Audiobook8 hours
Charlie Mike: A True Story of War and Finding the Way Home
Written by Joe Klein
Narrated by Holter Graham
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
This true story of two decorated combat veterans who find a new way to save their comrades and heal their country is “a great look at two of the best veteran organizations going and the incredible humans who make the effort work” (Jon Stewart).
In Charlie Mike, a true account that “reads like a novel” (Publishers Weekly) and “explodes like a thriller” (The Huffington Post), Klein tells the dramatic story of Eric Greitens and Jake Wood, larger-than-life war heroes who come home and use their military values to help others.
Wounded in Iraq, Navy SEAL Eric Greitens returns home to find that his fellow veterans all want the same thing: to continue to serve their country. He founds The Mission Continues to provide paid public service fellowships for wounded veterans. One of the first fellows is former Marine sergeant Jake Wood, a natural leader who begins Team Rubicon, organizing 9/11 veterans for dangerous disaster relief projects around the world. “We do chaos,” he says.
“A deep and compelling exploration of a group of young veterans determined to continue serving after leaving the military” (The Washington Post), this is a story that hasn’t been told before—a saga of lives saved, not wasted. The chaos these soldiers face isn’t only in the streets of Haiti after the 2010 earthquake or in New York City after Hurricane Sandy—it’s also in the lives of their fellow veterans. Charlie Mike shows how Greitens and Wood draw on the military virtues of discipline and selflessness to guide others towards inner peace and, ultimately, to help build a more vigorous nation.
In Charlie Mike, a true account that “reads like a novel” (Publishers Weekly) and “explodes like a thriller” (The Huffington Post), Klein tells the dramatic story of Eric Greitens and Jake Wood, larger-than-life war heroes who come home and use their military values to help others.
Wounded in Iraq, Navy SEAL Eric Greitens returns home to find that his fellow veterans all want the same thing: to continue to serve their country. He founds The Mission Continues to provide paid public service fellowships for wounded veterans. One of the first fellows is former Marine sergeant Jake Wood, a natural leader who begins Team Rubicon, organizing 9/11 veterans for dangerous disaster relief projects around the world. “We do chaos,” he says.
“A deep and compelling exploration of a group of young veterans determined to continue serving after leaving the military” (The Washington Post), this is a story that hasn’t been told before—a saga of lives saved, not wasted. The chaos these soldiers face isn’t only in the streets of Haiti after the 2010 earthquake or in New York City after Hurricane Sandy—it’s also in the lives of their fellow veterans. Charlie Mike shows how Greitens and Wood draw on the military virtues of discipline and selflessness to guide others towards inner peace and, ultimately, to help build a more vigorous nation.
Author
Joe Klein
Joe Klein is an award-winning journalist and the author of seven books, including the #1 bestseller Primary Colors. His weekly Time column, “In the Arena,” covers US politics, elections, and foreign policy and has won two National Headliner Awards for best magazine column.
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Reviews for Charlie Mike
Rating: 3.357142857142857 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
7 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5When Joe Klein begins to tell the story, he explains how the devastating earthquake in Haiti inspired Eric Greitens and Jake Wood, two Iraq war veterans, to offer their help. Who better then former soldiers trained to work under the most stressful conditions could there be, they thought, but they encountered bureaucratic nonsense when they tried to go through proper channels. Instead, they organized a group of former “brothers in combat” with whom they had deployed to Iraq, and formed Team Rubicon. This team, that was hurriedly assembled, worked so well together and accomplished so much good in a very short time, working with the Jesuits, that they decided to continue their mission by finding new ways to offer their help when disasters occurred around the world. They knew how to deploy quickly and accomplish their goals efficiently without the governmental red tape that normally held things up and prevented missions from getting done in a timely fashion. They wanted the returning servicemen who often had trouble adjusting to life back home again, to volunteer in this effort. They could jump through hoops and over hurdles to accomplish good things for society; that was the ambition that drove them to offer their service to the country to begin with, and in that way they could also readjust to life back home. Team Rubicon grew and went wherever there was a need. They were involved with the clean up in Sandy Hook, N.J., which suffered massive flooding after a storm, offered their help in the places devastated by Hurricane Katrina, traveled to Chile to help after a terrible earthquake, and to Pakistan to help in a Cholera epidemic. If the need for help arose, they tried to answer the call. They created ancillary businesses to give jobs to returning veterans, provided counseling, and offered scholarships for education. Families of returning soldiers and the fallen became involved as well.The most important message to come out of the book was that these loyal, returning veterans would never stop trying to help others, and they would never give up on their mission. Sadly, although the men and women had noble intentions and were well-meaning and brave, some were damaged before they went to war, and so they were more so after they came home. Helping these returnees to acclimate and assimilate into the peaceful world was often a losing battle. These brave men and women tried hard to save each other but some were lost to suicide while they waited to be approved for help by the Veteran’s Administration, which was, and still is, underfunded and in disarray in many places.Charlie Mike means “continue the mission” in military speak, and these men and women were obsessed with doing just that. All Americans should be grateful for their effort. However, Klein’s sometimes subtle, but obvious, left-wing interjections often interfered with the thread connecting the stories about these war heroes, and they even sometimes dominated the narrative and obscured the emphasis on their courage and their suffering. The book, unfortunately, was disorganized; it skipped around from place to place in each chapter without what seemed to be a rational outline. The chapters seemed disconnected from each other. Although the book is described as being one that is about the two men mentioned above, it mentioned so many other men and women that it was hard to even remember which person was being discussed from chapter to chapter or which place each new disaster occurred. Because the story about these courageous men and women was important to me, I soldiered on and read it until the end, but I think the book should have been organized differently, with each chapter fully “vetting” a single featured character and his background. Then in the final chapters, the way they came together to work and help in disaster areas would have been more structured enabling the dots to be connected. It was simply too scattered, too repetitive, too detailed and too politically motivated.The author wanted to expose the difficulties the soldiers faced when returning to civilian life after being in the theater of war. They suffered from physical, mental and emotional stress, often succumbing to PTSD. Klein delved deeply into the background of many of the soldiers he discussed, often including a bit too much detail, and sometimes the narrator, Graham, became too much a part of the book, over-emoting as if it was a stage production. When Klein attempted to wax poetic and get lyrical, the book also faltered. It needed a more sober approach to pay homage to those who served, those who wanted to “continue their mission” long after they had to do so.Both Greitens and Wood were part of the cadre of returning veterans from the Iraq war. These men and women should have been welcomed home as heroes by all of us because they are the ones that stand between danger and our safety, but they were often forgotten in the shuffle, in the political brouhaha framed by the liberal left and their hypocritical cohorts like “Code Pink”. They promptly forgot their vociferous and boisterous objections to war once the Democrats assumed power and the Republicans exited, which they readily admit. They can no longer get the following they had during the Bush administration when they protest now, during Obama’s reign. “Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the women’s anti-war group Code Pink, blames the Democrats”, according to the Washington Times of 9/4/13.Instead of honoring our returning soldiers, anti-war sentiment portrayed them as collaborators. They were not welcomed home like the brave men and women they were, but instead they were ostracized. The damage done by these hypocritical do-gooders is as damaging as what was done to the Viet Nam war veterans at a different time in history. Perhaps if the soldiers had been welcomed more kindly and debriefed more effectively on their return they would not have been so lost and ill at ease when they returned home after leaving the war zone. These men witnessed death and destruction and terrible acts of atrocity, some by those they knew, some who simply lost it in the heat of battle and death all around them, some simply as a direct result of what happens in a war. They needed and still need respect and care when they return, not demonstrations shaming them. Even though the book is not written that well, it deserves to be read because of the message which honors our men and women in uniform.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/54.75 stars.Charlie Mike is not the name of any person, but military shorthand for “continue the mission.” This is the story of some veterans from America’s 21st century wars and their reorientation to civilian life. Navy veteran Eric Greitens was the initial driving force behind the organization that grew to be named “The Mission Continues.” His life had been filled with a desire to achieve excellence in all things, academics, sports, martial arts, leadership, and service, military and otherwise. That innate urge led him to carve a way for veterans of his generation to transition back to the civilian world. Eric’s ideal of “warrior” and all that entailed convinced him that veterans needed not only to be of service but also needed the camaraderie of fellow veterans while doing so. Many felt isolated from the civilian population and struggled to fit in. Give them a mission/purpose with other vets and they could heal each other and hopefully decrease the astronomical rate of suicide and emotional dysfunction among the men and women who had served. Jake Wood, a Marine veteran of Afghanistan, and his buddy Clay Hunt, were on their way back from volunteer service in post earthquake Haiti, on a plane to Miami, when they found Eric’s advertisement in “Outside” magazine. He was looking for veterans who wanted to be part of a force that used their military skills for service to others. Jake and Clay had just completed a remarkable experience in Haiti and both knew they wanted to help at another disaster zone in the future. To their surprise, they found the Haitian people gracious and grateful for the help that they brought. They saw no evidence of the havoc that was described on broadcast TV and in other media. That was the opening for Jake and Eric to join forces. Team Rubicon, focusing on disaster response, and The Mission Continues, the larger organization with a wider scope of service projects result. The Mission Continues has its own website and presently has a large number of corporate sponsors, celebrity board members, and thousands of veterans in its membership. Klein documents the beginning and the extraordinary lives of the men and women involved in this project. I found this book eminently readable. Klein writes well, packs a lot of information into these pages, and his deep respect and admiration for the people involved in this organization are evident. At times I found him a bit too emotional, but that is just a matter of opinion. It is a book about people who have been to hell and back, some still with one foot in hell, so know that you will alternately cheer and tear when you read their stories. Not all make it back to civilian life. There are undiagnosed traumatic brain injuries, post traumatic stress (which one psychiatrist refuses to call a disorder because PTS is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation), and the incredible stress of dealing with the Veterans Administration and their byzantine application process. There are broken relationships among the veterans as well as veterans and their loved ones. There is also heroic generosity of spirit backed up with action. The biggest surprise to me was to learn how these combat veterans felt about the people and places where they were deployed. This review will be published in the Book Remarks column of the Coastal Breeze News (Marco Island, FL) 5/27/2016 issue.