Silent Heroes: A Recon Marine's Vietnam War Experience
By: Rick Greenberg / Narrated By: Patrick Lawlor
Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
Okay, so apPARently the narration didn’t comPLETEly turn me off… as I listened to this… 4 times…!
Seriously, Patrick Lawlor, each time I pressed Play, came blasting onto the scene sounding like a rather breathless game show host. His voices for different characters at tiiiiimes come off as caricatures. And the speed? Nooooo. NO x1, NO x1.25! Nope. Rather, given the many, many battles in this audiobook, I instead had to jack my usual x1.25 listening speed up between x1.5 and an outright x2. This is cuz, see, one does NOT want to hear battles plod along; rather, one wishes to feel one is right there in the firefight, feeling, battling, as frightened as the individuals doing the living, fighting, the dying are.
So there’s that.
But, see, here’s the odd part: I sooo liked this danged book that prepping for Vietnam War Remembrance Day had me listening to it a fourth time. And I liked it yet again. I wouldn’t say I loved this audiobook—even tho’ it’s kinda sorta based on Greenberg’s tour, it very much comes off as fiction, dunno exactly why—but I was thoroughly engaged, and there were some incredibly memorable scenes and situations that had me sick to my stomach with grief, or flat out frustrated and enraged by the violence visited upon the innocent. It’s written that well. The horror? Seeing a good friend practically vaporized and doing everything in your power to get his body, the many pieces, home. The sorrow? On a mission of mercy, a child, just an innocent, is open, sits on your knee, only to be turned into an Example by the Viet Cong of what happens when you play nice with the Americans.
Greeny (Ostensibly Rick Greenberg?) is barely 19 years old when he’s assigned to a Recon group as a radio operator. They’re all supposed to be volunteers but, what the hey, he thinks. He is where he is. He is… in Vietnam. And I guess that’s why it comes off as fiction: Greeny is in EVERY amped and horrific situation there is, and he gets off without so much as a scratch… except for when he doesn’t. No, the true scars he has are left upon the soul of a Once Was A 19-Year Old. And the book opens with Greeny back stateside, dealing with flashbacks, and nightmares, and memories he’d just as soon repress, to no avail. It begins at the end, with him opening up to a wife he’s lashed out at, seeing her pleas for him to share as Pity, until he realizes she’s coming from a state of Love.
There are soooo many happenings in this audiobook, and it makes for a nonstop edge of your seat listen. Cuz Lawlor’s breathless game show host narration? Well, breathless will do ya just fine if you’re describing a battle where you don’t know which way is up, and where you’ve just found your leader… missing the lower half of his body. So I s’pose Patrick Lawlor works out just fine when all is said and done.
And when it IS all said and done? Hmmm, I guess that’s where I had the biggest problem. The book ends up so suddenly, with Greeny still alive and going home, and we never get to see how his wife, who’s been listening to his stories, takes it. And we never get to hear just what happened to some of those other men we’ve come to care a great deal about.
Still, a good and swiftly paced listen (Once you jack up the listening speed…), and you’ll DEFinitely come away with some vivid images… of things nobody should ever have to see, let alone live through.
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