The Fort Brigade

"There is nothing in this world as terrible as war. Most days, there is nothing heroic about it; only coincidence and chaos. The media loves talking about the fallen. Few ever talk about the men and women who survived, left to live with the memories of war for the rest of their lives. No one sees them as heroes. But I do."

Former IDF intelligence NCO Gil Shilo captures the brutal reality of day-to-day life as a member of Lebanon's Beaufort brigade - the infamous, deadliest outpost beyond the Israel-Lebanon border.

When he enlisted at eighteen, no one told Private Gil Shilo that home would become a medieval fortress perched atop a Lebanese mountain-or that he would have to entrust his survival not to the rifle in his hands, but to a group of the strangest, headstrong, bravest men he'd ever met. In his raw, gripping account, Shilo vividly documents the surreal life on the Beaufort. The clocklike accuracy of mortar bombs, the nightly ambushes, the stress of living in a tightly packed kill zone, not knowing where or when the next rocket or enemy fire might come from, day in and day out.

An unforgettable war memoir, The Fort Brigade is a soldier's reckoning with the past, and an honor to the courageous soldiers who made the Beaufort their home-and those who made it their grave.