Well, this is embarrassing. I began posting reviews of Len Levinson’s (writing as Gordon Davis) magnificent WWII series The Sergeant in chronological order after starting out of sequence with my first couple reviews back on The Two-Fisted Blog…and somehow, I skipped right over this book despite posting an Amazon review back on May 9 of 2017. So here it is, finally:
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Master Sergeant Mahoney and Corporal Cranepool have just returned from their attachment to a French unit liberating Paris. It was supposed to be cushy duty, but only the end of it was cushy–in the arms of some French floozies in a fancy hotel.
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The Sergeant and his sidekick are back just in time to meet Charlie Company’s new C.O. Captain Anderson is a young, inexperienced officer, but one of the good ones (a rare combo, in my day). They’re also just in time for one of Patton’s “recon in force” missions, to push across the Moselle and keep the pressure on the Germans.
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This installment in the series could launch a character study on the sort of men who populate the officer corps of an army. Whether a commander wants to make a name for himself, or simply doesn’t want a sub-par evaluation, it is their troops who are used like cannon fodder to enhance or maintain their egos.
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Mahoney himself has some moments in this book in which hedemonstrates more humanity than is normal for him. (Also, in this one we are introduced to PFC Butsko. I can’t help but notice the similarities between him and the platoon sergeant of The RatBastards–also named Butsko.)
I’m not sure when I’ll complete reviews for the final three books in the series…but I plan to. Meanwhile, you can read the remaining reviews of this series so far here and here.
You mean we shouldn’t have revamped the American Armed Forces based on what Hollywood taught us?
The problem is that we allow fiction to be “proofs” of reality. I can’t tell you how many times when I’ve talked about women being physically weaker than men and that this is why they shouldn’t be in combat, I get the response, “But just look at Brianne of Tarth” (from “Game of Thrones”) or even the fictionalized accounts of Joan of Arc, whose combat role has been highly exaggerated.
Fiction can be a great vehicle to change how we think, and this has happened when it comes to equalizing men and women through the preponderance of female superheroes and “strong” women in film. We have been brainwashed into actually believing women can be just like men in the physical arena.
This is simply not the case, and it’s dangerous to think otherwise.
The USA has not had to face an enemy with comparable technology in a shooting war since WWII. The next time it does, it will probably suffer tactical catastrophes worse than any battle since the Little Bighorn. The combat arms are being packed with (and led by) women, foreigners, and sexual deviants, standards are plummeting, and the field grade officers who command them are fickle opportunists much more competent at backstabbing political games than at war fighting.
Nobody with the ability to prevent this scenario made any effort to do so. The public at large had been pre-programmed to accept it. And Hollywood is getting even more pozzed by the day. It will take a disaster like we’ve never seen to make Joe Public question The Narrative and demand a return to sanity. Can America survive such a disaster?
Denise McAllister’s book covers more than just Warrior Womyn in pop culture. If a lot of people read it, and realize how Homowood is mind-screwing us, they could strive to make this a better world. Read her interview with David Dubrow.
The Japanese could have taken Midway almost unopposed on their way to attack Pearl Harbor. That oversight fit into a larger pattern of miscalculations that spelled doom for the Japanese Empire.
But America’s victory was far from a foregone conclusion by the time the Japanese got serious about capturing the “unsinkable aircraft carrier” that was Midway Atoll. The “sleeping giant” Admiral Yamamoto feared was just awakening and the limping American Pacific Fleet was outmatched going into the battle. It was rather miraculous that we even had three carriers to throw against the Jap Navy. What happened once the forces squared off might be even more miraculous.
What’s nice about this film is that it builds a fairly thorough picture of the early phase of the Pacific War. It’s not just about the battle of Midway, but goes back to cover Pearl Harbor, and even ranges as far as Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo. It spends time on junior and mid-level officers I don’t remember seeing portrayed in any other movie, including a couple pilots who were instrumental in winning the statistically unlikely victory.
My apologies for writing this review too late for you to see this film in the theaters–because it was worth the ticket price. If you’re sick of most the garbage Hollywood spews out, and would like to see more good flicks like this one, then I encourage you to spend some voting dollars on your own copy of Midway as soon as possible.
False Flag is “an action-packed, enjoyable and terrifying read.” – R.A. Mathis (author of Ghosts of Babylon and the Homeland series).
A terrorist group came into possession of a tactical nuke. Uncle Sam covertly put together a squad of mercs and SpecOps veterans to swipe the WMD before it could be used. The team of military contractors led by former SEAL Rocco Cavarra, who prefixed their radio call signs with the term “has-been,” had to fight their way through war-torn Sudan to reach the terrorist camp where the bomb was stashed. This all happened in Hell and Gone, the first book in the Retreads series.
Ten years later, the survivors of the Sudan mission helped their SF buddy Tommy Scarred Wolf execute a hostage rescue in South Asia. The Retreads shot it out with human traffickers, pirates, and a secret team of black ops assassins. This took place in the pages of Tier Zero–the second and most action-packed Retreads novel so far.
While the Retreads were fighting overseas over the years (officially and unofficially), bad stuff has been happening on the home front in their own country. Now the USA is speeding over a cliff into economic collapse, nuclear terrorism, and civil war, and the Retreads are caught up in the middle of it in False Flag: the third novel.
Amazon reviewers have called False Flag “a runaway action thriller,” “a thinkers book,” and “an awe-inspiring ride.” More than a few have used the phrase: “ripped from the headlines,” but there are trace amounts of what would never make the headlines. Certain subplots would be dismissed as “conspiracy theory” in some circles, but in the wake of Jeffrey Epstein’s death, those circles are shrinking.
Both Hell and Gone and Tier Zero are available in audio book format as well as paperback and e-book. There are plans for a False Flag audio book as well. Now is a great time to pick up one of these great reads. They’re unlike anything else being published today; and they’re distinct from the action-adventure of yesteryear, too.
The subtitle says “A Post-Apocalyptic Novel,” and this book is the first in “The New World Series.”
The story is told in flashback via a surviving character in 2066 “Cascadia.” That character is in bookend chapters that frame the narrative. The main story opens in the suburbs of San Diego right before an EMP turns out the lights, permanently. A little bit of time is spent establishing that the protagonist, Gordon Van Zandt, is a dedicated family man with just enough soy in his diet to make him palatable to female readers. He’s an Iraq veteran whose little brother is currently in the USMC, hoping to become a scout-sniper.
In the author bio section of the Amazon product page, the author claims to be a USMC veteran. That may be true–there is at least some rudimentary military knowledge evident. Maybe he had a rear-echelon clerk/jerk MOS. There were a few details here and there that didn’t sit right, but not enough to make you toss the book aside, by any stretch.
The EMP strikes the USA, and Gordon goes into Scramble, Forage, and Protect Mode. (While doing so, he explains what an EMP is far too many times for a reader with reasonable memory retention.) His family-first instincts kick into high gear right away, which cause him to make some tough decisions that others are not yet ready to make.
The plot toggles between Gordon’s ordeal, little brother Sebastian’s story, and federal-level politicians. For the most part, the character interactions are believable, although there is a high Character Stupidity Quotient in effect–especially when it comes to Sebastian. Sebastian is such an idiot that, were he the star of the show, I probably would have quit reading. (Ironic, because toward the end, I found his story the most interesting.) I lost patience and began to skim through the sub-plots with the Speaker of the House-turned-President, his wife, Vice President, assistants and generals. Those segments resembled a literary soap opera that aren’t really even necessary for the plot.
Speaking of plot, this one does not suffer from predictability. I wonder how much of that was by design and how much was because the author was just making it up as he went along. I strongly suspected the latter when it came to Jimmy, Gordon’s neighbor. When first introduced, the reader gets the impression Gordon barely knew Jimmy; but as the chapters plod forward, a transformation takes place and the two neighbors have been great friends for years.
One of the most annoying personality traits of Gordon Van Zandt is his tendency to make promises he can’t keep. A lot of the dialog is amateurish as well, but then I guess this is the author’s first novel.
I made the decision to buy this book after reading some of the complaints by the one-star reviewers that there wasn’t enough GRRRL POWER on display. Sure enough: there was a lot less feminist garbage than you get in the average novel–whatever side of the aisle the authors fall on. I was thankful for that, but I was hoping (if there was any evidence of author worldview at all) that the author would turn out to be a patriot or full-bore, unapologetic, firebreathing right-winger. The overall flavor, however, is Log Cabin NeoCuck. By the second novel it becomes blatantly obvious, but I’ll say more if/when I review the sequel.
I guess the only full-bore, unapologetic, firebreathing right-wing authors on the cultural landscape these days are under Virtual Pulp’s umbrella.
Since the turn of the 20th Century, the wars America fought have not been to protect or improve the interests of America or Americans. However, American men and boys lost their lives in the belief that they were fighting for freedom. That deserves and commands our respect.
It is impossible for us to repay them for their ultimate sacrifice. But we remember them, and are forever grateful for the freedom we enjoy because of the patriots who put their lives on the line, starting in 1775.
New Virtual Pulper Paul Hair interviewed me about “conservatives,” the culture war, and my books. Here’s part of it:
HiT: Why’d you write The Retreads series and what’s it about without giving away too much of the plot(s)?
Brown: I didn’t anticipate making it a series, initially.
Between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, I had considered going back into uniform, but my knees and back were pretty well FUBARed from before, and my tolerance for Dumb S**t had shrunken considerably.
My subconscious mind must have been invested in the idea, though, because I often dreamed about being back in the Airborne.
One dream (not quite a nightmare) featured a fairly vivid firefight. I built a story around that scene and eventually titled the resulting novel “Hell and Gone.”
It’s about a team of Gulf War One veterans on a mission to recapture a tactical nuke. I didn’t know how common that “stolen nuke” plot was, or would become. I chose it, and many other elements of the story, based on unclassified intelligence reports I was privy to at the time.
For years, no agent or editor would read it. In 2010, I decided to take advantage of the digital revolution and outflank the New York Publishing Cartel altogether.
You can read the entire interview (it’s very brief) over at Hollywood in Toto. They’ve got some other good stuff there, too.
I’ve been posting some blog-length commentary at MeWe recently, while neglecting this site. It’s high time I hit two birds with one lemon…or make lemonade out of the bird life handed me…aw, nevermind.
The discussion was about the nearly two-decade debacle in Afghanistan, and what is required for victory there. Here’s me:
One part of the problem (and I mean JUST ONE) is the wussification of America. Up until 1945, we fought wars to win them–and winning usually meant unconditional surrender. If that entailed nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or firebombing Dresden and Hamburg…so be it.
Third-worlders with primitive mindsets (which, whether you want to believe it or not, applies to most of Asia and the Middle East) respect that. You might say it’s the only thing they respect. They see restraint and mercy as weakness–and act accordingly.
(My debut novel, Hell and Gone, touches on this a bit. The first draft was written before the ground campaign in OIF kicked off.)
If you you believe some crisis or other is so important that our young men (and now young women, God help us) should be sent into a place where they will be shot at and bombed, then you better be willing to stomp the living hell out of the opposing force there–collateral damage or not. Vietcong hit and run behind the border of a neighboring country? We’re coming after them, and we might just have to deal with their sympathizers in your government who are harboring them. Cowards want to snipe at our patrols, then go hide in a Mosque? Raze that building to the ground and douse the rubble with napalm. An enemy asset is an enemy asset.
We’re dealing with people who (in Vietnam) fire on medics and use children in terrorist bombings. In the Middle East they’ll do that too, then hide behind their women and children to avoid reprisal. Hell, look at what they do to their own people. The only way to pacify a population in such places is to beat them senseless, then bash their skull in if they look like they might want to get up and fight some more.
People in the USA don’t have the stomach for what it takes to achieve victory over there (unless you redefine victory, as in Gulf War I). We’re too soft and comfortable over here, and can’t even imagine the brutality of those people–much less the barbarism that would be required to make them peaceful.
If we’re not willing to do what’s necessary to achieve victory (and we’re not), we have no business deploying troops over there. Let’s concentrate on defending our own country against the primitive third-worlders hellbent on bringing their barbarism inside our rapidly disintegrating safe haven–and the politicians committed to importing them.
We interrupt the regularly scheduled political screed for some spontaneous horn-tooting.
For some reason, my debut novel remains the most popular book I’ve written. At least it’s accumulated the most “social proof” of all my books. Here’s the latest review of Hell and Gone:
I hadn’t planned on writing a review but the end of Hell & Gone had a comment by the author, Henry Brown, that struck me. Military fiction is a genre that’s has been dearly underserved by mainstream publishing. While there may be a financial justification for this, and it is a niche genre, the real reason is that publishers simply don’t like it. It’s difficult to market, requires a knowledge base few editors possess and, yes, it’s considered “icky” by an industry that leans so far to the left that some publishers have trouble getting through doorways. It also happens to be MY industry, and I know all this from experience.
That being said, the genre suffers from another problem: A lot of the material written for it just isn’t that good. Creating a story is hard work, and doubly so when it’s easy to slide into stereotypes and cliches instead of crafting realistic characters with original and interesting motivations. Combat action, while essential to a story, can cease to be what moves a story along and instead threaten to overwhelm the plot. And lastly, God save us all from the author that simply doesn’t bother to do research and spits out jarring technical mistakes.
This book has none of those problems. The characters are interesting and as a reader you are motivated to care about them. The action is fast-paced, with colorful description, and it serves the purpose of the story instead of the other way around.
In short, this is a damn fine book. Read it and enjoy a real treat.
It’s available in Audible, too.
Of course, now I’m wondering what I said that inspired this person to post a review. Whatever it is, I need to duplicate it in my other work. In a business where some books are getting thousands of reviews on Amazon, this book just barely reached 84…and it’s been a bestseller in a few different categories.
Anyway, the reviewer claims to work in the industry. Perhaps that’s why he’s keeping his identity anonymous–probably a wise move in today’s climate. In any case, I’m very grateful he posted.
How much you wanna bet they were allowed to steal the technology from the US Patent Office?
One laser weapons expert said the new weapon can “burn through clothes in a split second … If the fabric is flammable, the whole person will be set on fire.”
“The pain will be beyond endurance,” according to the researcher who tested a prototype at the Xian Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shaanxi province.
The 15mm rifle weighs 6.6 pounds — about the same as an AK-47 — and has a range of 800 meters, or half a mile. It can be mounted on cars, boats and planes.
The ZKZM-500, which costs about $15,000, is ready for mass production and is likely to be given to anti-terrorism units of the Chinese police.
The weapon is powered by a rechargeable lithium battery and produces no sound, so “nobody will know where the attack came from. It will look like an accident,” another researcher said.
Red-Blooded American Men Examine Pop-Culture and the World
It was supposed to be cushy duty, but only the end of it was cushy–in the arms of some French floozies in a fancy hotel.
across the Moselle and keep the pressure on the Germans.
demonstrates more humanity than is normal for him. (Also, in this one we are introduced to PFC Butsko. I can’t help but notice the similarities between him and the platoon sergeant of The RatBastards–also named Butsko.)
It was supposed to be cushy duty, but only the end of it was cushy–in the arms of some French floozies in a fancy hotel.
across the Moselle and keep the pressure on the Germans.
demonstrates more humanity than is normal for him. (Also, in this one we are introduced to PFC Butsko. I can’t help but notice the similarities between him and the platoon sergeant of The RatBastards–also named Butsko.)
Ten years later, the survivors of the Sudan mission helped their SF buddy Tommy Scarred Wolf execute a hostage rescue in South Asia. The Retreads shot it out with human traffickers, pirates, and a secret team of black ops assassins. This took place in the pages of 
The plot toggles between Gordon’s ordeal, little brother Sebastian’s story, and federal-level politicians. For the most part, the character interactions are believable, although there is a high Character Stupidity Quotient in effect–especially when it comes to Sebastian. Sebastian is such an idiot that, were he the star of the show, I probably would have quit reading. (Ironic, because toward the end, I found his story the most interesting.) I lost patience and began to skim through the sub-plots with the Speaker of the House-turned-President, his wife, Vice President, assistants and generals. Those segments resembled a literary soap opera that aren’t really even necessary for the plot.
Of course, now I’m wondering what I said that inspired this person to post a review. Whatever it is, I need to duplicate it in my other work. In a business where some books are getting thousands of reviews on Amazon, this book just barely reached 84…and it’s been a bestseller in a few different categories.