Swofford is a braggart, a probable liar, and as such is an example of all that is wrong with American military culture.His platoon seems to be populated by overgrown, scatological fifth graders, hopped up on whatever hootch they can ingest and hyperdeluded by an aggregate of Hollywood war movies, from which they get their twisted self-images.If this is the message Swofford is attempting to send, then he's done an adequate job. Unfortunately, he is a terrible prose stylist who prefers to tell rather than show, and whose strange compulsion to list things is to say the least annoying.