Styron's provocative anti-war novel: The story of two marine reservists' rejection of the forced conformity of the military machine. In the shadow of the Korean War, a series of misfired mortar shells kill six men in a marine camp during a training exercise, prompting the commanding officer to order a grueling punishment: a thirty-six mile march through the suffocating heat of the Carolina summer. Intended to beat discipline into the aging reservists,...