Call of Duty: My Life Before, During, and After the Band of Brothers | 
 enlarge | Authors: Lt Lynn "buck" Compton, Marcus Brotherton
Creator: Dick Hill
Publisher: Tantor Media
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 324285
Format: Audiobook, Cd
Media: Audio CD
Edition: MP3 Una
Number Of Items: 1
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Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 140015734X
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5421421092
EAN: 9781400157341
ASIN: 140015734X
Publication Date: May 6, 2008
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Product Description
This is the story of Lt. Lynn "Buck" Compton of Easy Company, immortalized as the Band of Brothers, a real-life hero who traveled to a faraway place and put his life on the line for the cause of freedom.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
Buck Compton is All-American July 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
When i purchased this book, my impression was that it was going to be about the celebrated "Band of Brothers" ... I've read several a couple of books about Dick Winters, as well as Ambrose's "Band of Brothers". I was actually surprised how little time was spent on that period ... mainly because that part of Buck Compton's life only represented a few pixels of the much larger picture.
What is enjoyable about the book is that Compton does not put himself on a pedestal for anything ... actually, most of the book is spent downplaying anything that could ever be interpreted as grand, heroic or egotistical ... he doesn't want accolades (as his daughters didn't even know he earned medals for valor in World War II until the "Band of Brothers" premier). This is a story of a humble and decent man with a strong sense of duty, self-pride, work-ethic, integrity and honesty.
I think the point of him writing this book was less a tale of being one of the Band of Brothers than using that role to prove to people that being an American is a greatt blessing if one is willing to work hard and make sacrifices when necessary.
There are several surprises in the book. He is quick to point out innacuracies in the Band of Brother book and movie, but does so in a manner that is not accusatory. He is also quick to marginalize, to some degree, the grand stature bestowed upon him as "Lt. Buck Compton" ... to him, his war service was nothing more than fulfilling a duty to his nation along with millions of other young men.
He completes the book with a chapter about his politcal views and I am sure it will offend or annoy some ... too bad, he's earned the right to state them and his life experiences have obviously shaped them (not newspapers or newsanchors).
Bottom line ... the man has led a very impressive life ... it was an enjoyable read and when i was finished i couldn't help but thinking how lucky we are to have people like him among us.
A fine American, a Rashomon-like story, and a "poor man's Rush Limbaugh" July 23, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Since the success of the HBO series "Band of Brothers" (BoB), several other books have come out about some of the key members of that story.
So far, these books have included autobiographies by Dick Winters in "Beyond Band of Brothers", Bill Guarnere and Babe Heffron in "Brothers in Battle", Donald Malarkey in "Easy Company Soldier" , and Lynn "Buck " Compton in "Call of Duty". David Kenyon Webster had earlier written his war autobiography in the 1950's, and this was finally published in 1994 with help from Stephen Ambrose as "Parachute Infantry". In addition, a separate biography of Dick Winters - "Biggest Brother" - was written by Larry Alexander.
Reading all of these books and re-watching the HBO movie series on DVD has a Rashomon-like quality. Details of how things happened in E Company's WWII campaign change from one storyteller to the next. Like Rashomon, from the differences in the stories, it is possible to glean insights into the characters of each of these men and how they wanted to remember themselves.
As mentioned by other reviewers, of all of these books, this one by Buck Compton actually has the least amount of information about E Company's actions during WWII. It does turn out to be an excellent study in the life and times of the Los Angeles area from the Depression all the way through the 1980's. In particular, the section on Compton's career as an LAPD policemen and then district attorney read like something out of "LA Confidential".
Buck Compton lived an incredibly full life - he was a child actor in Hollywood, a UCLA baseball player and a lineman for the UCLA football team that won the Pac-10 and went to the Rose Bowl for the first time in 1943, a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne during WWII who won a Silver Star for his role in destroying a German artillery battery in Normandy, a plainclothes policeman for the LAPD, and an LA district attorney who prosecuted Sirhan Sirhan for the assassination of Robert Kennedy. He was appointed by Ronald Reagan to be a judge on the California State Court of Appeals. Finally retiring to the San Juan Islands off the coast of Seattle, he would become a "poor man's Rush Limbaugh" (in the words of one of his daughters) as a conservative radio talk show host.
Ultimately, though, it was Compton's brief time with E Company that made him famous enough to get his autobiography published.
An analysis of Compton's time with E Company:
The discrepancy between Compton's recollections of the battle at Carenton and the accounts of others in E Company is easily explained. It is clear from Compton's book that, after the Brecourt assault, he somehow became separated from the rest of E Company in the general confusion of Army maneuvers as the soldiers moved to attack Carenton. Thus, he arrived late to Carenton, after the battle was over, and his account describes only the post-combat scenes of destruction and carnage. Compton's account does jive with all of the other BoB accounts - Compton's name never appears in any of the other descriptions of the attack on Carenton, as it is now clear that he simply wasn't there.
The attack at Brecourt would be the highlight of Compton's combat efforts. His only other contributions to E Company consisted of getting shot in the buttocks almost immediately when the shooting started in the Holland campaign, and then getting caught in the hell of Bastogne as E Company was sent out to hold the perimeter against a constant German artillery fire.
Which brings us to the uncomfortable topic of Buck Compton's moment of "combat fatigue" at Bastogne.
Although Compton firmly denies that he suffered a PTSD-type breakdown at Bastogne, there's a lot of evidence in his own account in this book that after the successful assault on the German guns at Brecourt, he rapidly lost his taste for fierce combat. Ambrose, in fact, states in his book that none of the original E Company men would ever charge as recklessly into battle as they did at Brecourt. Their initial enthusiasm for combat would rapidly be replaced by a general sense of self-preservation as they saw how many of their buddies were getting killed.
Compton's own version of the event at Bastogne puts the blame on Lieutenant Dike, E Company's useless replacement lieutenant during Bastogne. He states that he ran off the line to find Dike, and later raged about Dike's absence. Despite his explanation, the weight of the evidence from the other BoB accounts is that, yes, he did suffer a PTSD breakdown, becoming unable to function in his role as a second lieutenant for his unit after witnessing the carnage inflicted by the German shelling. The whole purpose of the military command structure is so that there is always someone to step in to take over in another soldier's absence. Other survivors of the shelling such as Carwood Lipton and Donald Malarkey would step in to hold E Company together.
Compton was not an original Toccoa man, having joined E Company in England. He had not suffered through Captain Sobel as the others did. And so his level of bonding with the rest of E Company was not as tight, something that becomes clear from a close reading of this book. After his best friends Guarnere and Toye were mangled in the German shelling, it appears that he lost his closest ties to E Company.
Contrary to the "happy ending" depiction in the HBO series, Compton did not return to E Company at the end of WWII. Officially recovered from trench foot, he was given orders to go back to E Company, but, on his way, stopped in Paris, and there met an old friend who transferred him to another unit that was engaged mostly in playing Army baseball and football.
He states that in hindsight, he should have gone back to E Company, just to set the record straight about his character, but I think the reality at the time was that he knew that his closest friends in E Company were gone by then - dead, wounded, or transferred - and that E Company was now filled with replacement soldiers.
And, unlike Ambrose's description of E Company as a tight brotherhood of friends, Compton would later, at an E Company reunion, be accused by a drunken Lewis Nixon of being a coward. Malarkey would come to Compton's defense (an identical account of this event appears in Malarkey's book).
And so, like all Hollywood movies, like most of history, like Rashomon, the truth is far, far more complex than it seems at first. This has been true for the story of E Company as well.
It is not for us, noncombatants, to judge Compton's character - his service in WWII required far more bravery than most of us could ever muster. Compton is a fine American, who did more than his share in WWII, and then later accomplished even more as a public servant for the state of California. His many other accomplishments in life may in fact have encouraged him to forget about his brief moment in WWII with E Company (he was with them for only for about one year).
The book ends, somewhat jarringly, with Compton's career as a "poor man's Rush Limbaugh", and his fierce diatribe against socialism. As this review is already far too long, I will just say this - he definitely got this part wrong. Socialism and free market capitalism are merely opposite ends of an eternal struggle between doing what is best for all people in society (including the poor and incompetent), versus the need to reward individual initiative and drive. Societies that run to the extremes of one or the other have always been terrible societies. Our goal as Americans should be to find the best balance between the two.
 can we push the editor out of a moving plane? July 17, 2008
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
I looked forward to reading the autobiography of "Buck" Compton, one of the officers of easy company in the now famous Band of Brothers. There are already several very good autobiographies out by some of the surviving members of E company of the 506 PIR of the 101st Airborne division but they are almost exclusively by what are called `Taccoa men,' that is men who were part of the original members of the company when it was formed. Compton was not a Taccoa man. He joined the regiment before it entered combat but after it had been forged into a close knit unit. The insight he might bring to this, I thought, would be fascinating.
Unfortunately, while other books by members of E company are well written, this is not. Personally I blame the editors at "Berkley Caliber" who should have seen the problems and addressed them before this went to print. Some details are organizational and some do reflect Compton's style but both are things the editors should have looked to.
For example it is common with these books to start with some dangerous event and then after wondering `how did I get here?" you go back to the start of the life that led you to that point. Buck starts this way, talking about the first time he jumped from a plane, but then with shaky starts you are moved to Normandy and then his first fight where his gun jambs and then, after 20 pages and multiple false starts do you go back to his youth. The editor should have seen this for the mess it is and sorted it out.
At barely 250 pages this is a fairly short book, most of the others are around 300 pages but that is less my concern than how much, or rather how little, focuses on his time in Easy company. In a 250 page book Mr. Compton Joined easy company on page 90 and by page 152 the war is over. Yes we want to know what happened to him before and after. What events shaped him and how to he got on after the war, but the war experiences should make up the bulk of this book. People bought it because of Band of Brothers.
What he does recount is often strangely at odds with what others remember. For example he talks about walking into Carentan without firing a shot while others have written about a fight to get into the town, most notably all other sources talk of Mr. winters, the company commander moving around on a road swept with enemy fire, urging his men forward. 33 days in action are glossed over very quickly by Compton, in about 2 pages. What are life forming moments for others seem to have become only a blur to him, given as much space in the book at his participation in the 1942 Rose bowl.
At some point the editors should have stepped in and said something like "Uh ,Buck, can you thicken this up a bit, it's awful short on this stuff." Then again, maybe they did. Compton is a shameless name dropper. He wants you to know all the famous people he knew and some of it is relevant but some of it is gratuitous. It's cute that he palled around with a young Mickey Rooney or that he played college ball with Jackie Robinson. I appreciate the story of an exchange they have on a train ride, talking about a loose woman, but Buck then goes on to spend nearly a page detailing the very public history of Jackie Robinson in major league baseball. Then he spends almost 2/3rds of a page is about how a guy he knew in ROTC went on to be a big wheel in the CIA. Maybe this was his padding. His way of making the book thicker but by the time he tells you how he went through jump school with the brother of the CHiP's commander you just want to tell him to drop it or tell their stories instead of his own..
Strangely events that could have been fun, escorting the glamorous Roslyn Russell to a dance, are glossed over.
To be fair Buck did not get on well with some of the other officers in Easy company, and it may be that this is being reflected in his writing. One wonders why he wrote the book. He says he spoke to Stephen Ambrose for only 30 minutes and most of the stories about him are anecdotal from others and he needs to set the record straight but the overall effect is weak, and disorganized and for that I blame the editors who are supposed to see this sort of problem and fix it before the public shells out good money. Mr. compton dedicated his life to public service and beyond being commendable this is an example for all americans. compton, liek all true heros, denies he was a hero and peopel should not laud him for what he did but those who died in the war. But people who bought this book were looking for the story of one of the "Band of Brothers" not the prosecutor who put away Surhan-Surhan. Mr. compton, in telling your story, in remembering those who never came back to tell their tales, that is how you could have best honored them.
Please do not take this that I am belittling Lt. compton's service. The man could have sat out the war in a safe state side job but he wanted to serve his country. He joined and led some of the finest light infantry this nation has ever produced. He fought in Normandy, Holland and Belgium and saw his closest friends reduced to hamburger. Along the way he was awarded the Silver Star and 2 combat stars on his jump wings and left his blood spilled in the soil of Europe to help free the world and defend his home. That is the resume of a hero in my book. My complaint is with the way his book is presented.
 A Man of Exceptional Character July 4, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
As the Title states this is about Before, During, and After WWII. I never did consider these guys ''The Greatest Generation'' because they won a Popular War that our Government wanted to win. Americans could win any war that We Were Allowed to Win. These guys did, however, go through the Great Depression as kids and most had developed a sense of responsability in their early years. As a child Compton worked as an extra on movie sets. He gave his earnings to his parents to help support the family. He went to UCLA on a football scholarship but had to work on campus four hours a day. When he finally got in the Army,,he could have stayed in the states and played regimental baseball but chose to be a paratrooper.
He hits the high spots of his time spent in the war. If you want to say he was ''Defensive'' ...he probably had some good reasons. I believe that Compton, among others, got shafted in the Mini-series. From reading his book and other little tid-bits that I have picked up, he left the line at Bastogne from a serious case of trenchfoot. When he was trying to get back to the unit from the hospital he ran into an old friend that got him a job in Paris for the rest of the war. I didn;t notice any other officers turning down chances to get promoted to Headquarters or rear-eschelon jobs. The mini-series made it sound like he spent the rest of the war in a padded cell or some such thing. Whatever the truth is,,,Compton spent more time on the Line than most of the Officers in and around Easy Company He couldn't have told much that hasn't been told several times in the other BOB books.
When a person comes home from a War it's easy to have some self-pity and get an attitude. You just left a bunch of guys that you loved and had everything in common with and now you are all alone with a bunch of people that don't even have a clue.
Compton hit the ground running. This guy worked full time as a policeman and went to Law School full time as well. He excelled at everything he did,,,not because it was dropped in his lap but because he worked his tail off. This should serve as an example for the returning servicemen of today. Compton's depth of character was what impressed me about his life. As a paratrooper, myself, jumping out of an airplane is no big deal,,, dealing with life,,day after day, year after year is what's tough.
He talks about some of his more interesting cases from his days as a Prosecutor,,, especially the RFK assasination case.
I highly recommend this book. The Americans that went to war in WWII were mostly Citizen Soldiers. This is a story of one citizen that helped win the war and the kind of citizen that makes this country great.
War changes a person. That should be evident from reading Ambrose's book or watching the Mini-Series. These guys had all varied lives before, during, and after the war. From that point of view this book goes into more detail than most. I've read them all. I really can't pick one book and say it was the Best or Worst. I can say that this book certainly adds a lot to the Band of Brothers Reading List and is a Must-Read for the Serious BOB Buff.
The rest of the story! June 26, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Lynn Buck Compton is a well deserved member of the "Greatest Generation". His book is, as Paul Harvey would say, "the rest of the story". The four words that jump out at me are "I did my job" in reference to WW2. My father said the same thing. This generation saw their role in saving the world for freedom as simply a job. Each person did his or her job to the best of their ability. Buck Compton explains to us how these same attributes were carried on after the war. His life is a great commentary on the making of the "right stuff" in America. Only in America would the sequence of events in his life lead to the life he led. I think Buck would agree "God Bless America" and keep her forever free!
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