The Gift of Valor

May 2, 2005
During a hard day of fighting in the Iraqi town of Husaybah in the spring of 2004, Marine Corporal Jason Dunham clamped his Kevlar helmet over a grenade dropped by an insurgent he and two other Marines were struggling to subdue. The story of his split-second of heroism, expanded here from Phillips's original Wall Street Journal article, makes for an absorbing if somewhat distended tearjerker. Working from copious reminiscences by Dunham's comrades and family, the author paints an idealized portrait of a lovable but callow youth who turned into a "natural leader of men" in the Marine Corps. The book picks up when it gets to the action; Phillips's nearly shot-by-shot recap of the day's bloody and chaotic combat is one of the most vivid depictions of the American side of the Iraqi insurgency. The final half of the book is devoted to the aftermath, following Dunham, who sustained fatal head wounds and never regained consciousness, as he winds his way through the military hospital system before finally being taken off life support. Full of grisly medical procedures and details of the Marines' cult of solicitude for the fallen, this part is drenched with maudlin pathos. Phillips's account sometimes feels padded with extraneous factoids and is too embedded in the Marine ethos of gung-ho sentimentality to question it very probingly. It's an often engrossing tribute to the courage of common soldiers but, like much writing about the American war effort, it skirts the troubling issue of the ultimate purpose of their sacrifice. Photos.

January 1, 2005
In April 2004, Marine corporal Jason Dunham gave his life to save his comrades in Iraq. Now there's talk of a Congressional Medal of Honor-the first awarded in over a decade. A Wall Street Journal reporter tells the story.

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2005
Adult/High School -This expanded retelling of a front-page story that originally appeared in the "Wall Street Journal" serves as a memorable narrative tribute to the life and death of U.S. Marine Corporal Jason Dunham. At age 22, serving in Iraq near the Syrian border with the Third Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment, Dunham suffered a grievous head injury when he clamped his bullet-resistant Kevlar helmet over a live grenade thrust at him by an insurgent during hand-to-hand combat, in an apparent effort to contain the blast and protect his squadmates. Phillips, an embedded journalist with the Marines, subsequently interviewed the corporal's parents, his childhood friends in Scio, NY, members of his infantry unit, and medical personnel who tended him both in Iraq and during the medevac flights to Germany and Bethesda Naval Hospital. These interviews reconstruct the emotional, significant ways in which the young man's life and plight affected relatives, neighbors, and comrades in arms. The context of his upbringing serves as a backdrop to his developing military leadership style, and the scant number of years that separate his teenage experiences from grimly serious battlefield conditions will undoubtedly catch the attention of readers. He has been nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor. This realistic, gritty portrayal of loss and its aftermath personalizes events behind daily headlines, but remains descriptive rather than political in its point of view." -Lynn Nutwell, Fairfax City RegionalLibrary, VA"

Copyright 2005 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 2, 2005
Lloyd's reading of Phillips' you-are-there tale of an American soldier in Iraq is smooth but distant, as if emerging from an overstuffed armchair in a wood-paneled library rather than from the heat and confusion of battle. Phillips, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, spent his time in Iraq following one typical soldier-Corporal Jason Dunham, a 22-year-old Marine from upstate New York. Phillips eschews the big picture for a series of small ones-details about Dunham's life up to joining the military, Marine patrols in newly occupied Iraqi cities, and soldiers' off-duty routines. Dunham and his group of Marines face the almost constant threat of death and the confusion of a complex foreign country, but Lloyd's voice, polished to a fine glow, lacks the emotional heft necessary to convey the concoction, part fear and part anticipation, that is every soldier's daily brew. Instead, Phillips' book is given the dulcet tones of a morning-television host, soothing and calming where it should be raw, gaping, and uninhibited. Lloyd's reading sells the book short, having stripped it of the immediacy that was its most crucial attribute.