Brave Men

By: Ernie Pyle / Narrated By: Paul Boehmer

Length: 21 hrs and 24 mins

As a reviewer of audiobooks? Do NOT listen to this—READ it instead, oh doooo read it!

I’m not sure, but I think I first heard about Ernie Pyle whilst folding laundry at work, the A&E Channel on TV as background noise. Or not, cuz it was a bio of the man, and Ernie Pyle is synonymous with War. THUS piquing my unDYing interest. And over footage of the Normandy beaches after they’d been stormed was the complete and utter wreckage left once “victory” had been secured. Landing craft, trucks, obliterated. And bodies, so many bodies. And a single dog, running after men, turning away, nosing at bodies, looking for his masters, now missing, now dead. The voiceover was Pyle’s words, cataloguing loss, and even depicting the loss for the dog.

The words were stirring; they were mesmerizing. So much so that I hit Half Price Books up for a bio on the man. So when I saw Brave Men on the New Release page, narrated by Paul Boehmer? Oh how imMEDiately I chucked a credit at it!

And then I started listening to Boehmer >ahem< ruin it for me. Oooooh, my dear friend, nooooo!

It’s like this, see. Hmm, Paul Boehmer blah blah SAG-AFTRA blah. I’d recently listened to him as part of a full cast of narrators for a charming historical rom-com piece that actually hit a few desperately somber notes to wind up as a supremely satisfying listen. But it should be noted that in that one, he played all the jaunty characters. Even the non-jaunty had a spring in their step. I shoulda known, I shoulda guessed, I shoulda run out to Half Price Books to see if they had a copy of Brave Men on hand.

It’s a compilation of Ernie Pyle’s columns/essays that he did when he embedded with danged near every type of service member stationed overseas and fighting in Europe in 1943-44. His real love was the lowly GI, but he interviewed EVERYone: Crews on dive bombers, sailors, Ack-Ack gunner crews, medics, engineers, light bomber crews, the supply line, even the brass hats. And with each introduction he makes to the reading public back home in the states, he shares the names and even addresses of the men he’s met and is hanging out with (Can you imagine addresses being published nowadays: My wife’s alone, everyone, come trash our house and steal everything in sight!). There’s dry wit, ribald humor (Tho’ it’s somewhat cleaned up for public consumption, one is quite able to gather from context just what-all was censored for audiences).

There are the moving pieces I remember; there’s the one that stuck with me from that A&E Special about the Captain up in the freezing mountains, much-loved by all for his level-head, his care and compassion, the respectful manner he treated his men, his ability to make it known that he’d ask only what he himself would be willing to do. Mules are whipped going up the mountain, carrying water, rations, ammo; mules stumble coming down the mountain, carrying the dead. The dead are lined up on the ground, left alone cuz you just can’t get bogged down in that when you have to go on to live and fight. -Until- the mules come down, their burdens of the dead, and one is the Captain. His corpse now on the ground, he’s not left alone: Each man comes by to stare, to shout, to cry, to say goodbye. It’s so very, VERY moving, and I’m getting a lump in my throat just thinking about it. Pyle was able to write like that, bring the grit and grime, the death and horror that the fighting men lived with, tell it to those at home who were only worried about sugar rations.

Pyle has a true way with his style of writing…

…And it’s RUINED by Boehmer! That trip down the mountains? Oh soooo jaunty! Those men shouting at the sky? “Goddammit” has never sounded so much like Aw Shucks! Yes, Pyle had a sense of humor, and his pieces are littered with the wry observation here, the witty remark there. But Boehmer even makes those annoying as his delivery is soooo over the top for the humorous elements. Jeeeeeez! Where’s another great American narrator? Where’s Mark Bramhall, was he busy or something? Couldn’t he get away so he could deliver this with somberness, with reflection, with the voice that can become thick with tears thus enSURing I’d be crying m’ danged eyes out? Bramhall can do humor too! So why get Boehmer who is known for his breezy delivery, for his frolicsome way with humor?

So lemme just sum this up for you: You’ll NOT find Brave Men in audiobook form ANYWHERE now; it was pulled, and I don’t know why. And I’m not gonna tell you: You GOTTA find this somewhere, you’ll be sobbing like a baby, do it do it do it, find it find it find it! Nooooo, my friend. Clocking in at over 21 hours of jovial narration, this left me wanting to hang m’self. Now I do like Paul Boehmer, for the most part, but THIS audiobook, aaaaallll those men who fought and died in WWII DESERVE THE BEST when it comes to telling their tales.

And this is not it.

DO read this, read a column/essay, mull it over, cry a while, or laugh (EsPECially when Jimmy Doolittle is interviewed!), just honor those who left jobs all over the country and went to war and wound up slogging through mud, clearing fields of the dead so that foxholes could be dug, woke up frozen to the cold, hard ground. Ernie Pyle honored them with his writing; the audiobook does NOT. But you CAN, by finding a copy of this and reading it.

His was quite the style, quite the way with words, with communing with his fellow man. And it’s soooo worth the time to read…