The United States Infantry, the Queen of Battle, is the oldest established combat branch of the Nation's long established military. Only Infantry Riflemen, trained and deployed to cope with the chaos of face to face killing, are Constitutionally charged with the awesome personal and professional responsibility of taking human life.

The Queen of Battle is not a memoir; it is the disquieting story of how seemingly basically logical political decisions, sadly embodied by the precipitate change from the M1 rifle to the M16 rifle, encapsulated and symbolized the ascent and decline...