The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won't Tell You About What They've Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War
Written and Narrated By: Kevin Sites
Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
Self-Indulgent Trauma Voyeurism set m’ teeth very much on edge
Kevin Sites is important…
Just ask Kevin Sites…
Okay, lemme take a step back from the abyss…
Here it is: The Things They Cannot Say is indeed important as Sites dares to go where we’re all told we must not go. He asks Veterans about what it was like to kill someone. THIS? Well, it’s vastly important that we all, as a nation with unclean hands, as a nation who’ve allowed a miniscule portion of fellow Americans to do the living, fighting, dying… and the KILLING? We’ve kinda sorta sent them out with shoddy equipment and even shoddier excuses, and then we’ve just kinda sorta expected them to come back to their country, fit in nice and neatly, and we’ve expected them to just pick up where they left off, relationships unchanged and hopefully with the desire and ability to be good and proper consumers in a consumerist society.
We’ve failed our Veterans miserably. But make NO mistake. Just because we’ve been lax, does NOT mean that the only way to get closer to understanding what our Veterans have endured is by listening to this hopelessly feeble flailing of Kevin Sites as he looks to find kindred sufferers (He has his own PTSD), as he judges MOST egregiously.
Pure and unmitigated Hell they’re going through? You betcha, The Things They Cannot Say chronicles that, and thus reviewers have hailed the work as IMPORTANT. Cuz we’ve been deplorable in our lack of care and consideration. BUT Jiminy H. Freaking Cricket, I’d aaaalmost written a review that found this audiobook to be horrifically shallow (Dude! I’ve listened to/read Every. Single. Study/Story you have and I KNOW it’s not enough to write a book) but p’raps the Only Thing Out There to educate a detached audience.
IT’S NOT. Read/Listen to ANYthing by Dr. Edward Tick, and you’ll be sooo much better off, you’ll do sooo much better for our Veterans with his insight, his long experience, his basic common decency which can describe atrocities committed, with no judgment of the individuals. Tick’s words educate, they provide comfort, they provide guidelines and suggestions. They do NOT condemn.
Sites? Oh gosh does he condemn, or what? Even as he posits that he’s been walking in their shoes cuz he’s become a war junkie, doing his much-lauded Solo Journalism (He’s won many an award, is heralded as the grandfather of such journalism, cheers for his Courage and Ethics in covering war and hotspots… blah blah Dude, you’re no Richard Engel blah…). Teeth FIRMLY On Edge…
But let’s get to a smattering of what’s in this audiobook. It starts like this, see. Sites just happened to record a US Marine “murdering” unarmed insurgent prisoners. He’s aghast, and is soooo aghast that when a lone survivor pleads with him for help, and he chooses to walk away, thereby leaving the man to be murdered? Well, he can’t forgive himself. Because to Sites, apparently he truly believes, like pretty much all Americans do, that Humane Wars are possible. No such thing as innocents being harmed, no such thing as poor examples by leadership, no such thing as physical exhaustion, or over-adrenalized actions, or horror of seeing comrades vaporized into bloody mush. Nope, to Sites, rules are rules are rules, and happy wars can be waged.
The book chronicles the experiences of 11 soldiers and Marines, of what they had to do during wartime, of how they’ve managed to live back in the States. IF they’ve managed to live or if they’ve become statistics. Through it all, even as the Veterans courageously offer some of their memories and nightmares, some of their greatest shame, some of their terror, being candid, being open, being brave even tho’ Sites is fairly relentless when he tries to pick at their wounds? Well, Sites rests back on his haunches, a Wounded and Judgmental Observer. He causes great pain, he spews their nightmares everywhere here, throughout each moment of this barely 7-hour audiobook, and he weighs and assesses. He “tries” to come off as neutral, but oy are his words reprehensible.
EsPECially when it comes to his own father. He’s been forever wondering about a photograph his father had of his own time during WWII’s Pacific Theater. His father is by Japanese prisoners, a gun in hand, and Sites knows that his father’s superiors told all to Take No Prisoners, leading Sites to feel terror that his father acted on orders received. It’s only when pacifying words are offered that Sites falls in a relieved heap, thinking that he can go on respecting his own father: His beliefs on what is Moral, what is Just, can continue…
Do NOT give this a Listen. And I’ll get around to reviewing Ed Tick’s audiobooks as those have been game-changers for me. Prior to Tick, I’d honestly believed that the ONLY offering that addressed horrific actions was indeed The Things They Cannot Say, that I’d have to recommend this audiobook with words along the line of Listen to the Horrors of What They Did and How They’re Trying to Live Now Out of That Arena but Do NOT Listen to Sites and His Holier Than Thou Rhetoric.
Noooo, I do NOT have to offer this audiobook at all and can simply say: There’s better out there. This is just one guy exorcising demons and throwing others under the bus at the same time.
Thanks, but no thanks. There are kinder and more compassionate ways to embrace the Soul-Injured than by airing pain and leaving in a lurch…
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