Battle Ready
Memoir of a SEAL Warrior Medic
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- USD 11.99
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- USD 11.99
Descripción editorial
The gripping memoir of Navy Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart recipient SEAL Lieutenant Mark L. Donald, Battle Ready.
As A SEAL and combat medic, Mark served his country with valorous distinction for almost twenty-five years and survived some of the most dangerous combat actions imaginable.
From the rigors of BUD/S training to the horrors of the battlefield, Battle Ready dramatically immerses the reader in the unique life of the elite warrior-medic who advances into combat with life-saving equipment in one hand and life-taking weapons in the other. It is also an uplifting human story that reveals how a young Hispanic American bootstrapped himself out of a life that promised a dead-end future by enlisting in the military. That new life begins with the Marines and includes his heroic achievements on the battlefield and the operating table, and finally, of his inspirational triumph over the demons caused by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that threatened to destroy him and his family.
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After humbly eschewing the "haunting label" of "hero," Donald, with the help of Navy vet Mactavish (The New Dad's Survival Guide), recounts his struggle to break free from an impoverished youth by joining the Marines and then the elite Navy SEALs, in whose service he fought and saved lives as a medic in Afghanistan. That experience left him with PTSD and an enduring desire to help veterans. Like most soldiers, he writes best about soldiering (the book is based on journals originally intended as part of his post-combat therapy), delivering a superb description of the infamously brutal weeding-out ordeal of SEAL training, the nuts-and-bolts duties of a medic, and the battle actions that won him the Navy Cross but claimed the lives of more than one close friend. Attempts to exorcise his personal demons back on the home front are less successful, but the suffering they point to is palpable. A few military memoirs like Anthony Swofford's Jarhead gloriously break the bonds of their genre; Donald's has no such ambition, but this is an admirable addition to the flourishing phenomenon of SEALs sharing their stories in print. Its audience will welcome the familiar macho elements no less than the original, often horrific medical details. 16-page color photo insert.
