exploring the emotional effects of tours away from home, family and friends.
Less trial-laden than Goggins and less adventurous than Chris Kyle, Alexander's journey to the military was through tradition and self-improvement. This journey is recounted in a jaded voice embued with earned pride but otherwise resembles a literary loner like Chris McCandless whose similar escapism was unfulfilling and aimless though seemingly noble.
September 2, 2021
Read if you: Want an incisive, honest, and revealing memoir about growing up in the military culture and fighting the "endless" war in Iraq.
Even if you don't normally read military/war memoirs, you definitely should read this one. With the very small percentage of people who grow up in military life and/or serve in the armed forces, this is a sharp look at a life that most Americans do not experience.
Librarians/booksellers: A fantastic addition to your memoirs collection.
Many thanks to Algonquin Books and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.
Even if you don't normally read military/war memoirs, you definitely should read this one. With the very small percentage of people who grow up in military life and/or serve in the armed forces, this is a sharp look at a life that most Americans do not experience.
Librarians/booksellers: A fantastic addition to your memoirs collection.
Many thanks to Algonquin Books and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.
November 18, 2021
A phenomenal read. In my experience with "army brats" over the years, they mostly expressed their experience in terms of impermanence and moving around a lot. Jerad covers the experience of being raised in the military where serving is a foregone conclusion. He goes on to objectively detail that process right up until his own service, where the writing, organically, becomes more emotional and judgmental; the result of combat and a life of voracious historical reading. An incredibly detailed and well written book. Highly recommend!
October 8, 2024
The most interesting part of this book is the author’s acknowledgement of regret for leaving the infantry and not going to war. It’s such a paradox… we come to loathe and hate a thing and our thoughts are monopolized by the idea of leaving it behind; yet when we do the regret is worse than the original thing. It’s a unique version of survivor’s guilt… or maybe Stockholm Syndrome. We try so hard to leave a thing, and the lack of that very thing comes back to haunt us, destroy us, and often kills us.
November 18, 2021
While I enjoyed Alexander’s story and found him quite a gifted writer, I felt that his criticisms of the military and the culture that sustained it were too overt. I actually agree with much of what he has to say, but it seemed that in almost every sentence there was some kind of dig at the military. The point he makes would have been much stronger if he had come to it gradually or led the reader there more subtly. As it was, it came off more bitter than thoughtful.
May 7, 2022
Very well written book by a former Marine who was raised in a military family. It went back and forth from his childhood to his enlistment. Not as much time describing his in-country service in the "sandbox" as I had expected, but certainly enough to convey his findings and experience. As a veteran, I enjoyed his book and thank him for his service and welcome him home.
September 14, 2022
After reading Achilles and An Iliad in book club, I am stymied by the question, “Why do men go to war?” There are so many reasons, and I’m not sure it can be distilled to a single underlying reason. Alexander’s reason: it was the culture in which he grew up.
I begin to think the reason may be because we don’t know enough about it on an individual level.
I begin to think the reason may be because we don’t know enough about it on an individual level.
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