Loon: A Marine Story

Loon: A Marine Story by Jack McLean, 256 pages.

McLean was unable to decide how to go about getting into a college that interested him after a difficult (academically) couple of years at the prestigious Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. His classmates, including George W. Bush, were going on to Ivy League colleges and universities, or other top-tier schools, but McLean had left himself with no clear path. As his lack of a plan began to bother his mother, she sarcastically suggested he just join the military in order to avoid the draft. He ended up joining the Marines, unaware that in 1966 and 1967 Marines were going to Vietnam in large numbers. McLean ended up in norther part of South Vietnam, by the Laotian border. He recounts the heavy fighting in his area shortly after he arrived, including one instance when his Captain called in an airstrike on their own position when they had been overrun. McLean stayed in Vietnam until the summer of 1968 and in that fall became the first Vietnam vet to enter Harvard.
An interesting book. I was happy to read it and save it from the nonfiction weed.

Redeployment by Phil Klay

Redeployment by Phil Klay, 291 pages.

An excellent selection of short stories about U. S. soldiers and Marines, some serving in Iraq and some attempting to return to civilian life.
Each story in this collection is wonderful in its own way.
An added plus is the excellent list of books in the acknowledgements section Everything about this collection is very strongly recommended.
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Ebook.

Fives and Twenty-Fives

Fives and Twenty-Fives by Michael Pitre, 380 pages.

Lt Donovan is aware that the troops under his command know that he

is not the leader that Gunnery Sgt Stout was, that he’s not even the leader that Sgt Michelle Gomez is, but they don't necessarily blame him for all that happens. All of the characters seem willing to share the blame and to take the burden back home with them.  They’re not a group who are happy with the way things went on their tour of duty in Iraq. A Marine platoon tasked with road repair and route clearance, under Donovan they fill six hundred and forty-seven potholes. Each one, all six hundred and forty-seven have been re-seeded  with bombs or an improvised explosive devices by insurgents. Route clearance involved driving in a small armed convoy to the pothole site, finding and rendering harmless the bomb or bombs, and filling and repaving the pothole. All while avoiding hidden bombs, ambushes, secondary attacks and secondary explosives. 

Corporal Zahn, whom Donovan is meeting up with as the book opens, after their war is over, is still suffering from undiagnosed PTSD resulting from bomb blasts and related trauma. They’re both in New Orleans, Donovan in grad school, and Zahn visiting some of his friends from high school

Doc Pleasant,  Hospitalman Third Class Lester Pleasant is from a small town in Cajun country in Louisiana, and is nearby.

Dodge, or Kateb, the son of a Baathist, translator for the unit, trying to finish his graduate thesis on Huckleberry Finn

The book's title refers to the potential blast zones the Marines are reminded repeatedly to keep clear, five meters from the armored vehicle, twenty-five meters from their more lightly armored selves outside the vehicle.
Pitre's first book has interesting characters with compelling stories, and his writing is nuanced, tight, and respectful of the characters. It was a joy to read.

It's only because I recently read Phil Klay’s Redeployment that I’m not proclaiming this the best book I've read about the Iraq war. If you're going to read two books about the Iraqi war, this should be one of them. If you're only going to read one, go for this one if you prefer novels to short stories, or just go for Redeployment.

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Redeployment

Redeployment / Phil Klay 291 pgs.

A collection of short stories loosely tied together by the second Iraq War.  This book takes you to a place most of us have not been.  How does it feel when you make your first kill?  How does it feel when you kill a child?  How does it feel when you go home after being at war and being under stress for months and months?  These stories give you a little bit on insight based on a variety of characters in different roles during the war.  There are times when I was reading this that it was painful.  There were times when you just feel so strongly for the character in the story and there are times when you dislike the characters and the situations they find themselves in.  In the end, I'm not exactly sure what insights I gained but I feel like reading this book was worthwhile.

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Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-1945 by Max Hastings

Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-1945 by Max Hastings, 615 pages.

I found this book a slow but very satisfying read. As you might expect, there was a lot going on in the world in 1944 and 1945, as the fates of millions and millions of  people were being decided in the Pacific region. As with other Hastings books, I was surprised to find events and occurrences from the war that I had not encountered before. There is an excellent section in this book on British General William Slim and the Imphal campaign. Imphal and the battle of Kohima were among those major events in this global conflict that had largely escaped my attention before I read Hastings' account. Hastings does a very credible job arguing against many revisionist historians who feel that the Japanese have been overly demonized in many accounts.He argues that those who feel that the atomic bombs were somehow an unnecessary or an overly callous choice in ending the war are ignoring the facts surrounding the end of the war, given that many in the Japanese military wanted to fight on after Nagasaki and Hiroshima and that there was a coup attempted to prevent surrender.  While racism permeated the attitudes and actions of soldiers and leaders on all sides of conflict, Hastings clearly shows that the ruthlessness and the  inhumanity on an appalling scale were factors of the war from its beginning, before the Americans or Europeans joined the battle. Throughout the book, Hastings digs into the written records of and  interviews with Chinese, Indian, Burmese and Japanese combatants and civilians much more frequently than many other western historians.
Hastings is also the author of several other engaging books on the war, including the excellent Armageddon : the Battle for Germany, 1944-45  and Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945. He is among the best writers on twentieth century military history.
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Downloadable Audio.

Norwegian by Night / Derek B. Miller 292 pp.

What do you call an 82-year-old slightly demented East Coast retired Jewish watch repairman who squares off against a gang of Kosovar organized crime thugs in Oslo to save a child he barely knows?  Quixotic.  Indeed, Sheldon 'Donny' Horowitz is a true knight errant, and one of the best characters I've met in awhile.  To be fair, he may or may not have been a Marine sniper in Korea, which explains his facility with rifles, but he's still fighting long odds. 

Sheldon comes to Oslo somewhat begrudgingly to be with his granddaughter and is having difficulty adjusting when violence explodes in an upstairs apartment.  Believing that he failed his son Saul, dead years ago in Vietnam, Sheldon is determined to protect the little boy left behind in the fallout.  With the help of many long conversations with his old friend Bill (also long dead, but that doesn't stop him from showing up and giving his opinion), Sheldon hatches a plan and sees it through. Full of musings about Jewish American patriotism, atonement, religion, and strangely suspenseful, too.

Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes

Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes, Fiction, 598 pages. Check our catalog.
Downloadable Audio.
When we first meet Marine Second Lieutenant Waino Mellas, new to the bush, and fresh from the world, he is struggling to remember just some of the 212 names of the men in Bravo Company. All the Marines, black kids and white kids, look the same to him. He came to Vietnam from Princeton, thinking that if he was running for congress someday, it would be good to do so as a former combat Marine. As the book is winding down, sixty some days and 590 some pages later, congress never crosses his mind, but he does know everyone's name, all of the splibs and the chucks (it's in the book, read it), the living and the dead. He's just Mellas now, or Mel, and he has lived a whole life with them on this one small patch of South Vietnam, on the two hills; Matterhorn and Helicopter hill, near the Laotian border, coming to understand something about the difficulties of race relations, something about love and hatred, and something about the nature of good and evil in this beautiful, sad book. I read this one, but we also have it on downloadable audio and on CD. Really a wonderful book, but for those who don't get the significance of the subtitle, there is a bunch of shooting, killing, and dying-so be warned.-Patrick

Dog Company Six

Dog Company Six/Edwin Howard Simmons 303 pages.

I chose this to because the subject is historical fiction about the U.S. Marines written by a Marine. - Susie

I'm staying with my boys

I'm staying with my boys: the heroic life of Sgt. John Basilone, UUMC 332 pg.

I chose this to learn more about Sgt. Basilone's life - Susie

The Battle History of the U.S. Marines

The battle history of the U.S. marines: a fellowship of valor/Joseph Alexander with Don Horan and Norman C. Stahl 398 pages

This was very interesting if a bit bulky to carry. - Susie