Stand-up, anecdotal, typical reminiscences of one of the Corps' all-time tough guys. Putting his career in historical perspective, and writing with fellow retired Marine Norton, Hamblen—a career Marine enlisted man—relates his adventures during and after the Korean War and in Vietnam. As a Maine farm boy, the author knew rough living, so it wasn't surprising that he was more prepared for the hellish experience of boot camp than were many of his peers. As a PFC, Hamblen was sent to Korea as a replacement. The conflict had stagnated into trench warfare, but the author made his mark as a sniper and in other ways. His memoirs of Korea are detailed, and, here, he gives what's arguably the most underpublicized war in American history some varnish. Several years later, looking for new challenges, Hamblen joined the elite force recon—the Marine Corps equivalent of the SEALs and the Green Berets—but, in 1962, he parachuted on to some high-tension power lines and lost his left leg. How Hamblen responded to this accident makes his book's title crystal clear: Recovering, he not only remained in the service but was among four Marines who were accepted into SOG (the supersecret Vietnam War Studies and Observation Group). SOG teams typically operated behind enemy lines all over Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Laos, North Vietnam, even China), kidnapping NVA officers, conducting sabotage raids, and gathering intelligence. Unfortunately, this portion of the author's memoir cries out for far greater detail: Hamblen glosses over Vietnam in 60 pages. A mere hint of a fascinating life. But Hamblen refuses to name the names of guys who back-stabbed him, and his recounting lacks the smell of cordite, the sound of guns, the cries of the dying and wounded.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-345-38481-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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