| About the Book |
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"Got the name? Play the game," Frank Warz likes to joke because he has the name, no matter how it's spelled. Warz regrets going to college instead of Vietnam since his degree is useless in recession-racked 1975 Detroit. He feels suckered to his blue-collar soul. He can't even schmooze. So, he perches on steel clothes-line poles in lightning storms to get a sense of what he missed in SE Asia and he poses as a decorated ex-Marine to feel like one. It helps him handle the frustration of evading the war. He takes great snapshots, though. Meanwhile, personal problems begin to get out of hand.
A discarded newspaper casually informs him the French Foreign Legion is alive and well and living in the south of France. It's a tip he doesn't forget. Finally, after a nudge from his WWI-hero grandfather and after passing a self-administered test of nerve, Warz decides to take care of everything by joining the Foreign Legion. A pardonable hit and run car crash chases him to France. The Legion introduces him to its severe world, and he learns about a place called Djibouti where, he hears, the sun hammers the rocks until they scream. Then the Legion rejects him.
Destitute, facing a fugitive's homecoming, Warz literally steps on unexpected funds immediately after a strange daydream, which makes the discovery seem like a miracle. The cash lets him get back on track. Intent on fulfillment, he follows the Legion to Djibouti. En route, he buys an old camera to begin a new career and assumes a second persona now: a battle-seasoned freelance photographer.
Traveling by land through Ethiopia to save money, Warz has adventures that include close calls from nomads and hyena, and another from a journalist who nearly unmasks him. A bittersweet night with a seductive, but married, Swedish model follows an unusual photo shoot for Playboy magazine. Once in the spot of hell called Djibouti, he meets a gun runner with an uncanny resemblance to a rock star that's supposed to be dead. Then Warz gets a taste of what he came for while watching the Legion catch trespassers in a chaotic response that almost brings down an airliner. But the real excitement comes after he meets a Legion deserter, an African-American from Mississippi.
The deserter is disguised as a Somali sheik. He is returning to Djibouti to help a legionnaire buddy escape in plain view of the whole garrison during a High Holiday ritual. The plan is so simple it should work; however, it backfires in a bloody siege between legionnaires that catch him and Warz and Somali bandits that catch them all. Warz gets the action he's always wanted, except that his trial by fire becomes a penance, transcending anything his fantasies have prepared him for. Even his broken, empty camera becomes a psychological weapon.
The story takes no prisoners, frankly addressing racial and cultural differences and unwrapping myth from a renowned armed service, all the while, beating the drum about the phenomenon of manufactured valor.
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