A military mission gone horribly wrong, resulting in a bloody struggle against overwhelming odds, is a common enough tale. But Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson (Little, Brown 2007) is a rare example of the genre. Defeat, and escape from complete catastrophe are not the usual subjects for uplift and inspiration. And in any case, I usually detest “uplift and inspiration” as nonsense for the weak-spined needing continual bracing. But this book inspires anyway, perhaps because it is not intended to be “inspirational”. You may read Lone Survivor as an inspiring adventure of a warrior battling against odds and numbers too great, and somehow surviving. But if you read it only as an adventure tale, you will have missed the author’s purpose and his deeper message.
It would be easy to make such a mistake. The first two chapters got off to a very slow and awkward start for me. The tone was excessively conversational. With nary a complete sentence. Just fragments. And lots of slang usage. Disjointed, you understand. And disorganized. Like this. And everything seemingly exaggerated. Marcus’ boasting, and his eulogies to his friends, now dead, which seemed to rise to the level of hagiography.
With the third chapter, the tenor of the book completely changed, and the story became far more focused, tighter and better organized. In this, and the following chapters, Marcus Luttrell describes the gritty path which led to becoming a SEAL. This enthralled me, and illuminated much of the boasting which had gone before, and also the determination which was to follow. The training is always stressful and brutal in any of the military’s voluntary programs, Officer Candidate School (which this reviewer tried unsuccessfully), Airborne, Ranger or Special Forces, or SEALs. Luttrell maintains that SEAL training is the toughest of all, and reading his description, I’m quite prepared to believe him. Every branch of every service convinces itself that they are an elite, better and tougher than all the others, believing the same thing. But the SEALs seem to have the bragging rights. This hundred and twenty pages, by itself would be an excellent lesson for anyone who has never done military service, what it means to become a warrior, and why they do it. ...
Read the whole thing .
Contributed by Bill Faith on August 15, 2007 at 12:03 AM in , , , , |
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I agree, what an awesome read!!! Highly recommended...