The Deserter's Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq Book

I skimmed the first couple of chapters. He's obviously trying hard for moral justification due to his childhood. Sorry, that won't fly. He's also dumber than a can of rocks.

"It wasn't right to kill puppies with a hammer, which is why I shot and buried a litter of pups before my grandfather could get at them in his old-fashioned way." Ridiculous. Leave aside all the rest & think about it. A quiet whack on the head is kinder than multiple loud shots & causes instant loss of consciousness, if not death. The next pup has no idea what happened to the previous one rather the horrific fear of the loud noise. Later on he describes the scene in more detail & proves my point.

"Iraq took all of the fun out of guns for me, but even in the days when I still loved shooting I stopped hunting after dropping that deer with a four-inch bullet through the neck." Why? It seems as if he is trying to establish some sort of moral high ground here, but I don't get it. He blasts a snake with a shotgun like a crazy person, talks about being hungry, & yet has a problem with shooting a deer. I'm sure he's eaten plenty of venison. Where does he think it came from? It's a "cartridge", not a bullet. The bullet is the bit of inert metal that strikes the target & it certainly wasn't 4" long unless he was shooting a small cannon.

His memories of shooting, poor gun handling, & especially his mention of gun accidents are ridiculous & obvious attempts to garner sympathy from people who don't know anything about guns. I was raised with guns & very little supervision, too. They're a power tool & we always treated them as such. Never had any accidents even though my cousins, friends, & I ran around like wild Injuns from an early age. Most of us had our first BB guns & pocket knives when we were 6 or 7, .22's & shotguns before we were teens. As young teens, we'd shoot a brick of .22 shells each in less than a week while hiking through the woods.

I shot a lot of snapping turtles, although I never used an Uzi on them. I only shot one once & don't know anything about the various models, but I wouldn't have used the one I tried for turtles. The Common Snapping turtle is a dinosaur. They're incredibly tough & crafty. I generally shot them from at least 75 yards away with a .22. (We kept an old single shot .22 by the back door & shot them as we saw them on the ponds else they'd clean out the ducklings & goslings in short order.) Only a head shot would kill them with that light of a bullet, though. I don't think the Uzi had the accuracy to hit them squarely nor am I sure the 9mm bullet would kill them. I've used a .222, .223 (AR-15), .270, .303, .3030, & .308. I NEVER had them flip up out of the water. Never - not even with a 220 grain, soft nosed .303 bullet plowing into them. Often enough, even with a huge hole in them, they'd dive for the bottom only to float up in a day or two. Sometimes they'd never come up & that meant they'd had the strength left to dig themselves in. Like I said, they're tough.

I won't go into further details, but his childhood has obviously been told in such a way as to garner maximum sympathy & create excuses for his subsequent actions. Yuck. I hate facetious arguments. If he wants to make a case for deserting, fine. Do it. His childhood has nothing to do with the situation he was in over there, though.

I don't doubt that he saw some horrific things in Iraq. Soldiers are a bunch of young, scared men who need proper leadership not to turn into a gang of macho thugs especially in a confused situation. Peer pressure in a unit is incredible - far worse than anything in civilian life save for possibly in gang territory & even then running away might be easier. I believe he was in a very bad situation & doubt there was much recourse for him. Oh, the Army & other authorities will tell the public there is, but the reality is far different, so I'm not going to judge him for deserting. It might not have been the right way to handle it, but I can see where that might be the most easiest & most attractive option to him. Hell, it might have been the right & best way. I can't say.

While I'm sure many of the scenes & situations are partially or even mostly true, they're likely skewed as much as his childhood stories. Even the most innocuous situations can seem horrific or hilarious depending on how the story is told. He's not writing this himself, but relaying it through another. On top of that, he's obviously justifying his actions, so everything he narrated to this writer is suspect, at best.

It's only sort-of-nonfiction & not worth my time to finish reading.