Battle Cry by Leon Uris Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Battle Cry
Book Review: Battle Cry
Summary: 5 Stars
Received Book in excellent condition. Great Price, Fast Delivery. My Son is enjoying it. Wonderful Seller. Totally Satisfied in all aspects of Sale and Company and the processing and delivery of my Order.Book Review: Great Book with the Comic Book Title
Summary: 5 Stars
At first, I thought a book called "Battle Cry" might be fairly reminiscent of the comic strip, "Sgt. Rock and His Howling Commandos of Easy." In that, I was disappointed, which means I was very relieved.
This book is a surprisingly good war story of the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine (Pogey Bait) Regiment. From the call to arms to their decimation on a Pacific Island invasion, you learn about the backgrounds of several of the marines in the Communications section of their battalion.
Uris demonstrates the knack for bringing characters to life where you feel their fears, hopes, dreams, and in this case, their intense esprit de corps.
I have a few qualifications for giving a five-star rating:
Do I still have the book?
Yes.
Would I ever pick it up, and read it again?
Yes.
Was I sorry that I came to the end of the book?
Yes.
I have only read two of Uris' books; I'm glad that this was one of them.
Book Review: Leon Uris' "Battle Cry"
Summary: 5 Stars
An outstanding piece of WWII historical fiction. Unlike other great works of this genre' (Herman Wouk's "War and Remembrance" for instance), this tale is not told from the perspective of the colonels and generals, but rather as experienced by the U.S. Marine sergeants and privates.
The tale thoroughly and patiently follows a group of young men from the train stations where they left their hometowns, through boot camp and training, and onto the beaches of Guadalcanal and Tarawa atoll where they fell in combat. Uris did not all neglect the issue of back home wives and girlfriends, who are so very important to men isolated so far from home.
His first novel, Uris wrote this from his own experience. He was a WWII enlisted Marine combat veteran in the Pacific. First published in 1953, this book was written while memories were still fresh. In a way, it's a bit dated, with terminology and (superior) social values from an America of yesterday. On the other hand, Marine and Navy veterans will recognize the jargon and behaviors that are still in use today. Tradition.
A reviewer has criticized the slow opening pace. I disagree. The device was used to well acquaint the reader with and help him/her to grow to know and love the players, just as these Marines loved their "buddies".
I noted in the author's epilogue that he strongly and repeatedly disclaimed any connection of the fictional officers in his story (he even names them) to any real life personalities he had served under. Glaringly absent was a similar disclaimer regarding the enlisted men in his story. I infer from this that many of the colorful enlisted characters of the book might be representations of Pfc Uris' actual wartime colleagues. A memorial to them, if you will. Interesting.
Uris used an unusual and successful style technique in "Battle Cry". The tale is sometimes written in third person narrative, and at other times narrated in first person by a veteran sergeant in the battalion named Mac. But it's really about the teenage boys that did most of the fighting . . . sometimes hand to hand. Again, Uris was not in a hurry and patiently let the story play out. At times it is slow and monotonous, as was the wartime Marine life. At other times the action is overwhelming. Writing realistically from life experience, the battle scenes are not an organized test of marksmanship between two opposing teams . . . the fighting is chaos. This is the kind of book that provokes the reader to alternately laughing out loud, cheering, or weeping.
This is not a cheap blood and guts war story. It's a great tale of courage, leadership, brotherhood and humanity - Well told.
Book Review: Not Gripping!
Summary: 2 Stars
Being a Marine and having read many books about Marines I would say that this book was written for romantic minded teenagers and hardly much of a depiction of young men serving during war time. Even in 1942 marines cursed profusely and were crass on more occasions than they would like their parents to know about. The characters in this book resembled more like the characters out of the old sitcoms such as "Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver or Gomer Pyle. Yes, the time of his writing this book was a more innocent age but not that innocent. The story is pleasant enough but hardly gripping. To say it depicts the US Marine Corps life of that time, well.....
My guess is that Mr. Uris chose not to reveal the coarser side of military life so as not to offend too many people and make the book more palatable to a broader audience. This is my first Uris novel as I usually read non-fiction historical accounts and since novels are not something I read very often maybe my review and rating is a bit harsh but for me this was not a book to hold my attention. RB
Book Review: Very dated material, doesn't translate to current times.
Summary: 1 Stars
Not good. This book, I'm sure, was good in it's time, but everything about the book is dated to 1953, more than 50 years ago. I should have checked the publish date before I ordered. So, I found after a few chapters that I was wasting my time and threw it out.
More Battle Cry reviews:
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