We Were One | Audiobook Reviews

We Were One: Shoulder-to-Shoulder with the Marines Who Took Fallujah

By: Patrick K. O'Donnell / Narrated By: Richard Powers

Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins

Fantastic stories, but oh soooo poorly read. You want a feel for grueling combat? Do READ the book, like, the print version. I’m serious…

I just don’t do it; I do NOT curse in my reviews. If I have to, I do phrases like Good Gosh instead of what I’m dying to say: Good GOD!!!

But I have to Go There for this review of We Were One by seasoned combat writer Patrick K. O’Donnell…

You wanna know what it’s like to be In The Shit?

O’Donnell, who was embedded with Lima Company’s 1st Platoon, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment as a civilian historian, tells us just how it is. This is brutal, this is graphic, this is heartrending. A story mostly of four pairs of friends, this is how the 3/1 lived, fought, died, never left anyone behind. Whether it was carrying a dead friend’s body, or it was carrying a dead friend’s body, wondering where his face had been blown off, never to be found again.

I’ve gotta tell you. Listening to this made me kinda sorta pretty godawfully enraged. When we ask Marines to fight and to die? You’d better BELIEVE they’re gonna do it. So my GOD we’d better give them good reasons. Cuz they pack meaning onto everything. A dead friend, the first casualty? Well, the rest of their efforts are dedicated to him, everything done to honor his memory, to give their grief some shape, some form, some purpose. That young man, shredded to bits by an assault weapon wielded by a Mujahideen in a surprise attack while the men were playing stickball will never be forgotten. All the dead? Each marine carries the weight of every. single. fallen brother. And the 3/1 bears the weight of sooo many fallen brothers.

This is the story of the 3/1 sent to do battle in Fallujah in Iraq (Now why were we in there? WMD? No? Iraq was led by a bad man? Why not North Korea? Just asking…). And boy does it capture what house-to-house fighting was like, what hand-to-hand combat was like, what it’s like to see the enemy using women and children as shields and having to make the right decision in a split second. This puts you In The Shit, my friend, over and over. And over. Cuz they were there, doing it all, with poor equipment, and ridiculously PC orders, fighting a battle in a war they were not allowed to win.

Now on to why you should read this rather than listen to it… Oy, Richard Powers. My GOD whyyyy was HE chosen? The man can’t do action to save his life, and brother, this is ALL action. The man does corny heavy-handed vocal gyrations to distinguish individuals, and brother, this is ALL Marines all the time. I did NOT need to hear his stereotyped accents for a Black Marine, for a Hispanic Marine. And dude, one guy from the South had a hysterical drawl the men loved; where was that?!? Oy Oy Oy. The writing had me jumpy and fearful, anxious for the guys, the narration had me frustrated at best, bored at worst (And when you’re In The Shit, hoping to grenade the HELL outta a room before entering, knowing there’s a hopped up Chechen in there, ready to take as many Americans out before he dies? Bored is a BAD thing).

I just passed my End of Life Doula Certification Exam, and I’ve started the rigorous “We Honor Veterans” education within the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization because I’d dearly love to work with Vietnam Veterans. And while O’Donnell posits that the Iraq War guys are the new Greatest Generation? Well, I happen to think all Warriors are.

So there you go.

You’ve either been In The Shit, or you haven’t.

Those of us who are safe on the sidelines? We just haven’t a clue.