|
The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq | 
 enlarge | Author: John Crawford
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $13.99 (100%)
New (54) Used (79) from $0.01
Rating:  143 reviews
Sales Rank: 99963
Media: Paperback
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5 x 0.8
ISBN: 1594482012
Dewey Decimal Number: 921
EAN: 9781594482014
ASIN: 1594482012
Publication Date: April 4, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More.
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
John Crawford joined the Florida National Guard to pay for his college tuition. One weekend a month. Two weeks a year. A free education. But in 2002, one semester shy of graduation and on his honeymoon, Crawford was shipped off to the front lines in Iraq. Once there he was determined to get it all down, to chronicle the daily life of a soldier in all its brutal, terrifying, heartbreaking honesty. The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell introduces a powerful new literary voice forged in the most intense of circumstances.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 138 more reviews...
 An excellent work August 5, 2005
D. G. Rosenthal (A Co. 3/124th Infantry)
276 out of 293 found this review helpful
I had the privilege of serving with Spc. Crawford in Iraq. His book tells it exactly like it was, with no holds barred. It covers everything from our supply inadequacies, to command mismanagements, to the reality of the war that the media never took the time to cover.
Crawford is a natural author, an expert at weaving an engaging story that grips the reader firmly and swiftly. In an age where the news media corporations are the only source most Westerner's have for news of the war, and the corrupt Arab news networks are the propaganda sources for the Middle East, Crawford's account of the Warrior battalion is a cutting, incisive, and TRUE representation of what REALLY went on over there. -
Accidental soldier August 5, 2005
FrKurt Messick (Bloomington, IN USA)
242 out of 262 found this review helpful
John Crawford's story might be something out of Hollywood (indeed, with the new FX series, `Over There', now playing, Crawford's story seems almost as if it had been lifted for that drama). Crawford is like many others - he joined the National Guard for college money, not to go abroad and fight a war (whatever happened to the days when the National Guard stayed at home? but I digress...) He was nearing graduation, newly married, and suddenly thrust into the middle of a war that was controversial at the start, and increasingly unpopular at home as it dragged on.
Crawford spent three years in the 101st Airborne division, and then enlisted in the National Guard as he entered college, primarily for the tuition assistance. In Fall 2002, he was activated and had to go. Like many, his expectation of a short tour of duty was frustrated - the promise of `three months, six at most' turned into more than a year abroad.
Crawford's tales are riveting and engrossing. Like many men and women abroad in the conflict, he had varying access to email and internet facilities, and was encouraged by an embedded journalist to submit his tales (those of his own experience, and his writing on the experiences of others who were also around him at the time) to places around the country.
Some stories are now familiar to people in the States - problems with equipment, problems with personnel, problems with understanding their role vis-a-vis the locals. Crawford says that his unit was so underequipped that they even had to get vehicles from other units; at one point, they had a confiscated SUV from which they'd knocked the doors out, and mounted a machine gun on it. Not military issue at all. Their flak jackets were Vietnam-era technology, and their rifles were decades old. He also talks of the scavenging and improvising that took place, including digging through landfills for spare parts. Crawford even said that the only way to get replacement uniforms and boots was to order them online - soldiers then had to pay for these themselves, unreimbursed. Tough conditions, indeed.
Through it all Crawford insists that he and his unit were good soldiers who were going to do their duty no matter what, even if they did feel at times like the poor step-child that nobody cared about.
`Imagine a war in which you can call home at the end of the day,' Crawford says - he'd call his wife at home after a hard day; she'd talk about cleaning up dog doo in the house, and he'd talk about cleaning up dismembered people on the street. During the major operation of the war, there was no easy communication, but during the occupation time, it was much more available. Crawford sees this as a mixed blessing - instead of keep concentration focused, often soldiers would be worrying about things at home, and that could present a problem. It would also reinforce just how far away home really was.
Crawford also writes about drug use - some were into steroids (he describes a few `roid-rage' incident times), and some were onto antidepressants or valium. These were readily available from pharmacies. Crawford's own use included valium and sleeping pills, to make sure that when he was supposed to sleep, he could.
Part of this was written while he was in country in Iraq and Kuwait, and it was finished when he returned to the United States. It is an important read, and fills in many of the gaps that one gets in coverage of the war from media outlets, both factual and fictitious.
Great Story from someone who served August 6, 2005
Airborne Soldier (Ft Bragg, NC)
34 out of 37 found this review helpful
I was attached to the 101st Airborne Division in Baghdad, I remember when Johns unit came to relieve us. I can say, I bought this book today after watching The Daily Show. I have not been able to put the book down the entire day. I just now stopped to go online and see if I could find out more about John. But I am pretty sure I will finish this book this weekend.
The storytelling was remarkable, I felt as if I was back along that river watching those drunks yelling and screaming. I would 100% recommend this story to move directly to hollywood. It would translate totally to cinema.
Especially being there, I think it truely hit me deep down. Thank you for telling this tale, I can do nothing but recommend it to all readers.
Stories that Donald Rumsfeld will not be telling on Fox News August 24, 2005
Ian Kaplan (Livermore, CA)
32 out of 41 found this review helpful
After serving three years in the 101st Army Airborne Division, John Crawford joined the Florida National Guard as a way to pay his college expenses at Florida State University. On his honeymoon, only a few classes short of graduation, Crawford got word that his National Guard unit would be sent to Iraq to support the US and British invasion (which took place on March 20, 2003). Crawford was in Iraq for more than a year.
The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell is structured as a set of short stories that recount some of Crawford's experiences in Iraq. This is a successful format for recounting an experience that had little logic while Crawford was living it and probably less in retrospect.
Generals and journalist try to write accounts that provide some global view of events. Crawford's account is that of an infantryman on the ground, in the dust, dirt and fear. The book opens with a story about the invasion. Crawford's unit was trapped with a few other units in a dust storm. As night falls, with zero visibility and no anti-tank weapons, they are told that an Iraqi tank unit is headed their way. The dust is everywhere, clogging their weapons, which in any case would do little damage to the Soviet era tanks used by the Iraqi army. Crawford never finds out whether the tanks pass by his unit or just never show up in the area.
Crawford's unit spends the rest of their time in Iraq attempting to provide security in Baghdad. Several of his stories involve the time his unit spent policing two Iraqi gas stations. The Iraq that Crawford describes is a shattered third world country. The Baghdad he inhabited was a city of hovels and crumbling apartments. A dangerous city of dust and filth. The overall color is the brown of desert sand, a city almost devoid of trees. Crawford's picture of Iraq brings home the surreal absurdity of the Bush administration's claim that Iraq was a "clear and present" danger to the United States, a country with a population over ten times that of Iraq, thousands of nuclear weapons and the most powerful military in existence.
Crawford's accounts are gripping, giving the reader some feel for his experience in Iraq. Crawford and his fellow National Guardsmen are bored, scared and desperately homesick. As National Guardsmen they are treated as second class soldiers. Their body armor is vintage of Vietnam era. Their officers are less well trained and less able than the regular Army officers. They are shifted from unit to unit, their Iraq departure date sifting with little obvious logic.
The enemy in Iraq is not an opposing army, but fighters who blend into the population. Crawford and his comrades are shot at from buildings and from the roadside by men who sometimes seem like ghosts. Crawford writes of the hate that is sometimes directed their way. The response to Iraq of these young, heavily armed men ranges from generous to brutal. Crawford gives the reader the feeling that without the oversight of the officers above these young men, there would be unrestrained carnage. They want to leave this strange land they have been sent to. Crawford writes that he would gladly kill an arbitrary number of Iraqis if it would get him home twenty minutes sooner.
Crawford's picture of himself and his fellows is not a picture of noble warriors. Their time in Iraq makes them desperate and brutal. Yet they are at their core honorable. The men and women in the US military are fulfilling the promises they have made. The brutality that emerges is the brutality that lives in all human hearts. As in any war, the military men and women in Iraq pay a terrible price. The toll exacted from them is not just death and physical injury. Marriages are shattered, businesses ruined and many of them will never be the same. Crawford writes of downing Valium by the handful, along with cheap Turkish whiskey and on one occasion beer taken from the Iraqis. As his stories unfold his marriage breaks up. By the end of his account, the blackness closes in on Crawford.
The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell is a short book. The stories sometimes repeat detail that Crawford has related earlier. This gives the book the feeling of a collection of reprinted stories. Perhaps because the details are simply too painful, some parts of the story are obscure. Crawford's wife, Stephanie, slowly draws away from him as the story progresses. Crawford's dream of a Penelope welcoming home her Ulysses is just that, a dream. But the reader never finds out what happens.
The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell and the other books by Iraq veterans that are starting to appear are important reminders of the sacrifices that our country is asking of our sons and daughters who are serving in the military. We owe them more than a "support our troops" bumper sticker. As a nation we should listen to their stories and hear of the price they have paid in our service. As a nation we should ask why they are paying this price. We should ask why a war that was started over Weapons of Mass Destruction became a war to install democracy and finally a war to install an "Islamic Republic" which may turn out to be no more democratic than its ally Iran.
 Disgrace to the military October 20, 2005
Tabitha Stewart (Lake Mary, Fl)
30 out of 71 found this review helpful
I am a combat medic in the United States Army and I was disgusted with this so-call soldier's stories. My favorite part of this book was finding out that John Crawford was no longer a part of the United States Army. His stories were far from the truth. In the last paragraph of the book he informs the reader that everything that he has wrote up to this point was fiction. He draws unknowing civilians a picture of disgrace and corup and calls it the army. He does not live a life or tell a stroy of a real solider. Real soliders do not steal, lie, do drugs or make up stories to reap finicial benift. I wish the writer the best of luck in college and life. Though, I highly suggest that John Crawford stays clear of military personnel and any type of post.
|
|
|
|
| |
