WAR STORIES: In the aftermath of previous wars, it took years if not decades for books by soldiers to filter into bookstores. The current war is different. This fall will see the publication of at least five on-the-ground memoirs by recent combatants. The first to make an impact is ''The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq,'' by John Crawford, which enters the hardcover nonfiction list this week at No. 12. Crawford, who ended up in Iraq after joining the Florida National Guard to help pay his college tuition, turns out to be a bracing writer. (''My M-249 squad automatic weapon fired 850 rounds a minute, and if that didn't stop whatever was after me, then I had a problem that nothing would solve.'') Crawford thinks the war in Iraq is a mistake. But as he put it, memorably, to Terry Gross recently on National Public Radio, he believes it's too late to stop now: ''I liken it to getting in a bar fight. Occasionally, you know, you get drunk and you get in a fight because you think some guy's eyeballing you in the bar. And you wake up in the morning, and you say, 'Wow, that guy didn't deserve that at all.' But the morning is the time for regret. If you do it in the middle of the fight, then you still wake up feeling bad, but you got beat up, too.''

UP FROM QUEENS: Memoirs by rock stars are best-seller list staples, and there have been some smart ones lately, from Bob Dylan's ''Chronicles: Volume One'' to Phil Lesh's ''Searching for the Sound.'' Here comes another one worth attending to: 50 Cent's memoir, ''From Pieces to Weight: Once Upon a Time in Southside Queens,'' which enters the hardcover nonfiction list this week at No. 9. Written with Kris Ex, the book is cool, hard and vivid, a minor classic of a genre you might call gangster rap noir. No fluff here. 50 Cent tells the story of his life -- the drug dealing, the shootings, the boxing, the early attempts to break into rap music -- with a novelist's economy. ''People want the truth,'' he writes. ''That's why people watch the news every night. There's nothing good on the news. . . . And you still watch. Why? Because you want the truth. You'll complain, but you'll watch. Every night. The news always gets good ratings.'' 50 Cent doesn't apologize for, or rationalize away, the bad decisions he's made. But he does give young readers one piece of advice: ''Every time I sit down for an interview, I'm asked, 'Well, 50, how did it feel to get shot nine times?' Honestly, it didn't feel good -- not at the time anyway. Now it's just a memory, but when it happened, it hurt. Bad. I mean it hurt hurt -- really bad. If you're given a choice, check the box that says 'No.' ''