Book excerpt: For seventeen-year-old high school dropout Jim Bathurst, the Marine Corps’s reputation for making men out of boys was something he desperately needed when he enlisted in March of 1958. What began as a four-year hitch lasted nearly thirty-six years and included an interesting assortment of duty stations and assignments as both enlisted and officer. We’ll All Die As Marines narrates a story about a young, free-spirited kid from Dundalk, Maryland, and how the Corps captured his body, mind, and spirit. Slowly, but persistently, the Corps transformed him into someone whose first love would forever be the United States Marine Corps. It documents not only his leadership, service, and training but also regales many tales of his fellow Marines that will have the reader laughing, cheering, and at times crying. In this memoir, Bathurst reveals that for him—a former DI who was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star Medal with Combat “V”, Purple Heart, and a combat commission to second lieutenant—the Corps was not a job, a career, or even a profession; it was—and still is—a way of life.