Spearhead: An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives in World War II
By: Adam Makos / Narrated By: Johnathan McClain
Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
Another Makos Jolly-Decent Listen
What can I say? Adam Makos may indeed be a tad hammy, a tad repetitive, whatever. But he does have a way with setting up protagonists in his military histories whereby their humanity shines through oh so brightly, and by the end you’re feeling all warm and fuzzy, and you’re furtively wiping a tear or two away. Whouda thunk a military history could make ya weep like a baby?
All right, there was no sobbing over here, but I did have to swallow down a Mega Lump in my throat by the end. Probably because of that OTHER thing Makos does which is make one wonder why the hell we go to war in the first place. After all, the unlikeliest of friendships can occur after war. So it’s baffling, and with Spearhead, we have combatants turned friends, heroes turned suicide statistics, grateful survival turned PTSD struggle. It’s tragic.
Because Clarence, the tank gunner who the book follows survives all of the harrowing battles he was involved in (all told with graphic detail, but not too excessively) only to come back to be shaken by nightmares, bouts of insomnia, flashbacks; you name it. And it all gets worse when he sees his own tank in a documentary, and a small but very violent skirmish is captured by the camera. He’d thought at the time that things were a certain way, and while there were distressing results, it’s nowhere NEAR as bad as what the reality of the situation turned out to be. Clarence, so many years after the war, is haunted anew.
Gustav was a German teenager who also survived many battles, also was part of a tank crew, also was involved in that haunting incident. He battles many demons of his own…
So of course, Makos takes that one situation and turns it into a LENGTHY LENGTHY book. A few times I found my mind wandering, hoping we’d get back to Gustav, or hoping for more Clarence, but what the hey: I LOVE military history, so I snapped to and got back to paying attention. I only mention the wandering of the mind because I think Makos could use a bit more diligent editing. This audiobook could’ve been much shorter.
Speaking of “audio”! When I saw that Spearhead was coming out, I dearly hoped John Pruden would be the narrator as he does military history and nonfiction like nobody’s business… As it was, I was pleasantly surprised with Johnathan McClain’s performance. Anything Adam Makos writes demands that emotion as well as action must be conveyed well. And thanks be to gosh, McClain delivers! One truly feels the horrors of the battles (and there’s NOTHING so horrifying as men trapped in tanks, burning alive), and at the end, one feels the desolation of the elderly survivors.
Okay, so even though I got a tad twitchy about the length, this was a worthwhile listen, as is any Makos book. Clarence and Gustav go through so much and see enough to ensure nightmares for decades to come. They never wanted to kill anyone; they just wanted to survive and go home. Alas, they did what they needed to do to live just one more day, and that meant doing things that took years for them to accept: It was War. So the ending, where the two really try to find healing, is touching beyond measure.
Huzzah for Clarence; huzzah for Gustav; huzzah for Veteran’s the world over. Because even tho’ this book tells of two sides? Ultimately it reminds us that we all belong to the same human family…
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