My Detachment
A Memoir
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Narrated by:
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Tracy Kidder
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By:
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Tracy Kidder
About this listen
Kidder was an ROTC intelligence officer, just months out of college and expecting a stateside assignment, when his orders arrived for Vietnam. There, lovesick, anxious, and melancholic, he tried to assume command of his detachment, a ragtag band of eight more-or-less ungovernable men charged with reporting on enemy radio locations.
He eventually learned not only to lead them but to laugh and drink with them as they shared the boredom, pointlessness, and fear of war. Together, they sought a ghostly enemy, homing in on radio transmissions and funneling intelligence gathered by others. Kidder realized that he would spend his time in Vietnam listening in on battle but never actually experiencing it.
With remarkable clarity and with great detachment, Kidder looks back at himself from across three and a half decades, confessing how, as a young lieutenant, he sought to borrow from the tragedy around him and to imagine himself a romantic hero. Unrelentingly honest, rueful, and revealing, My Detachment gives us war without heroism, while preserving those rare moments of redeeming grace in the midst of lunacy and danger. The officers and men of My Detachment are not the sort of people who appear in war movies, they are the ones who appear only in war, and they are unforgettable.
©2005 Tracy Kidder (P)2005 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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From its terrifying opening to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone. Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time.
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All of the reviews are correct.
- By Mark Thoreson on 01-18-22
By: Michael Herr
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The Green Berets
- The Amazing Story of the U.S. Army's Elite Special Forces Unit
- By: Robin Moore
- Narrated by: Jim Frangione
- Length: 14 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Robin Moore became one of the first true embedded journalists by training with and fighting alongside the Green Berets in Vietnam. Though fictionalized, his work is an eye-opening exposé of the horrors of the Vietnam War and the basis for the hit John Wayne movie of the same title. Taut, fast-paced, and interspersed with unforgettable accounts of combat, Moore’s novel features an American major who goes "native" with Montagnard tribesmen, a courageous Vietnamese girl who poses as a rabid anti-American Communist to capture a murderous Viet Cong officer, and the unforgettable acts of courage of soldiers in the field.
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Green Berets Nam and beyond
- By Jawbone on 10-07-17
By: Robin Moore
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The Good Soldiers
- By: David Finkel
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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It was the last-chance moment of the war. In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced a new strategy for Iraq. He called it "the surge". "Many listening tonight will ask why this effort will succeed when previous operations to secure Baghdad did not. Well, here are the differences," he told a skeptical nation. Among those listening were the young, optimistic Army infantry soldiers of the 2-16, the battalion nicknamed the Rangers.
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Honest opinion folks
- By james on 11-06-11
By: David Finkel
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From Here to Eternity
- By: James Jones
- Narrated by: Elijah Alexander
- Length: 36 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Diamond Head, Hawaii, 1941. Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt is a champion welterweight and a fine bugler. But when he refuses to join the company's boxing team, he gets "the treatment" that may break him or kill him. First Sgt. Milton Anthony Warden knows how to soldier better than almost anyone, yet he's risking his career to have an affair with the commanding officer's wife. Both Warden and Prewitt are bound by a common bond: the Army is their heart and blood...and, possibly, their death.
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Genius on Every Level
- By aaron on 06-13-13
By: James Jones
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In Pharaoh's Army
- Memories of the Lost War
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Whether he is evoking the blind carnage of the Tet offensive, the theatrics of his fellow Americans, or the unraveling of his own illusions, Wolff brings to this work the same uncanny eye for detail, pitiless candor, and mordant wit that made This Boy's Life a modern classic.
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Boring Waste of Time
- By Ethan on 08-21-22
By: Tobias Wolff
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The Last Jump
- A Novel of World War II
- By: John E. Nevola
- Narrated by: Mike Ortego
- Length: 23 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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The Last Jump is a war story, a mystery, a love tale, and a tribute to the people who won World War II. Fact and fiction intermix seamlessly to unravel a secret passionately guarded by four aging soldiers. The reader is transported back in time to an imperfect America, with all is incredible virtues and vexing shortcomings struggling with racial and gender issues while fighting for its very survival. It was time when Americans stood shoulder to shoulder to free the world from tyranny.
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Good Story, Too Preachy
- By Michael Brown on 09-15-17
By: John E. Nevola
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Nam-Sense: Surviving Vietnam with the 101st Airborne
- By: Arthur Wiknik Jr.
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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An honest tour of the Vietnam War from the soldier's eye view... Nam-Sense is the brilliantly written story of a combat squad leader in the 101st Airborne Division. Arthur Wiknik was a 19-year-old kid from New England when he was drafted into the US Army in 1968. After completing various NCO training programs, he was promoted to sergeant "without ever setting foot in a combat zone" and sent to Vietnam in early 1969. Shortly after his arrival on the far side of the world, Wiknik was assigned to Camp Evans, a mixed-unit base camp near the Northern village of Phong Dien.
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A very good view of the war from a grunt's view.
- By Frank B. Smith on 07-16-19
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The Silence of War
- An Old Marine in a Young Marine's War
- By: Terry McGowan, Bill O'Reilly - foreword
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Terry McGowan had been a beat cop, a marine captain, and a special agent for the FBI before retiring at the age of 50. But when tragedy struck the United States on September 11, 2001, Terry felt an undiminished sense of duty to protect and serve his country. Six years later he was in Iraq as a member of a team of high-ranking retired and active-duty military working for the highest level of marine military intelligence. His success in Iraq led to a position as a law enforcement professional with the marines in Afghanistan.
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Respectful, Heartfelt, but Writing is Dry
- By Gillian on 09-04-16
By: Terry McGowan, and others
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I'm Staying with My Boys
- The Heroic Life of Sgt. John Basilone, USMC
- By: Jim Proser, Jerry Cutter
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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I'm Staying with My Boys is a firsthand look inside the life of one of the greatest heroes of the Greatest Generation. Sgt. John Basilone held off 3000 Japanese troops at Guadalcanal after his 15-member unit was reduced to three men. At Iwo Jima he single-handedly destroyed an enemy blockhouse, allowing his unit to capture an airfield. Minutes later he was killed by an enemy artillery round. He was the only Marine in World War II to have received the Medal of Honor, the Navy Cross, and a Purple Heart.
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Devil Dogs!
- By Skip Drake on 10-25-18
By: Jim Proser, and others
What listeners say about My Detachment
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Roy
- 08-29-09
An Antiwar Memoir
I am a fan of Tracy Kidder and have read all of his books. Like John McPhee he has a true ability to convey what is taking place around him. In this volume he reveals the Viet Nam war through his own eyes and his own point of view. Certainly, he shares his own failings and change during this tour of duty honestly.
You'll not find anything really heroic in this volume. In the end, it seemed as though Kidder picked up his former fiction manuscript and decided to write a memoir about his experience. Unfortunately, he still seems to be nursing old "wounds" about slights and bureaucratic snafus that he endured while there.
The reader is warned by Kidder at the outset that this is the saddest story you'll ever hear. That is self serving and not really true. The reader will get a distinct picture of one Officer's experience in and feelings about the war. The volume is well read and written. Ultimately, it contains insight into the conflict that is narrow in focus, but valuable nonetheless.
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