Imagine waking up at 4:30 a.m. Imagine staying up all night to prepare against an ambush.

To be a soldier is to give up some of comforts and joys of an everyday life. Some of the Daily Bruin staffers followed the Bruin Battalion, a group of ROTC students administered out of UCLA, as it traveled to Camp Pendleton for a four day of combat training.

When the smoke clears and the guns go quiet, what's left are the people.
Here is a collection of the stories behind the uniforms