Mr. Premel describes his adventures in the Marine Corps, beginning with boot camp, which he loved from the outset. “I grew up in a family of nine. It was an 800 square foot house. … I had to sleep in an overstuffed chair in a curled up position … we had one set of clothing we wore a week.” At boot camp, he “got a free haircut. I got free two sets of clothing … and my own bed, with a mattress, a pillow, and sheets, a top and bottom sheet. ... I was in heaven.” He goes on to describe jump school (including an extremely dangerous mishap), and the pinning ceremony of the coveted Force Recon gold wings. He describes mountaineering training, which he “found really thrilling … fun,” and demolition training, where he learned from Marines who did stupid things… "never eat C-4.” He also describes LST, LSD, and submarine lock out training in hair raising detail, and running some stark naked hippie squatters off a Marine Corps base beach in California. He describes missions in Vietnam involving flashlights and fireflies, KA-BARs and spy rigs, C-4 and chainsaws, observation, intelligence gathering, and hand grenades. And he describes how he earned the Navy Commendation Medal with a Combat "V.”