An aggressive, unapologetic account of one man’s brutal war.
Combat tales from a tank commander–turned-sniper during the Iraq War.
During Sgt. 1st Class Dillard “Crazy Jay” Johnson’s distinguished, 21-year Army career—four Purple Hearts and numerous medals for valor, including the Silver Star—he did a tour in Bosnia and Iraq, where he saw only a bit of action in Desert Storm. Despite having a child at home afflicted with cerebral palsy, he volunteered to return to Iraq in 2003. Commanding a Bradley Fighting Vehicle christened “Carnivore,” Johnson led the invasion, taking part in the war’s first engagement, cutting a large and bloody swath through the country. After contracting radiation cancer from the depleted uranium rounds fired by his tank and after treatment at Walter Reed (where he was given a 1 in 4 chance to live), he returned to Iraq yet again. This time, with the ground war over, Johnson’s mission focused on the insurgency and killing the guerrillas placing the deadly IEDs. He was credited with 121 confirmed kills with his sniper rifle. With the aid of Tarr, Johnson fills in a complete picture of combat: the sleeplessness, the sandstorms, the constant fear of attack; the chaos that leads to killing cows and sheep accidentally and the absurd necessity of killing a lion on purpose; the difficulty of extracting a hunting knife from the ribs of a stabbed insurgent; the mundane lesson learned from packing soap too close to the coffee; the delicate protocol between a sniper and his spotter; the heartbreak at a fellow soldier’s death; the terror induced by incoming fire and the destruction inflicted by outgoing. Military buffs will appreciate the author’s frequent appraisals and comparisons of various tanks, rifles, knives and other accouterments of battle. Most readers will be impressed with Johnson’s undoubted courage and sacrifice, even as they are put off by his memoir’s tone, which too often uncomfortably erases the line between bluffness and boorishness, pride and braggadocio.
An aggressive, unapologetic account of one man’s brutal war.Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-228841-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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