I've also recently finished reading the book Armor by John Steakley. It is an epic tale of a struggle against overwhelming odds, and a destructive war on a foreign planet. For all who enjoy novels getting into the heads of battle hardened soldiers, this is a novel packed such phychiological topics, a certainly worthwhile read for fans of military science fiction.

Pages: 426

Synopsis:

The planet is called Banshee. The air is unbreathable, the water poisonous. It is the home of the most implacable enemies that humanity, in all its interstellar expansion, has ever encountered.

Body Armor has been devised for the commando forces that are to be dropped on Banshee--the culmination of ten thousand years of the armorers' craft. A trooper in this armor is a one-man, atomic-powered battle-fortress--but he will have to fight a nearly endless horde of beserk, hard-shelled monsters--the fighting arm of a species which uses biological technology to design perfect, mindless war minions.

Felix is a scout in A-team Two. Highly competent, he is the sole survivor of mission after mission. Yet he is a man consumed by fear and hatred. And he is protected not only by his custom-fitted body armor, the culmination of 10,000 years of the armorers' craft, but also by an odd being which seems to live with him, a cold killing machine he calls "the Engine."

This is Felix's story--a story of the horror, the courage, and the aftermath of combat, and the story, too, of how strength of spirit can be the greatest armor of all.