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A review by cflam38
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
5.0
"My father used to call all soldiers angel warriors," he said. "Because usually they get boys to fight wars."
My friend recommended this book to me and I first thought that I wouldn't really enjoy a war-story, and maybe that's true, but this book was just so captivating. Fallen Angels is a horrifying story of the Vietnam War from the perspective of a 17 year old boy. This book quickly became a favorite of mine and I think it is a must read for everyone. By the time I finished it I felt so close to the characters. I laughed with them, cried with them, and was afraid with them.
I had never thought of myself as being afraid of anything. I thought I would always be a middle-of-the-road kind of guy, not to brave, but not too scared either. I was wrong. I was scared every time I left the hooch.
I wanted to say more to him. I wanted to say that the only dead person I had ever seen before had been my grandmother. I wanted to say that when I saw her I was ready, walking into the darkened church with family and sitting in the first pews. But Jenkins was different. Jenkins had been walking with me and talking with me only hours before. Seeing him lying there like that, his mouth and eyes open, had grabbed something inside my chest and twisted it hard.
We spent another day lying around. It seemed to be what the war was about. Hours of boredom, seconds of terror.
The guys that our artillery blew away didn't have a reason to die. They hadn't died facing the enemy. They just died because somebody else was scared, maybe careless. They died because they were in Nam, where being scared made you do things you would regret later. We were killing our brothers, ourselves.
I started writing a letter to Kenny. What i wanted to put in it was the reason for my dying, if I should die. I knew that I wanted to live because I was afraid of dying, and I knew that I could come up with reasons for wanting to live.
Sometimes standing alone seemed to be the hardest thing in the world to do, even when being in the crowd meant you could be killed.
I cried for Brew. Sometimes, even when I wasn't thinking about him, or at least when I didn't know I was thinking of him, I would find myself crying. And when the tears came, I thought about Brew and the sound the zipper made in the chopper.
The noise was terrible. Every time a mortar went off, I jumped. I couldn't help myself. The noise went into you. It touched parts of you that were small and frightened and wanting your mommy.
"I started praying to God and to Saint Jude," Manaco said. "I mean some heavy praying. I'm making all kinds of promises, too. You know, get me out of this one and I'm going to be so cool for the rest of my life it won't be funny."
"I thought I was the only one making all the promises," I said.
"If God gets even half the promises we've been laying down, The U.S.A. is going to be holier than the Vatican," Monaco said.
I had never been in love before. Maybe this is what it was like, the way I felt for Manaco and Peewee and Johnson and the rest of my squad. I hoped this was what it was like.
"If they say you ain't hurt bad enough to go home you got to play crazy. Tell them you keep seeing pink-ass zebras running around the room and you want to catch one of them and eat him."
My friend recommended this book to me and I first thought that I wouldn't really enjoy a war-story, and maybe that's true, but this book was just so captivating. Fallen Angels is a horrifying story of the Vietnam War from the perspective of a 17 year old boy. This book quickly became a favorite of mine and I think it is a must read for everyone. By the time I finished it I felt so close to the characters. I laughed with them, cried with them, and was afraid with them.
I had never thought of myself as being afraid of anything. I thought I would always be a middle-of-the-road kind of guy, not to brave, but not too scared either. I was wrong. I was scared every time I left the hooch.
I wanted to say more to him. I wanted to say that the only dead person I had ever seen before had been my grandmother. I wanted to say that when I saw her I was ready, walking into the darkened church with family and sitting in the first pews. But Jenkins was different. Jenkins had been walking with me and talking with me only hours before. Seeing him lying there like that, his mouth and eyes open, had grabbed something inside my chest and twisted it hard.
We spent another day lying around. It seemed to be what the war was about. Hours of boredom, seconds of terror.
The guys that our artillery blew away didn't have a reason to die. They hadn't died facing the enemy. They just died because somebody else was scared, maybe careless. They died because they were in Nam, where being scared made you do things you would regret later. We were killing our brothers, ourselves.
I started writing a letter to Kenny. What i wanted to put in it was the reason for my dying, if I should die. I knew that I wanted to live because I was afraid of dying, and I knew that I could come up with reasons for wanting to live.
Sometimes standing alone seemed to be the hardest thing in the world to do, even when being in the crowd meant you could be killed.
I cried for Brew. Sometimes, even when I wasn't thinking about him, or at least when I didn't know I was thinking of him, I would find myself crying. And when the tears came, I thought about Brew and the sound the zipper made in the chopper.
The noise was terrible. Every time a mortar went off, I jumped. I couldn't help myself. The noise went into you. It touched parts of you that were small and frightened and wanting your mommy.
"I started praying to God and to Saint Jude," Manaco said. "I mean some heavy praying. I'm making all kinds of promises, too. You know, get me out of this one and I'm going to be so cool for the rest of my life it won't be funny."
"I thought I was the only one making all the promises," I said.
"If God gets even half the promises we've been laying down, The U.S.A. is going to be holier than the Vatican," Monaco said.
I had never been in love before. Maybe this is what it was like, the way I felt for Manaco and Peewee and Johnson and the rest of my squad. I hoped this was what it was like.
"If they say you ain't hurt bad enough to go home you got to play crazy. Tell them you keep seeing pink-ass zebras running around the room and you want to catch one of them and eat him."