Reading List/Reviews
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Bringing Mulligan Home’: For Veterans a Route-Map; For Their Families a Reasoning
Saturday, March 16, 2013 – 20:09
Huntington News Network
Reviewed by Gary R. Prisk
Reviewed by Gary R. Prisk
Recreating a Marine Company’s past, searching for answers, the son of a combat veteran attempts to recover one of his father’s comrades. ‘Bringing Mulligan Home’ (Public Affairs, 318 pages, $26.99) is a well-crafted father-son quest: What happened to Herman Walter Mulligan, the dead Marine who haunted the life of Sergeant Steve Maharidge?
Sergeant Steve Maharidge did not kill Herman Walter Mulligan. “I did not kill him,” he screamed at a picture mounted above a grinding wheel in his basement redoubt, his post-war foxhole. And yet the guilt played on—they said he killed Mulligan. He could have done something, given more specific orders. Such is the judgment awarded combat infantry fire-team leaders, squad leaders, platoon leaders, et al — a judgment with recurring nightmares.
BOOK REVIEW: ‘George Washington’s Military Genius’: For America’s General, it was Peg Mullen’s Beefsteak House
Thursday, May 31, 2012 – 17:12
Huntington News Network
Reviewed by Gary R. Prisk
Reviewed by Gary R. Prisk
A congressman, a land owner, not in the least showy, a man keen to the whims of economic and political intrigue, General George Washington’s landed will was his reason acting in concert with America’s grand goals—independence and westerly expansion.
Dave R. Palmer’s “George Washington’s Military Genius” (Regnery Publishing, Inc., 254 pages, $27.95) is a masterful synthesis of Washington’s tenacious longevity (The Old Fox) providing a logical trace of the general’s strategies as the Revolutionary War passed from winning America’s independence, to not wanting to lose.
With his army tied to the average speed of a horse, a medley of enlistments, untrained woodsmen and farmers, limited resources, and tactical strategies tied to the waterways that led to the Atlantic, Washington’s natural calmness while sorting the war’s perplexities allowed the general to make immobility to appear responsive.
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Those Who Have Borne the Battle’: For Veterans a Hashing of Persistent Questions
Monday, May 14, 2012 – 17:21
Huntington News Network
Reviewed by Gary R. Prisk
Reviewed by Gary R. Prisk
He’s a trained, skilled general, but he has one weakness. He repeats his tactics—and that’s the way I’m going to get him.—Lieutenant General Bernard L. Montgomery after defeating Rommel’s Africa Korps at Alam Halfa Ridge, in eastern Libya, September 1941, weeks prior to the battle of El Alamein.
As veterans continue to march into America’s past, James Wright’s “Those Who Have Borne the Battle” (Public Affairs, 351 pages, $28.99) is an episodic look at America’s wars, drawing at the need for a military draft to temper the inclinations of politicians to march the young off to war. Repeating his arguments while casting them in shades of this and that, Wright draws on the words of others as if those words might need repeating.
Despite his continual reference to his service as a peacetime Marine, Wright disrupts his arguments and his readers with the continual use of the word despite. For this Army combat veteran Wright’s assertion that only America’s army fails to learn was disheartening.
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Eisenhower in War and Peace’:
For Ike the First Biography That Talks Across the Havoc of War
Reviewed by Gary R. Prisk
Reviewed by Gary R. Prisk
D-Day’s on. Nothing can stop us now
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Little can match the age-old romance of cavalry or the pictures that governed my father’s den. In 1952 Eddie Prisk — ‘The Major’ — enlisted my help, escorted me to his 1950 Chevrolet, handed me a bucket filled with ‘I Like Ike’ buttons, and we were off. Assigned ‘every single’ door in the Sheridan Park Naval Housing neighborhood of Bremerton, Washington, a navy blue-jacket town, my orders were clear.
I was relieved when Ike won the election. The Major stood a little taller. His picture with General Eisenhower and Field Marshal Montgomery was moved to gather more light.