" I have read/listened to various good and not so good war history books all my 47 year old life. After having read Hal Moores "We wer soldiers", Larry Chambers "Death in the A SHAU valley" and Robert Masons "Chicken Hawk" I chose "Taking Fire" by Ron Alexander as the next logic book covering the same war. As the three preceeding books was very good and gave a correct portrait of the war and the ordinary people fighting it, I had high hopes about "taking fire". But in the prologue when the person reading this book changes his voice to a high pitch cry for help from a LRRP ranger calling on "miniman" to help them out of an ambush by the VC I had enough. Just the whole idea of trying to elevate your own deeds and actions by making a hard core LRRP that voluntarily is behind enemy lines cry out for help is disgusting. Why could they not just let the LRRP soldier act normally, like the probably did. They would be whispering not to give away their position. And also, then the LRRP says quote "VC is so close I can smell their breath of fish"? This is in a dense three layer jungle forest, far far away from the ocean. Where this extraction is depicted this would probably not be true. VC in these areas seemed to live on rice only (And sometimes some small amount of heroin.....). I just felt sick of this disrespectful intro of this book so i stopped reading and will not continue to do so. "
— Carl, 10/11/2023