The Majors: The Brotherhood of War

The Majors: The Brotherhood of War by W.E.B. Griffin

The third installment of the “Brotherhood of War” series.  As I’m reading these, I’m enjoying them so much that I’m really not stopping and reflecting much upon completion. As soon as I finish one book, I literally pick up the next and continue. That’s a good thing. It means the story is compelling and I’m not getting bored.

This leads me to conclude that there really isn’t many differences from book to book. The three main characters in this military saga seem to get promoted to the rank in the title of the book at some point, but that’s about it. There’s a lot of “military” obviously in these books, and the author is obviously trying to tell a story of how it really is or was.

Of all the books in this series so far, this had the least “war” in it. The majority of this story takes place in a small military camp in Alabama.   The volume starts in 1954 during the French-Vietnamese conflict with a few of our heroes being air dropped into Dien Bien Phu.  The particular event in our story happens rather quickly, however, and were quickly shifted stateside for the rest of the story.

If you were to be challenged to come up with some sort of background for this individual book, it would be quite difficult. The way I understand it (and forgive me, my military language might not be up to snuff), the army is working on a prototype helicopter that will a) be able to fight in combat – and – b) be large enough to carry a multitude of people – presumably to get them in and out of battle.  During the Korean conflict, helicopters were introduced to combat, but they were only used to mainly transport the wounded to field hospitals.    With this new project, there are a lot of politics and hurdles to overcome.  Example: Shouldn’t the air force be spearheading this since helicopters, you know, fly??  Again, author Griffin is bringing real life scenarios to the pages.

Because there’s not a lot of actual fighting, there’s a lot more leisure time for our soldiers. We read about a lot of drinking.  Maybe it’s because I’m not much of a drinker, but sheesh, you need a tally sheet to record all the references to soldiers and/or their wives “having a stiff drink” etc.  There’s also a lot of sex in this book. Anytime we meet a new female character in one of these books, you can bet she’ll be having sex with one of the soldiers very shortly.  You couple the sex factor with the drinking factor, and you have big problems that affect some of our main players.  This was a bit too soap opera-ish for me, but these books move at such a fast pace, that the author really doesn’t give you much time to get bored.

Despite the fact that there is very little conflict in this particular installment, I still highly recommend the series. Do yourself a favor and ensure you read these books in order, however. It’s not necessary, but it’s highly advisable.   Plus, as I’ve mentioned, all of the books are all quite enjoyable.