3 comments about Down South: One Tour in Vietnam.

1. This is the single best book I have read yet of the Marine experience in Viet Nam. Hardwick does an outstanding job of communicating the episodes of sheer terror that punctuated the more routine aspects of his tour. Uncommon valor is described as unremarkable, a refreshing change from the current political diatribe.



2. This is a must read for all individuals. For those of us who did not serve in Viet Nam, this book puts you on the front line. Very well written, I couldn't put the book down.



3. I have read a lot of Vietnam war paperbacks. Hardwick did a good job for his first book, and I generally enjoyed the read. However, there are many of these books in the book stores. This is the first one that I have read which takes the point of view of a forward observer for arty. I learned some new perspectives from his point of view. Generally in all these books, America puts its young men (and women) at risk. We need to be careful if these policies are just.
   
   Hardwick came to hate the war. He did some pretty stupid things in the war. One was targeting the farmer with bombs. The farmer and his water buffalo may have been in restricted territory, but that didn't give him the right to drop a bomb on him. Hardwick came to realize the hopelessness of this war. An OK read of the Vietnam War.

2 comments about Winning My Wings: A Woman Airforce Service Pilot in World War II.

1. Marion has written an excellent insight into the experience of flying. As a fellow pilot, I greatly enjoyed reading about the experiences of Marion and the other women pilots during WWII. The story is filled with joy and tragedy splashed across her story of becoming a military pilot. Just as important as the flying, she relates how she came to marry her husband of over 50 years, Ned Hodgson. This is a wonderful book that anyone interested in flying and the romance of the air should read.



2. This was a wonderful book. I belong to a book club and I like to choose books about women. I was visiting the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington several months ago and came across this book. It looked so interesting that I decided to choose it for my book club to read. Everyone LOVED the book and we plan to read more books about the WASPs. You will thoroughly enjoy this book --- I love how a lot of the book is written through letters that Marion Stegeman Hodgson actually wrote to her mother and a man friend, whom she eventually married. The only thing I wish is that the book was LONGER!!! It was one of those books that you can't wait to pick up again!! ENJOY!!

3 comments about No Picnic on Mount Kenya: A Daring Escape, A Perilous Climb.

1. An entertaining story. It's hard to imagine escaping from an interment camp simply to climb a mountain, planning to return to camp afterwards! And it is even harder to imagine planning such a climb with the sparse resources available.



2. An extremely well-written book, especially considering the author was not writing in his native language. A crazy idea about climbing a mountain by 3 novices; crazier still under the circumstances of escaping from a POW camp with the intention of returning. I bought the book after having read the story in National Geographic "Adventure" of 2 experienced & well-outfitted mountaineers who re-traced their steps. The original is better!



3. The best thing about the book is that it is believable. With that being said, it's just not real compelling.

5 comments about Red Baron.

1. Great book! Great photos and an amazing life told by The Red Baron himself (translated into English, of course!).



2. This is a fantastic autobiography, because Von Richthofen was an amazing person. Very real (he devotes as much attention to his cousin and him climbing the spire of the local church, as he does to some of his aerial battles), full of good-natured humor and a zest for life. I particularly loved how the early fighter pilots were known as "Knights of the Sky", and kept to the chivalric code, including following downed pilots to ensure that they were all right.



3. I wonder if some of the fatherland stuff was added by one of the Kaiser's goons. This guy is a wild boar hunting nutcase. A great book if you wonder why Germany keeps starting wars.



4. I saw a biography about the Red Baron on tv and thought that he had an exciting life so I wanted to read his book that way I could read about it straight from the person that lived these events. The book is fairly short and you could easily read through it very fast without any trouble. He writes about his childhood,entering the cavalry and the war, then how he became a piolet and the rest of the book talks about his many victories as the best fighter piolet. There are a bunch of black and white pictures of the Baron, other German aces and a few planes. There is also a list of all his victims including the plane type, date, times and piolets and there is also a list of the planes he flew and which victims he shot down in which plane.
   
   I liked the book because it's an easy read, it has some funny parts and exciting moments and in a way you get a feel for the man himself. However there are some things I didn't like such as he doesn't go into much detail through the book it's like he just breezes through some of his fights in a few sentences or so which kind of makes it anti climatic. One example is how his brother just shows up out of nowhere and is fighting along side him and not much is said about him. I'm also sure that there was some propaganda thrown in since this book was released during the war. I bet he would have wrote a far better book after the war had he lived but as we all know he was shot down.
   
   This isn't the book to read if you want to know everything about the Red Baron but if you want to read what he experienced first hand then get this autobiography because it's a good read and it's coming straight from the horses mouth that.



5. "During my whole life, I have not found a happier hunting ground than that in the course of the Somme River." That famous sentence begins the chapter on the Battle of the Somme in Manfred Von Richtofen's autobiography, The Red Baron, first published in 1917 and available in a reprint by Pen & Sword with additional new material. In this edition, Norman Franks summarizes Richtofen's air battles and gives us a fine summary of the life of Richtofen. N. H. Hauprich presents a list of the aircraft flown by Richtofen.
   
   That this work is of historical value cannot be denied. It is, after all, the autobiography of one of the truly great flying aces of World War I. That it is a fascinating portrayal of a gentleman officer in a world long gone cannot be denied. That it is a very entertaining read cannot be denied.
   
   And yet, to the modern reader there is something uncomfortable in Richtofen's describing combat in such a way as to read like the adventure books for boys so popular in his time: "I advised him to fly around the smoke cloud. Holck did not intend to do this. On the contrary. The greater the danger, the more the thing attracted him. Therefore straight through! I enjoyed it too to be together with such a daring fellow."
   
   Richtofen died young, of course, and he died in a fight in the Valley of the Somme, his happy hunting ground. We are not likely to see his type again, and that may not be a bad thing.
   
   --David Lang at Advance Book Reviews

3 comments about Days and Nights of Love and War.

1. This book is for anyone immersed in the human condition, waging a war internally and silently stuggling externally. Galeano's collection of thoughts and essays and stories stirs the emotions of the reader and forces them to consider the entirety of the Latin American canon of literature as a formidable one. It encompasses genres such as autobiography, biography, testimony, prose, and short story. This is poetry of the soul for the soul, and shouldn't be limited to those obscure literature classes dealing with oppression



2. The personal testimony of one of Latin America's foremost contemporary political writers, Eduardo Galeano's Days And Nights Of Love And War blends memoir journaling with an eloquent history to record the lives and struggles of the Latin American people under two decades of unimaginable violence and extreme repression. Galeano combines straight-forward reportage with personal vignettes, interviews, travelogues, and folklore with an impressive and engaging emotional enrichment that includes anger, irony, sadness, and humor. Days And Nights Of Love And War is very highly recommended for students of late 20th century Latin American political history and culture.



3. is as Galeano define "Days and Nights of Love and War". The author open the memory box and let escape the pain and the love, the sadness and the joy. That is not only his box, it's my box too, all latinoamericans' box. So, when we open it we live.

5 comments about The Gift of Valor: A War Story.

1. I know it's only January but this book is fantastic - an extremely well-written account of a fascinating story of a true American hero. Strongly recommended.



2. This was an incredible book about an incredible young man and his sacfrice for our freedom. As a USMC veteran of the first GUlf War I was interested in reading what these guys are dealing with in Iraq. As a father I was so caught up in what his family went through and how they dealt with the decisions they had to make. This book will be on the top of my list of favorite books.



3. This is also a non-fiction book about the trials of becoming a Marine, then a leader of men, and then a victim of the tribulations of that position. I have been reading the Wall Street Journal for over 50 years, and have been ever salutory of the reporters that have produced stories for that instituion----and this is NO exception! This reporter dug up the very varied backgrounds of these Marines, and brought them into focus of a VERY controversial time in the U.S.----and the M.D.'s and nurses that played their roles in the very lives of these fighting men and women----that are on the the frontline--------so that we do not have to be.



4. A quick read that will help the family of this fallen Marine heal their pain. Would be a good basis for a course or discussion or analyis of how wishful thinking and hope by well meaning people falls short when they lose sight of the realities of the situation and circumstances. None of which takes anything away from the valient heart of Medal of Honor recipient Corporal Jason Dunham, USMC.



5. This is an excellent book that tells the story of cpl. Dunham and Lima company in Iraq. It has a smooth introduction that breaks off into an ambush with intense second by second battle recounts and then takes a turn onto the more emotional path of Dunham's and his squads wounded tales and their path home through many hospitals. This book will emotionally drain you, but has lots of comedy relief to bring you back to life and has a ver spiritual ending. I am very glad I picked up this book at the library when I saw it sitting on a shelf where it did not belong. This book should be a bestseller and be placed on many book club reading lists. Why has this book went unnoticed? It is too good to be placed in the shadows.

5 comments about Vipers in the Storm: Diary of a Gulf War Fighter Pilot.

1. Rosenkranz provides plenty of details about exactly what a combat pilot does in a very busy F-16 cockpit, and he also details some of the interesting personal history that led him into this career. Unfortunately, he can't resist frequently venturing off into naive political and historical analyses of the wider questions of the war and the threat Iraq posed to the world, reprinting many speech excerpts from President H.W. Bush as justification for what he and his fellow service men and women were doing, extending them, in the end, to justify the current war in Iraq without ever considering the problems incurred by pursuing policy with force in the Middle East. At times the book reads like an instrument of the Republican National Committee campaign to reelect George W. Bush, or at the very least an apologist for the mistakes of both Bush administrations in the Middle East.



2. Rosenkranz is no Hemingway, but he does a good job of telling the entire story of his experience in Desert Storm. One of the things this book has that others about similar experiences lack is the emphasis on the human aspects of war (the moral issues that come from killing people, the toll that being away from one's family takes.) I immensely enjoyed the fact that this book shows that you don't have to be gung-ho all the time to be a good military man, and it in fact has given me more respect for those that serve our country because of the way it relates that one's primary drive to go to war should stem from a strong sense of duty rather than a sense of thrill.



3. This is a brilliant book.
   For anyone interested in military aviation or modern warfare I can only recommend reading Keith Rosenkrantz's excellent account of his part in the first Gulf War.
   This book is well written, easy to read, detailed and personal in a way many of these books fail to be.
   As a pilot myself (commercial) and having always dreamed of flying such aviation exotica as the F-16, this book is the key for us mere mortals to step into the world of the modern fighter pilot. It gives you a taste of the discipline, courage and commitment required.
   For all this and much more you should definitely check out Vipers in the Storm.
   
   When you're finished reading it drop Rosey a line, like I did to thank him for sharing his experiences. His email address is at the back of the book and he was gracious enough to reply to my message too. An officer and a gentleman not to mention hero.



4. Boy, I loved this book. As someone who's NOT a pilot and NOT in the military, this book provided a TON of insight into the day-to-day life of a combat pilot.
   
   One way to see what it's like to be a fighter pilot is to buy a combat flight sim for your PC. Sometimes I wonder how real these are. However, when reading Rosey's account, I can say, they're pretty real!
   
   So many times I've forgone all tasks other than countering a missile threat. So many times I've almost flown into the ground at night. Rosey did these, too, and I can't imagine how it feels to really see a SAM guiding on you, coming out of the clouds.
   
   In addition to a lot of things flight sim fans have gone through, Rosey adds a lot of real life perspective. I laughed when he described how F-16 pilots bring 'piddle packs' on long flights and he described how he went about not making a mess with them. I laughed again when he described bringing a granola bar with him on flights, for the ride home after a bombing run. I've often gotten up while playing a flight sim and gone to the fridge for a snack.
   
   For flight sim fans, this book should be REQUIRED READING. It gives a great perspective on how missions are planned and carried out. I was surprised by a lot of the real-life aspects of combat flight and was equally surprised by some of the aspects that read the same way an 'after-action' report from a flight sim mission reads. I'm still blown away by a couple of the mission accounts when Rosey went 'downtown'.



5. i bought this book as a gift for my husband who is an f18 pilot himself, we r from kuwait so a gulf war book is a must have for us.. my husband owns a bigggg library with all sort of war and military books.. but this one was sooo special he couldnt put it down in fact i was a little jealous of the book! he loved it soo much u wont believe it.. in fact i gave it a quick scan myself and i enjoyed the story too. when i asked my husband what he thought of the book because im writing for amazon, he just said that its the best book he ever read and its a very good account of what happened during the war to liberate our country!

4 comments about Life After Deployment: Military families share reunion stories and advice.

1. In my opinion this book is a must have for todays military families facing the deployments they are facing. There are many stories to help you realize that you are not alone, how others have dealt with the uncertainty of deployment and reunion. It is also filled with tips and links to help you along your journey.
   Reading this book will not only help you to understand what todays families face it also gives encouragement in knowing that not only are others facing the same things you are but that you can do this just as many other families have done in the past and will continue to do in the future.



2. "Life After Deployment" is author Karen Pavlicin's sequel to her award-winning book "Surviving Deployment". Mrs. Pavlicin has written another important book for the military family and their friends and relatives.
   
   The writer is a wife of a Marine with multiple deployments, and this book deals with the many problems faced by wives and families when their servicemen return from deployment. These are not theoretical problems - these are the problems faced by too many families today: dealing with the children - re-establishing parental authority - PTSD - intimacy issues...plus how to best handle combat deaths and injuries...this book is filled with practical solutions Mrs. Pavlicin has elicited from the thousands of wives and families who have - and are - facing these issues.
   
   With so few Americans volunteering to serve in the military (approx 0.07 % of the population), there is a deplorable lack of data and professional assistance for these families; most therapists have no clue how to deal with the anger of a child whose father died in Iraq or came home missing a limb from an IED attack in Afghanistan - this book is the first step to filling that void.
   
   This book should be given to every spouse as his or her serviceman steps off the airplane back onto US tarmac. Well-written and thorough, the issues raised here are important ones that these families need to recognize and face, and Mrs. Pavlicin - the widow of a multiple-deployed Marine - does a first-rate job taking care of her now -over-extended military family. High Recommended !!



3. this book was helpful to me, as far as what to expect when my soldier comes home, especially b/c it has others's stories so its not just one persons point of view. I do not have children yet so some parts of this book did not affect me. For those who have children, it gives you lots of info on how kids of all ages react to the return.



4. I really enjoyed this book it was very helpful for me. My husband just got home from a year long tour and he is thinking of reading it now. I would tell any one that is going through a deployment to read this book i feel that it would help out with how to deal with it.

5 comments about Flyboys: A True Story of Courage.

1. What could have been an excellent piece of historical research is fatally flawed by an unflinching and blatant diatribe against American culture and action going back to the first settlers in the East.
   
   Under the pretext of explaining why the Japanese resented American "meddling" in the Pacific, Bradley clumsily brings up a litany of (in his mind) evil American policies and acts that gradually become the dominant theme of at least his first few chapters. His graphic depiction of the Rape of Nanking is followed by a diatribe against the Americans' treatment of their aboriginals ( Indians, Native Americans, or whatever term floats your boat this week), and Bradley's intent of establishing moral equivalence is quite clear. As this pattern goes on, and on, and on, one begins to harbor a secret suspicion that this anti-American propaganda -- for there is no other appropriate word for his slick and dishonest portrayal -- was indeed the real raison d'etre behind this book.
   
   No historian worthy of the name would seriously argue that Japan's megalomaniacal conquer-and-slaughter policies were merely a natural response to America's westward expansion, but that is exactly what Bradley tries to do. He is certainly entitled to his opinion, no matter how bizarre, but he is not entitled to play fast and loose with historical fact, and claiming that the US conquered the Philippines and Hawaii at bayonet point in the same way as the Japanese conquered Nanking is not just a stretch -- it's a lie.
   
   Bradley's carefully-calculated weaving of every available piece of anti-American propaganda into the fabric of this book is especially distressing because his research and portrayal of the actual facts surrounding the Chichi Jima incident is otherwise excellent. His analysis of Japanese history and cultural change is succinct and, occasionally, perceptive. Clearly, there are either huge gaps in his knowledge of these areas or, more likely, he has picked and chosen the parts he likes and ignored others. He could have done us all a service by mentioning the Japanese plans for conqest and empire, including specifically everything up to and including Hawaii -- plans that went back almost to the turn of the century and were certainly no secret among the Japanese military or any Japanese citizen that read books and newspapers. He may not be comfortable with direct research into Japanese-language material, but there is at least one recent book in English on the subject of Japan's plans for Hawaii (Hawaii Under the Rising Sun, by John J. Stephan). Japan's militaristic culture and birth rate drove her imperial dreams since the population of tiny Japan, believe it or not, was almost two-thirds that of the whole United States.
   
   For those with a firm grounding in history that can stomach Bradley's distortions, this book can be useful and definitely add to one's knowledge. Personally, I got a lot out of this book, but I deeply resent the deliberate distortions and untruths, and this is one book I would only recommend to other readers with a giant, bold warning label: "Inside these covers lies much good data, but with a large helping of politically correct B.S."
   
   Unfortunately, I suspect this book will get wide readership among students and academics since the leftist history professors will simply love the message in this screed.



2. "Fly Boys" an incredible botch. The book promises to tell of American fliers shot down over Japanese-held Chichi Jima. Not far from Iwo Jima, scores of Japanese on Chichi could only watch impotent as a huge American force utterly devastated their nearby comrades, opening the door for fiery assaults against the Japanese home islands. The Japanese proved far better at amassing forces than maintaining them, effectively stranding troops across the Pacific. (Imperial doctrine called for troops to "provision" themselves - by stealing from local inhabitants or by subsisting on insects and flora.) As a result, islands like Chichi and Guadalcanal became home to thousands of starving Japanese troops barely able to bring the fight to the enemy. Desperation exacerbates the sort of hysteria already endemic to every level of the Japanese military when the war began, and the "Fly Boys" suffer their captors' wrath.
   
   Some reviews complain about Bradely's use of "moral equivalence" (Bradley compares Imperial brutalities with those of an expansionist America from the post-Civil War era through the war in the Philippines) to anti-American effect. But those problems mask the book's larger flaw: that it really isn't about anything at all. What starts out a story of American prisoners, goes back to the dawn of Japanese-American relations, the birth of modern Japan and the road to war. Then there is the rise of American airpower, the battles of Coral Sea and Midway, and finally the landings at Iwo Jima and the firebombing of Japan. These historic events don't simply form a backdrop to the story, but become the story, grabbing as much of Bradley's focus as the plight of his downed airmen. Bradley never integrates these threads into a common historic theme, and never explains what they're all doing in the same book. In a book about nothing in particular, everything is irrelevant.
   
   For his research, or maybe because of it, Bradley loses his way almost immediately. Instead of learning about the downed Chichi fliers, Bradley begins with the historical roots of the Pacific war...and then works backward. We see how Commodore Perry "opened" the closed yet sophisticated and highly regimented Japanese society to the outside world. Japan's honor system - epitomized by Bushido - was blameless for the barbarities of WWII. Instead, the modern combat experience of the Japanese demonstrates both compliance with that code and extraordinarily humane (Russians captured in the 1907 war received treatment little worse than that for guests). Bradley contrasts this with the aforementioned brutality of Americans in war.
   
   Getting to WWII, Bradley barely touches on his subjects - instead rehashing more milestones already familiar to anybody with the least basic grasp of military history (or with basic cable). From the court martial of Billy Mitchell to Doolittle's raid on Tokyo; from the Battle of Midway to the fire-bombing of the home islands of the Empire - Bradley gives some marginal insight, but again little bearing on the downed American fliers who become extras in their own story. Bradley not only forgets whom he's writing about, but never clarifies whose perspective. (Bradley compares the cruelties perpetrated by Americans in giving some shape to those committed by the Imperial Japanese, but did the Japanese know of "Wounded Knee" during the Bataan March? Is Bradley is arguing for moral relativism, or merely demonstrating that the Japanese had done so?)
   
   When it's clear that Bradley is writing from his own perspective, the result is a soft concoction of history and euphemism, with little hard fact. This is especially true of the title - nothing in Bradley's book gets to the meat of what it means to be one of the "Fly Boys", though he uses the term throughout. In that vein, "fly boys" may be an image, like the one used in "The Right Stuff" in which pilots were the lone shining knights of the nuclear powered space age. But Wolfe fleshed out his metaphors without being conquered by them (by the end of "Stuff", Wolfe's America has matured beyond its need for such archaic heroes like the Mercury 7 - the era of the lone, shining and supersonic knight had come to an end). Bradley instead uses "Flyboys" to refer to fliers in general - ignoring much distinction between the fliers of different services. Instead, Bradley has "flyboys" as FDR's one-word answer in the desperate early days of the war (was FDR such a fan of naval aviation?), without saying much about how FDR turned that answer into the force that won the war. Other glossed over points - the relative industrial might of America and Japan, and the exhaustion faced by Japan in China even before hostilities began with America. Bradley "shows" much, yet teaches little.
   
   As to the problem of moral-equivalence touched upon by unfavorable reviewers, "Flyboys" engages in a sort of thematic shell-game. In turns, he eschews then embraces the sentimentality of American pluck over Imperial aggression. In a work that reveals the contrasting imagery that each side used for the other (uniformly hostile, of course), Bradley freely engages in imagery and sentimentality of his own - of spirit warriors and Samurai, of those betrayed the warrior's honor code, and those who've inherited it. Bradley charts Japan's ironic metamorphosis from honorable warrior to barbaric marauder, fleshing out the contrasting extremes for each. Yet having plumbed American atrocities, reverses direction for Americans without explanation, and makes them the heirs of the Bushido - a characterization (much like "Fly Boy") qualified or even defined. "Flyboys" is supposed to be an unflinching look at WWII as we haven't seen before, yet its subtitle, offering a story of "courage" suggests he's as much reliant on heroic and unreal imagery as those who written before him.



3. I had seen the book but never made the connection to the author of The Flags of our Fathers. I decided to pick it up and give it a read after chatting with an older gentleman about the war. He said it was good.
   
   I had never hear of Chichi Jima. A bypassed island which was overshadowed by the Battle of Iwo Jima. Chichi Jima was a communications center for the Japaneses. American pilots "flyboys" were assigned to try and take out the radio stations so they could not inform Japan that bombers were on the way. Bradley tells the story of what happened to the flyboys that were shot down. Their names were Dick Woellhof, Floyd Hall, Marve Mershon, Jimmy Dye, Grady York, Warren Earl Vaughn, the future President George HW Bush, Glenn Frazier, Bill Connell and an unnamed B-24 crewman. Only George Bush and Bill Connell would survive.
   
   
   What I found interesting is the way Bradley tries to explain the two cultures and the history leading up to the war. The history mentioned ranges from the Samurai, the restoration of the Mejii, Perry and the rise of the Militaristic powers. Bradley made an attempt to explain the pseudo-Samurai culture that arose and the actions of the so called "Spirit Warriors" committed. Actions which the real Samurai would have never done.
   
   Bradley makes no attempt to "white wash" the history and the wars that were fought. Bradeley tells of barbarous acts committed by Japan, the US, and even China throughout the years. Actions which at the time people thought they were the right thing to do and with future generations can question.
   
   The clash of the two cultures does come into play. To the Japanese soldier the act of surrender was a shameful horrendous act. It basically made you the lowest of the low. Treatment of such men was horrible especially with the brutal thugs that ran the army.
   
   War is about dehumanizing the enemy. It makes it easier to kill them. The US even practiced it with songs such as "I am going to slap that dirty little Jap" and the use of a parade float which showed scurrying yellow rats being bombed.
   
   Hollywood likes to paint a noble John Wayneish view of the war and yet our boys could be a brutal as the enemy. As mentioned by flyboys who strafed Japanese soldiers and sailors. Bradley doesn't try to paint an evil image of the US soldier. Simply that war can make decent people do bad things in war.
   
   I knew prisoners were executed as I have seen the famous photo of the Australian soldier about to be beheaded. What I did not know was the acts cannibalism that went on.
   
   Such acts happened to the flyboys that crashed and were captured on Chichi Jima. Such acts suggested the War Department thought it was not a good idea to tell the families of the flyboys as they were told they were MIA. It's kind of sad hearing the mothers went to their graves not knowing what happened to their sons. Yet, would you want to tell a mother that her son was beheaded and partially eaten?
   
   This story only made it to light because of Bill Doran felt the flyboys stories needed to be told and he contacted the author and told him about them. Bill Doran was present at the war crimes trials for the leaders and soldiers involved with the killings on Chichi Jima.
   
   Bradley talked to endless people and even Japanese soldiers who were on the island an interacted with the flyboys. The cannibalistic commands were executed in 1947. The stories told about the flyboys facing their deaths is indeed courageous and noble. Depending on your viewpoints you can take it as true or simply soldiers making them honorable rather then what happened.
   
   Bradley also visited the islands of Iwo Jima and Chichi Jima with President Bush. He asked the author if he knew anything about what happened to the two men he lost when he was shot down that day. President Bush stayed with his plane longer then he should have and even tried to turn it so they could get out safer. They didn't make it even though it was thought two parachutes were seen.
   
   President Bush said to this day he still thinks of them.
   
   Overall this is a great book to read and I highly recommend it.



4. My dad loves true military stories, and I got this for him for Christmas. The previous Christmas I had gotten him "Flags of our fathers." He loved it. My dad is a good reader, but he never reads for hours on end putting other stuff aside just to do so. But, this book had him reading for the better part of his Christmas break. He also said it was somewhat sad, but not overly.



5. The book was a little too boardly based. It covers US and Japanese relations from the 1850s to the end of WWII. But it was wonderfully engaging and any history/WWII reader will greatly enjoy it.

5 comments about God Willing: My Wild Ride with the New Iraqi Army.

1. I've had an opportunity to read an excerpt (Chapter 15) and I am looking forward to reading the whole book. I've already pre-ordered two and thinking of ordering more to give as gifts. Captain Navarro is a newcomer to the writing world with a maturity beyond his years. His writing "voice" is a unique one - a mixture of a dry sense of humor and colorful, first-hand accounts of his experiences. While in the Islamic world, the phrase 'God willing' invokes a particular meaning, clearly, in the Christian mindset, God has a purpose and a plan for Captain Navarro. God, of course, was able to bring him back safely and turn the Captain's horrific experiences into something good. May God continue to bless him and enlarge his territory in his new endeavors.



2. The "New" Iraqi Army - quite a concept as told from the fiercely intelligent and jaw dropping perspective of Marine Captain Eric Navarro. As you read Navarro's superbly drawn account of his mission - attempting to transform a rag-tag battalion of hapless and hopeless Iraqis into a cohesive fighting force - you can't help but wonder whether the NIA are really the "New" Marxists (as in Groucho, not Karl.)
   
   Far from the Pentagon and superdelegates, Navarro lays down a brutally honest assessment of how questionable logistics and barriers of culture and language intrude on our neat and convenient notions of democratization and nation-building - where even the basic civics of defecation becomes a test of wills. It would be brilliant satire if not for the deadly serious circumstances. Told by a true patriot, God Willing is an important testament to the real work of Iraq.
   
   Semper Fidelis and Insha Allah.



3. I just finished reading Capt. Navarro's novel about his first tour in Iraq. I couldn't put the book down. Eric's writing is clear, detailed and eloquent. The shame of it is that our military and political leaders never learned any lessons from my father's generations Iraq, "Vietnam" and our failures there. You can't grow a democracy and train a new army if the countries populace has no idea what freedom of choice is about. You need to read this book to have any understanding of what our soldiers are dealing with over there. We need more from Eric. We need our political leaders to listen to young people like Eric.



4. The idea was that we would send over some of our best and brightest military personnel to serve as advisors to train the New Iraqui Army. Now the politicians and generals in Washington who cooked up this operation would have us believe that in the not too distant future the New Iraqui Army would assume increasing responsibility for the security of their homeland. Capt. Eric Navarro, USMCR knows better. After spending eight long months in Iraq as one of those advisors he felt compelled to write a book about his experiences there. "God Willing: My Wild Ride with the New Iraqui Army" chronicles Navarro's sometimes harrowing and almost always frustrating time there. "God Willing" calls into question the wisdom of our mission in Iraq and documents the challenges our military personnel face each and every day to try to make it all work. As Capt. Navarro points out time and time again it is almost always a case of "two steps forward and one step back".
   In order to highlight the kinds of obstacles that Capt. Navarro and his compadres in the Advisor Support Team (a/k/a The Drifters) were forced to deal with during their tour of duty in Iraq I will quote liberally from a paragraph on page 212 of "God Willing" which seemed to neatly sum it all up: "Too many pieces were being thrown into the puzzle and none of them fit neatly together, no matter how much the President or the generals wanted them to. American contractors, Iraqui civilians, Iraqui solders--all were mixed together with marines, soldiers and sailors from a multitude of different units. No one person was in charge of it all. We were living with a complete breakdown of command and control in a combat environment." Get the picture? And when you discover that soldiers in the New Iraqui Army are allowed to take one weeks vacation each month to spend time with their families you will begin to empathize with the intense frustration of Capt. Navarro and the others who have had to put their own lives on hold and travel half way around the world in order to try to stabilize the situation in Iraq. In addition, Navarro points to a number of other serious logistical problems that impede real progress in Iraq.
   As someone who has never served in the military and therefore is not familiar with military nomenclature I found that some of the terminology in "God Willing" was foreign to me. For some readers this may prove to be a bit of an obstacle to fully comprehending the issues being discussed here. Those with military experience will probably glean more from "God Willing" than the rest of us. Having said that, it is extremely important that the rest of us get up to speed on these matters. The citizenry at large cannot question policies that they really do not understand. In "God Willing: My Wild Ride with the New Iraqui Army" Capt. Eric Navarro succeeds in arming his readers with badly needed information. "God Willing" has certainly changed the way I view events in Iraq. This is a timely and well-written book that deserves your attention. Highly recommended!



5. After hearing Capt. Navarro discuss his book at length, I feel the previous reviewers have missed the author's main thrust. Navarro is emphatic that on his first tour in Iraq the situation was dismal to beyond hope, partly because of the Iraqi soldiers' fatalistic attitude (i.e., "if God wills it") and their seeming refusal to take any responsibility for their own well being. However, he says that by the time he returned for a second tour, things had turned around more than he ever would have expected and that this improvement was largely a result of a change in U.S. policy. Where the U.S previously had been installing their own hand-picked leaders in Iraqi villages, they instead began working with the village chieftans, who already occupied positions of authority. This strategy produced much better results, and Navarro ended the book appearing optimistic about the future of the U.S. in Iraq. However, he was adamant that the U.S. must not leave Iraq, because to do so would create a power vacuum in the area that Iran would quickly exploit.