The Thin Red Line

'When compared to the fact that he might very well be dead by this time tomorrow, whether he was courageous or not today was pointless, empty. When compared to the fact that he might be dead tomorrow, everything was pointless. Life was pointless.'

Such is the experience of war in The Thin Red Line, James Jones' devestating novel based on World War II's Battle of Guadalcanal, a six-month, notoriously brutal fight from which only 1 in 9 soldiers returned.

The soldiers of C-for-Charlie Company are not cast from the heroic mold. The unit's captain is too intelligent and sensitive for the job, his first sergeant is psychotic, and the enlisted men begin the campaign gripped by cowardice. But they will all discover the thin red line that divides the sane from the mad - and the living from the dead - in this dark, gripping novel about the brutalizing impact of war.