Rating: 
Summary: Great Book
Review: Excellent book about Recon operations in Vietnam. I served with Mike in OCS before Vietnam. I highly recommend the book.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Read!
Review: I've never written a book review before, but I believe that this book deserved one! "Reluctant Warrior" was intelligently written and well thought out. Michael Hodgins makes one actually "live" the patrols with the "recon teams" and describes the fears, terror, and concerns that they faced. This is an excellent read, a microcosm of the war, which I highly recommend...As a personal note, I am very critical about books, especially ones that can't hold my interest and/or attention. With "Reluctant Warrior", I found that I could not put it down!
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Read!
Review: I've never written a book review before, but I believe that this book deserved one! "Reluctant Warrior" was intelligently written and well thought out. Michael Hodgins makes one actually "live" the patrols with the "recon teams" and describes the fears, terror, and concerns that they faced. This is an excellent read, a microcosm of the war, which I highly recommend...As a personal note, I am very critical about books, especially ones that can't hold my interest and/or attention. With "Reluctant Warrior", I found that I could not put it down!
Rating:
Summary: Best day-to-day account of a year in VietNam
Review: In his preface, Michael C. Hodgins hits the target when he identifies the motivating factor of 60s-era draft dodgers such as our illustrious president: convenient and self-serving anti-war sentiment. He then leads the reader into his own microcosm of the war in which he led a group of marines on several hair-raising missions into enemy-held territory. The characters come alive: I can still see them crawling through elephant grass and hacking their way through bamboo. I can see their faces and understand their enthusiasm, misgivings, and hopes. Hodgins is by no means the gung-ho grunt of John Wayne movie lore, but a man who was called upon to do his duty and who did it. How Hodgins interacts with the members of his team is fascinating. His keen psychological insights into his men's states of mind intrigued me as much as Hodgins' own doubts and fears, signaled in the text by the recurring thought, "What now Lieutenant?" So well-written, and so laden with meaning on so many different levels, this book could be used as a text in history, literature, or psychology classes. I will definitely be reading this one again.
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Summary: The "Real" Vietnam
Review: Michael Hodgins captures the real spirit of the place and time. As a former Marine who served with the 1st Recon Bn, I can testify Mr. Hodgins presents a true and vivid picture of life in the bush, on an OP, and in Camp Reasoner. With all the distortions about Vietnam presented in the movies and on TV, as well as the anti-war prejudice of public school history teachers, this book should be required reading in the high school cirriculum. I hope someday someone will write a book that will tell us more about Lt. Skibbe, Lt. Rathmell, and Captain McVey who gave lost their lives protecting their troops.
Rating:
Summary: The "Real" Vietnam
Review: Michael Hodgins captures the real spirit of the place and time. As a former Marine who served with the 1st Recon Bn, I can testify Mr. Hodgins presents a true and vivid picture of life in the bush, on an OP, and in Camp Reasoner. With all the distortions about Vietnam presented in the movies and on TV, as well as the anti-war prejudice of public school history teachers, this book should be required reading in the high school cirriculum. I hope someday someone will write a book that will tell us more about Lt. Skibbe, Lt. Rathmell, and Captain McVey who gave lost their lives protecting their troops.
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Summary: The Average Joe
Review: Only those who experienced 'Nam first hand will ever understand how it was. My husband was a door gunner on a huey in the Marines and paints Vietnam War folk art. He does not talk much about what he did so I have to look for answers in his paintings and read war books.I must say that Reluctant Warrior did all a book could do to transport me to the field and into battle. Great book! We need more like it.
Rating:
Summary: Reluctant Warrior
Review: Reading Reluctant Warrior was like stepping through a door into the jungle. For just a little while I was on patrol again with 1st Recon, 3rd Plt, "C" Company. I saw and smelled OP 425, ran through the jungle and listened to the 46s coming to extract our team when we got in the "S__t Sandwich". My friends lived again---Thanks Mike! Chuck Fenwick HM3 1st Mar Div, 1st Recon, 3rd Plt, "C" Company, RVN 69-70.
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Summary: Semper Fi
Review: Semper Fi is about all that can be said. This was the life of the grunt. No amplification or heroism that was not there. This is the best book I have ever read discribing the life. Also the excerpt on page 299 and 300 "These Good Men" by Micheal Norman is the first and only explanation of all of us that have ever served and our feelings forever to our comrades. I wish Micheal could write another book, I don't think he will. It was all in this one.
Rating:
Summary: An honest account ofa mans year at war.
Review: The authors accounting of himself as an officer of elit Marines is as serious and straight-forward as the missions they undertook in Viet-nam. Michael Hodgins skillfully, without the usual shoot em up bang bang of war novels, creates an accurate and exciting account of his time with 1st Recon. We are privy as readers to an inside look at preparations,logistics and worry not ever seen when looking at a small group of camoflaged men clinging to a ladder below a helicopter. This novel will remain always an historical account of the Marine Corps involvement in Vietnam during its dangerous disengagement in 1970. Well done Michael Hodgens, I hope you will writr more.
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