I have almost finished reading House to House, which covers a small part of the battle of Faluja. It's just over 300 pages long, and I started it around this time last night. Talk about impossible to put down. It's absolutely gripping from page 1. Bellavia is one hell of an author.
Here's how gripping it is. I had to go into town today, so I took the bus. I read the book on the bus. Although the bus was quite cool, I was sweating from the action. It is that intense. I never trained for MOUT, which is what this book is all about, but there are many infantry concepts or ideas or experiences that are common across all terrain - like suffering and hardship and ungodly physical and mental strains. This book takes those ideas and smacks you in the face with them, and smacks with gusto.
It's not a deeply introspective and thoughtful book like Jarhead, and compared to the Australian way of describing "recent" wars, such as In Good Company, it's blisteringly confronting and the action is quite over the top. The yanks do extreme violence like no one else, and it's just so unrelenting.
Screw blogging. I'm going to finish the book.
2 comments:
Agreed on the book BOAB.
Bought it a few months ago and didn't put it down.
Really, really interesting. Couple of times touching too, esp. when describing combat fatalities....
That's on my list of things I Must Read, but if you're looking for another remarkable book, you can't go past On Call In Hell by Rich Jadick.That's another near unputdownable (is that a word?) book.
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