Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the US Army

by KaylaWilliams (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $3.36

  From Basic Training to Baghdad, from Mosul to a remote outpost on the Syrian border - this raw memoir gives a vivid picture of Kayla Williams's deployment in Iraq. During her time in the army she witnessed death up close, and horrifying disregard for human life and foreign cultures. Through it all - the violence, boredem and fear, as well as the light-hearted moments of camaraderie and flirtation - she brings home with vivid intensity the experience of being a woman soldier in the US Army today.

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $4.55

  Kayla Williams is one of the 15 percent of the U.S. Army that is female, and she is a great storyteller. With a voice that is funny, frank and full of gritty details (New York Daily News), she tells of enlisting under Clinton; of learning Arabic; of the sense of duty that fractured her relationships; of being surrounded by bravery and bigotry, sexism and fear; of seeing 9/11 on Al-Jazeera; and of knowing she would be going to war. With a passion that makes her memoir nearly impossible to put down (Buffalo News) Williams shares the powerful gamut of her experiences in Iraq, from caring for a wounded civilian to aiming a rifle at a child. Angry at the bureaucracy and the conflicting messages of today's military, Williams offers us a raw, unadulterated look at war (San Antonio Express News) and at the U.S. Army. And she gives us a woman's story of empowerment and self-discovery.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2006

  $3.36

  'I want to write the book that explains it - the horror, the terror, the shame, the mind-numbing boredom; and the joy and the honour. Down to the goriest and most degrading detail, down to the suicide attempts, the suicides, the anorexic desperation, the promiscuity, the comradeship, the tedium, the bravery, the violence'. From basic training to intensive language school, to learning how to fire an automatic weapon, to being deployed in Iraq and holding up the American convoy because it's complicated for a woman to pee in a chemical weapon's suit, Love My Rifle is a gripping memoir of life in the US army written by a woman with an unforgettable voice. It touches on today's news stories, of Abu Ghraib prison and the soldiers still fighting in Iraq, but also on more universal issues: of being the one woman in a troop of 200 men, of patriotism and honour, of courage and military incompetence.