Customer Reviews

Generation Kill

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have a friend serving in Afghanistan as part of the Canadian contingent of NATO. He was describing to me the thrill he felt to be on the front-lines fighting. As an admitted pacifist and having never served in the military, it is hard for me to understand how someone can feel "glee" in an all out firefight. My friend referred me to "Generation Kill", as a way to explain how he feels.

First the mechanics, Evan Wright is an excellent journalist and writer and the lucidity of his prose reflects his talents. The book is literally a page-turner and Wright does a great job developing each of the characters as an embedded journalist in a Recon unit leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The parallel with Lt. Fick and my friend are uncanny.

It's still difficult for me to comprehend why soldiers do what they do, but Evan Wright's book has helped me bridge that gap. Soldiers are ultimately human, conflicted and flawed. Compared to Mark Bowden's "Black Hawk Down", I felt Wright did a better job showing more raw human emotion, to explain what it means to be a soldier.

I'm writing this review as I'm watching the HBO series that bears the same name as the book. I read the book last year and watching the series brings me back to this great book, a worthwhile read for anybody wanting to know more about what it means to be a soldier.

I'm glad to read a story about the Marines that is uncensored - with the high expectations of the American people set by the greatest generation that ever lived I found it impossible to live up to Steven Spielberg's version of "Band of Brothers". Being a Marine in 1st Recon Bn, Evan Wright's interpretation of our daily lives and experiences are extremely accurate. While reading the book almost a year later I had forgotten some of the details of my own experiences that Wright brought back to life. It was almost like I was living through the war again. Simply put, if you want to know what it is like to be a Marine during this campaign there is no better book at this time. It seems to me that Evan Wright was influenced by nothing but the experiences and the personalities that he absorbed during the war. No one is over exaggerated.

Comparisons are made with this book and Michael Herr's "Dispatches" for the Iraq War generation. I think you need to look at these books as bookends of a long arc of excellent journalism on the "American soldier on the ground" experience.

Look, forget the analysis as all I know is any military unit that bans any country music and calls it "the Special Olympics of music" is one I want to get to know. This book takes you inside that unit and is right up there with Anthony Swofford's "Jarhead" at the top of the heap in books on the modern military.

I was a Recon Marine (Bravo Co. 3rd. Plt.) in the first Gulf War and Somalia. I look at this book from the distance of time, for my own experience, and with a history degree to reflect upon. The Marines have not changed much, nor has the command structure. There were good officers and enlisted men, and bad ones. The bad ones being deadly by the nature of the work. Yet, when you go to war you are stuck with what you have. First and foremost Wright illustrates that maxim of war.

Secondly, Wright, if he follows up on the consequences, shows the dillema of a journalist being too close to the war. He is embedded with his subjects and the story himself. For me, he did an outstanding job of staying objective about the chaos and slaughter of war. As well, he shows the American Fighting Man for all the things that he is. Some do not want to hear it but many Marines do look forward to war and that does not change after the first round goes off. But Wright does, in a way, become one of the boys. However, he could not have gotten this story if he had not, Recon Marines tend to not like reporters because they usually get portrayed as ninja like Rambos, which is unreal.

Of course, Wright made a few errors on military details, which an editor should have caught. Reporters of military actions should know more about the military: the structure, rank, equipment and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. There are at least a few remarks in the book for which some Marines may unfortunately regret. I don't think journalists should edit themselves but greater care is given to other confidential sources.

Wright got his boots dirty and saw a piece of the military that America has chosen not to look at. This book is true to the American Marine who has to go to war with less than perfect conditions and make decisions that few other humans have to consider.

Semper Fi! (The God Father always had a rhaspy voice.)

I was with Third Recon in Vietnam. This book is the only real description I have read about the full Recon experience. This is war. Some valor Some horror Today I will buy ten copies of this book and pass them out to people. If you want to know me, read this book that is what I will tell people. I was in Vietnam for a year doing this. How were any of us supposed to have survived? For once our story gets out almost forty years after my time in Vietnam. I will be a Recon ranger till the day I die. Somebody wrote the truth in this book. God help the next generation. We might have to hunt and fight the some of these middle easteran religious fanatics on our own land.

moe

This book is great!! Wright's writing style has a great flow and it made me want to search down the Rolling Stones articles to find out more info on these interesting people. The only down fall is that after the killer HBO mini series came out he did a afterword for the re release of the book. So I would look for the copy with the movie cover.

I watch the television series before, but no hesitation this book was wonderfull and one of the best a read even if I knew the hole story before reading it. But in this book you learn more about the guys in First Recon and there's more detail so I just loved it !

I chose Generation Kill after watching the series based on Evan Wrights book. I found that the series was very true to the book and made for yet another excellent account of the triumphs and failures of the modern warrior in a conflict marred by uncertainty and poor planning by it's architects. Read in concert with other books like Paul Rieckoff's "Chasing Ghosts" and Joshua Key's "A Deserters Tale" it gives perspective and clarity to those who would otherwise have opinions based solely on rhetoric from both sides of the political divide.

This book is everything I was hopping for, first hand accounts of the front lines as marines fight their way into central Iraq. The writer make you feel like you are ridding along in the humvee with these marines, giving you an uncensored account of what is happening.

War is not a pretty thing and those guys had to preformed aggressively to be able to stay alive, making quick life and death decisions that not always turned out the results they were expecting, but that is the raw version of battle and in my eyes these guys are heroes.

I am a 12-year veteran of the Marine Corps and was in Beirut with two different infantry Battalions. I am not a fan of the Iraq war and I despise George Bush. However I am still very connected to the Marine Corps and follow their activities. This book is a must have for anyone interested in the Marine Corps or the Iraq war. Its an excellent first hand account of raw combat. For the big picture buy "The March Up".