Finding My Platoon Brothers: Vietnam Then and Now
By: Glyn Haynie / Narrated By: Chris Monteiro
Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
Oh gosh, how I WANTED to like this…
But I’m afraid I kinda sorta didn’t. Well, I didn’t DISlike it or anything, it’s just that, with listening to so many audiobooks for Vietnam War Remembrance Day, with having listened to many, many other books re: Vietnam prior to this and through the years, this audiobook, Finding My Platoon Brothers, was fairly even-keel, not gritty at all, and tho’ author Glyn Haynie obviously feels a GREAT deal, it just doesn’t come through with the writing.
I KNOW!!! And I’m sooo sorry as I’d dearly love to throw my full hearted support to each and every Vietnam veteran out there. That Haynie has suffered so much, that he bears scars from his time in Vietnam, all that he saw, the men who came back wounded or who quite simply came back in body bags, is apparent, but it somehow comes off rather flatly.
I dunno, maybe it’s Chris Monteiro’s narration. It seems his voice can’t get rough to save his life. It’s always peppy, even when he’s reciting the names of Haynie’s fallen platoon brothers. That Haynie feels completely responsible for the deaths of several of those men (He was walking Point, and he felt he SHOULD have known bad things were there) rather falls by the way side. It comes off as a simple recitation rather than the desperate attempt to keep the memory of those men alive by repeating their names: I say it, he thinks, you continue to live in one way or another. That should be heartbreaking. It’s not.
And there should also be some soul-stirring scenes as Haynie, after attempting to contact all the men he possibly could of First Platoon, sets up a reunion. Men who haven’t seen each other in decades come together, wives and families get to know each other, interacting at once like old friends. Men who haven’t spoken at all of their time in Vietnam suddenly come around when they see a photo, brought by a platoon brother, and they speak openly and without self-consciousness, of this or that time. And all fall silent when a photo of a fallen brother appears. It could be rather sobering at the most basic level. It’s not. Like I said, Monteiro comes off as a bit light and glib.
And then when Haynie decides to go back to Vietnam to visit places that weigh him down with horrible memories, places of violence, loss, and despair, he goes with a fellow platoon brother and with one of his own sons. THAT should be quite something, right? Uhm, it’s not. Rather, we get bogged down in the details of the trip, what it was like to check in to their hotel, what they ate for dinner (Every single night) and how they ended with ice cream (Again, stated for every single night).
One thing, and this is not Monteiro’s fault, is that Haynie lists details like crazy. When something pointed comes up, you find yourself holding your breath because you think something bad is about to happen; after all, why would something so mundane be mentioned otherwise? Nope, everything goes smoothly with flawless followthrough, and the listener is left wondering why on earth such small points were stated. The point? There is none that I can see other than Haynie has an incredible memory, and he’s letting us know EVERYthing that happened, as it happened, whether it’s relevant to furthering the story or not. So, waaah, I s’pose because my heart kept skipping beats, only to come to rest cuz nothing comes of any of those itty bitty details (As in: Did the hotel lose the reservation? Of course not. Can’t communicate with the Vietnamese driver taking them to places? Nope, not a problem as SOMEone SOMEwhere is always around to make vital connections with the nice man).
So nah, this wasn’t what I was thinking it was going to be, and my disappointment had me woeful that I turned down listening to a different audiobook on going back to Vietnam to make peace (We Are Soldiers Still by famed soldier Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore. I didn’t do that book because I have yet to review that rather good We Were Soldiers Once… and Young. One simply canNOT do the second book when one hasn’t given the first book its due). Most unfortunate.
It turns out that it’s not easy to emotionally bond with a story of laying ghosts to rests when there aren’t any ghosts which come out to haunt. Just a recitation of names of the lost.
And just a plethora plethora plethora of details.
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