Beginning with interviews with the last surviving drill instructors of
World War II, this powerful oral history offers the voices of veterans
from every major war of the last sixty years, concluding with accounts
of what it takes to train marines for Iraq today. The Few and the
Proud contains revelatory details about the vicious training techniques
used to prepare marines for the great battles against Japan in the
Pacific; the Ribbon Creek training disaster of the 1950s; and legendary
stories by the likes of Iwo Jima veteran Iron Mike Mervosh and R. Lee
Ermey, the infamous drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket. With
death-defying accounts relayed from the MCRD in San Diego and the
legendary Parris Island, The Few and the Proud is both a personal
history of the 230-year-old U.S. Marine Corps and a repository of
heroism, leadership, and determination in the toughest division of the
United States military.