James R. McDonough

Careful and respectful memoir of a West Point graduate and Lt. with the 173rd airborne infantry. McDonough had gone to Vietnam in 1970. This was near the end of the US involvement in the war.
This is the second time I've read this book. When I first started reading about Vietnam I wanted to find out what the US was doing there aside from reading about it from historical accounts which I knew to be slanted politically and often unreliable factually. Memoirs became the easiest way to find out what soldiers, marines, airman and sailors were occupied with in their own words. I have learned so much from Vietnam memoirs that some have been the most beautiful reflections I have ever read. War is war and it is never an easy topic to cover but books such as this make the sacrifices offered by thousands upon thousands of people somewhat understandable given the heartbreaking circumstances they were put in.
This book goes over the basic elements of military leadership. Care for his soldiers, making tough decisions which others might not agree with, dealing with ranking officers above him who may be incompetent, trying to make sense of a war policy that may not be able to achieve political victory even when a tactical loss is never suffered.
Probably not the most exciting book on the war or even the most profoundly felt one either. It is nevertheless a sincere work by Brooklyn man born of an Irish father and Italian mother and who was so proud of his country that he did not shrink from serving in a war that his newlywed wife must have agonized through. The book is written (1985) to pay homage to the men he served with who never received the rewards of a grateful nation once they returned home. McDonough does not seem to be religious or else deliberately removes those type of recollections from this book.… (meer)

A very long and detailed description of the battle of Walerloo with a focus on several primary characters.

I rarely read fictionalized historical accounts, but a friend suggested it and I was not disappointed. The descriptions provided of this vicious and brutally wasteful type of warfare is enough to make anyone wonder how men could not only survive such horror, but partake freely, to the limits of endurance and beyond. I experienced combat as a door gunner on a Marine helicopter where tremendous effort was expended to quickly rescue the wounded, but in this tale of misery tens of thousands of men and horses were left to die in the mud, trampled by those still alive, others left at the side of the road with no pain killers, no clean water and very little, if any, care. Amputations were performed without anesthetic.

I'm sure James did his homework as the details are exacting and the conversations and thoughts of the characters revealing. For the type of novel this is, I felt James did an excellent job.… (meer)

The Defense of Hill 781 adapts the technique of a scenario and action report of The Defence of Duffer's Drift (1905) to modern armored warfare. We follow LTC A. Tack Always through failure and success during six missions of armored warfare. I found some of the mistakes made too trivial and unworthy of a LTC especially regarding task force composition. The bigger flaw, however, is that the era of big tank battles is probably over. Just as the Defence of Duffer's Drift did not prepare the British for the trench horrors of WWI, The Defense of Hill 781 was of little use in the conflicts fought by the US since its publication in 1993. A tank battle that stretches over multiple days where the two forces are resupplied in relatively open terrain isn't very likely to occur and does not capture the fluidity of armored or cavalry warfare. An OK read.… (meer)