You Just Survive
About
You Just Survive: Combat, Chaos, and the Quiet Battles That Follow You Home
by Jeffrey A. Sabins
You’ve seen the movies. This isn’t that.
You Just Survive is a raw, unfiltered collection of real stories from a Marine who lived through it all—IED blasts, sniper fire, ambushes, and the battles that never made the news. Jeffrey A. Sabins served seventeen years in the United States Marine Corps, surviving five combat deployments and earning the Purple Heart. But the hardest part? What came after.
From the streets of Ramadi to the outposts of Afghanistan, this book takes you deep into the turret of a Humvee, through fast-rope drills gone wrong, into firefights at midnight, and inside the mind of a warfighter who had to keep leading when the dust settled.
These are the stories veterans know but rarely tell.
Stories of fear, leadership, sacrifice, trauma, humor, guilt, and the moments that stay burned into memory forever. Stories about returning home to silence, to nightmares, to a world that doesn’t always understand.
If you’ve worn the uniform, you’ll see yourself here.
If you haven’t, you’ll never look at a veteran the same way again.
Whether you’re a military reader, a family member, or someone searching for what war really feels like—You Just Survive delivers something most books won’t: the truth.
Powerful. Gritty. Human.
This isn’t about medals.
It’s about memories.
And the weight we carry when no one’s watching.
Praise for this book
Written in snap shots, this anthology of personal reflections provides insight into the internal war combat veterans face after battle and military service. Just one of the deployments Sabins mentions would serve up plenty of memories. But he was deployed five times--Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia. It's definitely a book I would have used in my America at War course when I was a classroom professor. I recommend it to anyone interested in the individual's experience of combat, during and after.