Chuck Pfarrer

This is a well-balanced view of the last days Che Guevara. This fictional story is well-written and compelling. The main character, Paul Hoyle weaves through historical figures as the action does not stop. Characters are well written and I cared about what happened to them. It's a big book, but I could not stop listening.

After I finished the book I researched what was true and what was not. Reality was sadder. Strangely, Chuck's fictional book helped me understand the politics and the background of what was factual.… (mer)

This is a well written book by a raised Catholic man who lost his faith during Hurricane Camille when his family lost their home and he abandoned his faith in Christianity. He regained his faith in a supreme being when while stationed in Beirut, Lebanon he was hit by a mortar round but went unscathed although the munition went off within feet of him.
The best part of the book for me was his version of events during the Marine barracks bombing. Pfarrer was working there with his SEAL team in a hopeless “peacekeeping” situation. He doesn’t blame Reagan but it was Reagan who was President then. From all other accounts Marine brass also were asleep at the wheel. He mentions only Marine Commandant P.X. Kelly as being negligent as anybody else. Pfarrer laments that this Hezbollah attack should never have been allowed to have happened in the first place. 241 US personnel died tragically that day.
Pfarrer also documents his time capturing the Achille Lauro terrorists who were green lit by the PLO. This is also covered in the Gormly memoir Combat Swimmer: Memoirs of a Navy Seal. Pfarrer went on to become a screenwriter and so this book has craftsmanship to it. Warrior Soul also has power as a poetic vehicle when he describes his use of submarine lockout trunks and swimming alone next to a mechanical wonder like a US submarine.
While in training cycles Pfarrer says that it is now official Navy doctrine that during the Vietnam War the NVA were actually trying to eliminate the VC by absurd operations (i.e. Tet Offensive). These insane operations were known to the US at the time of the war but has always been assumed by other books that I’ve read as being the doctrine of the NVA and VC in collaboration. Pfaffer says that among special operations’ core understandings the VC effort was always futile, and the VC were always sacrificed to the whims of the supply chains and massing of the NVA troops. This was a new thing I read here and nowhere else. The reason this would be true, Pfarrer says, was that communist doctrine demands that all power and decision making happen at the party level and not among military strategists.
This book has minimal gung-ho bravado which adds to its literary credibility, in my eyes.
B&W Photos, Glossary, three chapters, intended for military acquainted readers but most names & some places have been changed to protect the innocent.… (mer)