Review: The Last Good Fight
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 22, 2012
There is a beautiful beach in Injured Reserves, no doubt postcard-pretty in actuality but rendered deadly beautiful by DC Bourone.On that beach there is a horrific battle, described with aching precision. A specific real-life battle, maybe. If it did not really happen this way, no matter, because this story is so beautifully and honestly and, yes, brutally told that in 16K+ words I've had an experience that leaves me shaken and, surprisingly, strengthened.Billy, the protagonist, the hero (in the true sense) has "found the last good fight." This is a deeply moral story, and learning what Billy and his men fight for puts me deeply on their side. Trust me, it matters. But I leave it to each reader to make that discovery.This isn't battle-porn writing, there's no special-effects slasher shocks. The shocks are earned, paid for. Here is Tate: "The second [shot] took off Tate's leg just above the knee, spun it away like a stick thrown for a pet." That's what the murderous machine-gunner on the clifftop does to the men on the beach. That and more. That's what they sacrifice.Billy goes through more than I can imagine enduring to get his wounded men, his friends, off that beach.The book's subtitle is "A Song of War." Bourone speaks of the rhythm of the fight, of the mission. "Lose the rhythm...lose your life." The men lose their rhythm on this beach, amidst a cacophony of sound: shrieking gulls, concussive gunfire, rumble of the patrol boat's diesels.Shaken, I come to the end of Billy's story to find to find him reunited with his men. Here, the song concludes: "A new string plucked. The sound of hope." Hope comes in the words of a "tiny surgeon" ferociously working to save Billy's life. Words that speak to the title Injured Reserves.If you read this book, you will understand.Note: I don't read much in the war-story category. The few that I have read--Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun, Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels--I consider masterful. Injured Reserves belongs in that company.