War Memoirs

For some reason I love war memoirs. It all started with a Vietnam War class I took a couple years ago when we read Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, and I've been hooked ever since, so I thought I'd make a list of my favorites;

My current favorite is House to House: An Epic Memoir of War by Staff Sergeant David Bellavia with John Bruning. It was so intense. It's about the second Battle of Fallujah and the major house to house (hence the name) urban fighting it took to take back the city. If you are thinking about trying out this genre for the first time you might not want to start here- build up to it- I think it is the most intense book I've ever read. 

Another favorite is One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer by Nathaniel Fick, I like this one because it shows how difficult it is to be a leader in combat- you can tell he cared about his people and didn't want to take stupid unnecessary risks with their lives- he seems to have taken his responsibility to his men very seriously. I've noticed that most the books I've been reading are about Iraq- I'm not sure why but there seems to be more memoirs about Iraq than Afghanistan- so I like that Fick talks a little bit about their tour in Afghanistan before focusing on Iraq.

Roughneck Nine-One: The Extraordinary Story of a Special Forces A-Team at War by Frank Antenori and Hans Halberstadt was a fun read- it is very Hoorah for lack of a better word- after reading a few books by men who never really expected to be deployed and therefore were pretty bitter about it (ie- The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell- not that I blame John Crawford for being bitter)- it was actually nice to read a book by someone who enjoyed being in the military. And while the men in this book wanted to fight and talked about "piling them up" (them being enemy dead) the book still acknowledges that war is not pleasant and that it has its costs.

I just finished reading I Love my Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army by Kayla Williams, this is the first time I've read a war memoir by a female soldier- and I really liked it. Sometimes the writing is rough- I couldn't figure out if that was just her style but it seemed like there were a lot of fragment sentences that I found distracting but I think she was trying to make a point- I don't usually notice stuff like this- but it was hard to ignore. Overall, I think she does a really good job showing how difficult it is for women in the military and how hard it is to know how to act when everything they did was judged by the men around them and always seemed to come back to their sexuality. I also like her discussion of her frustration of bad female leaders and her argument (only briefly mentioned) that the Army is basically a communist institution.

I just started reading My War: Killing Time in Iraq by Colby Buzzell.  It's still to early to make a recommendation- but so far- so good. I really like how blunt he is even if it doesn't always make him likable although it often makes the book really funny...