Sancho
05-27-2012, 12:23 PM
The MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) for an Infantry Soldier in the U.S. Army is - 11B, also known as: Eleven Bravo, ‘Lem Bravo, ‘Lem Bush Beater,’Lem Bullet Stopper, and so on. Intel troops (Thirty-five Foxtrots) call them Knuckle Draggers. Artillery troops (Thirteen Foxtrots) call them Crunchies. Just about everybody else knows them simply as Grunts. They are the point at the tip of the spear. They are also the lowliest of the low in the vast military hierarchy, and a group of people who are used and abused on a regular basis by – pretty much everybody. As the saying goes, “Shot at and missed, Shi*t at and hit.” In a nutshell, that is what this book is about.
The novel is set during an NFL game on Thanksgiving Day between the Dallas Cowboys and the Chicago Bears at Texas Stadium. The story is told as a limited third-person narrative from the perspective of Specialist Billy Lynn, a grunt. Specialist Lynn, Sergeant Dime, and the rest of the men of their Infantry Squad are on a two-week Victory Tour after they were made instantly famous by an embedded Fox News Team who filmed them fighting heroically on Al-Ansakar Canal in Iraq. They are known to the nation as The Bravos, which is the result of a bit of a snafu by the Fox News people when they called them Bravo Squad on the news cast. They are actually 1st Squad, 2nd Platoon, Bravo Company (and presumably of such-and-such Battalion of so-and-so Brigade of whatsits Division). At any rate it’s just one of the many examples in the book of people hearing what they want to hear, or what sounds good, or what makes for good copy – fashion over substance. What most of the people do not realize is that the Bravos are only back home for two weeks, after which the Army is sending back to Iraq to finish their tour of duty. Yet everybody seems to adore them, even if they also see only what they want to see, and worse, they seem to all use the Bravos for their own agenda. This includes family and friends, clergy, the entire Cowboys organization, a movie producer, a peacenik outfit, to name but a few.
Here’s Billy on his new fame and his evolving impressions of his fellow Americans:
No one spits, no one calls him baby-killer. On the contrary, people could not be more supportive or kindlier disposed, yet Billy finds these encounters weird and frightening all the same. There’s something harsh in his fellow Americans, avid, ecstatic, a burning that comes of the deepest need. That’s his sense of it, they all need something from him, this pack of half-rich lawyers, dentists, soccer moms, and corporate VPs, they’re all gnashing for a piece of a barely grown grunt making $14,800 a year. For these adult, affluent people he is mere petty cash in their personal accounting, yet they lose it when they enter his personal space. They tremble. They breathe in fitful, stinky huffs.
Billy has a reflective personality, which sort of unusual for a grunt, but it keeps the story going. Also unusual for a grunt is the level of political engagement of the Bravos. Much of the book is a scorching commentary on U.S. Foreign Policy and on the state of The States in general. I have to tell you here that I’ve spent a large chunk of my adult life in and around the American Military, and I’m afraid I just haven’t met all that many grunts who are as politically aware as the men of Bravo. I’m not saying that the average Joe (11B) is of subpar intelligence. On the contrary, if my time with the Army has taught me anything, it’s not to confuse intelligence with education. I found the Joes in general to have a higher than average social intelligence as well as a strong mechanical intelligence. Abstract thought may not be their forté, but hey, Theoretical Physicists are weird. Am I right? At any rate, grunts tend to be practical and pragmatic above all else. The Joes may not be able to name the sitting V.P. of the United States, but they can sure tell you which MRE has the Peanut Brittle Bar and which one has the package of Skittles. And when you’re sitting in a foxhole in the middle of the night, with a bunch of well-armed and pissed-off dudes all around you, a Snickers bar can do a lot more for your piece of mind than Joe Biden can.
Another compelling character is Sergeant David Dime, the leader of the squad. Sgt Dime is a self-professed liberal who reads, on average, four books a week. That, like Billy’s reflectiveness, is an unusual trait for an Army Sergeant, but what is not unusual for a good Army Sergeant is leadership ability. Dime is a superb leader. He leads from the front not the rear, and he seems to know what his men are thinking before they think it. Here are the boys being escorted to a posh buffet at Texas Stadium before the game:
They step off the escalator onto something called the “Blue Star Level,” and Josh leads them to an elevator marked RESTRICTED – STADIUM CLUB ONLY. He swipes his card through the little access gizmo and everyone boards. Two well-dressed couples join them for the ride up, they are old enough to be any Bravo’s parents but money shaves off a good ten years. No one acknowledges anyone else. The doors close, concentrating the women’s perfume, a shrill citral musk like lemon trees in heat. The elevator has just clunked into gear when necessity rumbles Billy’s bowels, precursing a monstrous anal belch. He clenches with all his might and hangs on. An almost imperceptible tremor runs through the Bravos; several more are stiffening, shifting their feet, opening and closing their fists. Oh God, please God, not here, not now. They grit their teeth and stare straight ahead. What is it about close confines that so reliably excites the fighting man’s lower GI tract?
Dime speaks with the steel of a man born to lead. “Gentleman.” He pauses. “Do not even think about it.”
All in all, I liked this book a lot, and I have no reservations about recommending it to anybody here. So, go ahead, give it a read. Take a chance - Custer did.
The novel is set during an NFL game on Thanksgiving Day between the Dallas Cowboys and the Chicago Bears at Texas Stadium. The story is told as a limited third-person narrative from the perspective of Specialist Billy Lynn, a grunt. Specialist Lynn, Sergeant Dime, and the rest of the men of their Infantry Squad are on a two-week Victory Tour after they were made instantly famous by an embedded Fox News Team who filmed them fighting heroically on Al-Ansakar Canal in Iraq. They are known to the nation as The Bravos, which is the result of a bit of a snafu by the Fox News people when they called them Bravo Squad on the news cast. They are actually 1st Squad, 2nd Platoon, Bravo Company (and presumably of such-and-such Battalion of so-and-so Brigade of whatsits Division). At any rate it’s just one of the many examples in the book of people hearing what they want to hear, or what sounds good, or what makes for good copy – fashion over substance. What most of the people do not realize is that the Bravos are only back home for two weeks, after which the Army is sending back to Iraq to finish their tour of duty. Yet everybody seems to adore them, even if they also see only what they want to see, and worse, they seem to all use the Bravos for their own agenda. This includes family and friends, clergy, the entire Cowboys organization, a movie producer, a peacenik outfit, to name but a few.
Here’s Billy on his new fame and his evolving impressions of his fellow Americans:
No one spits, no one calls him baby-killer. On the contrary, people could not be more supportive or kindlier disposed, yet Billy finds these encounters weird and frightening all the same. There’s something harsh in his fellow Americans, avid, ecstatic, a burning that comes of the deepest need. That’s his sense of it, they all need something from him, this pack of half-rich lawyers, dentists, soccer moms, and corporate VPs, they’re all gnashing for a piece of a barely grown grunt making $14,800 a year. For these adult, affluent people he is mere petty cash in their personal accounting, yet they lose it when they enter his personal space. They tremble. They breathe in fitful, stinky huffs.
Billy has a reflective personality, which sort of unusual for a grunt, but it keeps the story going. Also unusual for a grunt is the level of political engagement of the Bravos. Much of the book is a scorching commentary on U.S. Foreign Policy and on the state of The States in general. I have to tell you here that I’ve spent a large chunk of my adult life in and around the American Military, and I’m afraid I just haven’t met all that many grunts who are as politically aware as the men of Bravo. I’m not saying that the average Joe (11B) is of subpar intelligence. On the contrary, if my time with the Army has taught me anything, it’s not to confuse intelligence with education. I found the Joes in general to have a higher than average social intelligence as well as a strong mechanical intelligence. Abstract thought may not be their forté, but hey, Theoretical Physicists are weird. Am I right? At any rate, grunts tend to be practical and pragmatic above all else. The Joes may not be able to name the sitting V.P. of the United States, but they can sure tell you which MRE has the Peanut Brittle Bar and which one has the package of Skittles. And when you’re sitting in a foxhole in the middle of the night, with a bunch of well-armed and pissed-off dudes all around you, a Snickers bar can do a lot more for your piece of mind than Joe Biden can.
Another compelling character is Sergeant David Dime, the leader of the squad. Sgt Dime is a self-professed liberal who reads, on average, four books a week. That, like Billy’s reflectiveness, is an unusual trait for an Army Sergeant, but what is not unusual for a good Army Sergeant is leadership ability. Dime is a superb leader. He leads from the front not the rear, and he seems to know what his men are thinking before they think it. Here are the boys being escorted to a posh buffet at Texas Stadium before the game:
They step off the escalator onto something called the “Blue Star Level,” and Josh leads them to an elevator marked RESTRICTED – STADIUM CLUB ONLY. He swipes his card through the little access gizmo and everyone boards. Two well-dressed couples join them for the ride up, they are old enough to be any Bravo’s parents but money shaves off a good ten years. No one acknowledges anyone else. The doors close, concentrating the women’s perfume, a shrill citral musk like lemon trees in heat. The elevator has just clunked into gear when necessity rumbles Billy’s bowels, precursing a monstrous anal belch. He clenches with all his might and hangs on. An almost imperceptible tremor runs through the Bravos; several more are stiffening, shifting their feet, opening and closing their fists. Oh God, please God, not here, not now. They grit their teeth and stare straight ahead. What is it about close confines that so reliably excites the fighting man’s lower GI tract?
Dime speaks with the steel of a man born to lead. “Gentleman.” He pauses. “Do not even think about it.”
All in all, I liked this book a lot, and I have no reservations about recommending it to anybody here. So, go ahead, give it a read. Take a chance - Custer did.