Customer Reviews:
 God made us free. Let's mean every word. October 18, 2008
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Guilty until proved innocent. His crime? Being an Evangelical in America. Everybody knows Evangelical Christians aren't to take advantage of free speech; free speech is only meant for the self-righteous Left... right? Irony aside, the Leftist media found Boykin guilty without hearing him out.
This is the story of another soldier who found his nemesis in the Leftist media instead of in druglord Pablo Escobar, Pineapple Noriega of Panama, or among the gun-crazies of Somalia. No, these are almost cartoon enemies compared to the ones at home. The media crucified him, like they did with black judge Clarence Thomas, only Thomas did't even have his black 'friends' to back him out. Who needs an enemy with friends like us?!
Anyways, this is also the story of Delta Force. It's no about politics at all, but about the aftermath of politics being played on regular guys. A personal journey of a man who fought within and without himself to reconcile his personal faith in a Christian God with serving in America's professional armed forces.
It's a story at times sad, but only at times, because one can feel throughout the book that despite the elites of the US forsaking him, his God never did, and in the end it was worth it. Amen to that. Pages 175-6 are the two funniest pages I have read in many years. A delicatessen.
A lesson out of Mogadishu, Somalia: "Our view was just the opposite (of Clinton's): If you're going to commit the military to combat, go all the way, make the full commitment, and be prepared to accept the cost in human lives. If the men doing the dying were prepared to accept it, then the men in air-conditioned meetings ought to accept it, too." I thought we had learned this after Vietnam, but alas!
Happily Boykin came out clean when finally they left him talk (talk... will they ever let us talk? ...truth hurts, it's dangerous): "The Left can scream all it wants that war on terror is about oil or American imperialism, or G.W.Bush's personal amusement. That if we weren't such big, bad bullies, the poor third world jihadists wouldn't have attacked us, and the French would like us better. But w are not the bad guys. Out motto is life and liberty." Well said. Let's never forget that.
God made us free. Let's mean every word.
 The Failures of the Glory Boys of Delta Farce October 15, 2008
2 out of 14 found this review helpful
Where do I begin? How bout the courageous f**k-up at Son Tay (1970).
It's very clear that leaks from the Foggy Bottom boys screwed up
this mission by warning NV about the raid which Nixon and (especially)
Kissinger did not want to succeed.
Mission Recap: No prisoners were found at Son Tay, lots of bad
guys killed and supposedly no friendlies killed---although other people
said there were people left behind. Fog of War.
Unofficially, Bull Simons and SF grunts were very pissed at their
lack of mission input, lack of up to date intel and mission security.
Bull Simons? Isn't he the one who rescued two of Ross Perot's EDS
employees in 1979? Yep! Unlike the Son Tay screw-up, Bull had total control of this merc mission from start to finish with very few people
'in the loop' to compromise security; PLUS, the Feds---especially the Foggy Bottom boys were given no info about this mission til after the
mission.
Mission Recap: 2 EDS personnel resuced with about 11,000 Iranian
prisoners escaping as cover AND no good guys dying!
1980's Debacle in the Desert? Another Delta Farce, Glory Hound Debacle.
The 1st Sunday after this gold plated mess, I met at church with SF
Col. Taylor.
Mission Recap: Nobody rescued, good guys dying, and Iranians
laughing. Weeks later we found out how micro-f**ked this mission was
by Carter and the boys at Soggy Bottom (Pentagon Pukes): The helo crews
were ordered-ORDERED OVER THEIR OBJECTIONS---to remove the sand filters
from their helicopter engines (!) to 'increase range' and more unbelievable cr*p.
Col. Taylor? Isn't he the guy who planned and executed a rescue mission,
Code Name: Dragon, to rescue men, women and children from Congolese
rebels in the early 60s? Yep!
Mission Recap: About 200 people safely rescued from deep in rebel
territory, no good guys dying and hundreds of brave, heavily armed thugs
killed. (Col. Taylor and his mission remind me of Richard Burton and
the movie: Wild Geese.)
Ruby Ridge? Mission Recap: One dead boy, one dead dog, and one dead
mother getting her head blown apart as she was breast feeding her child---
and one 'good guy' dying. This Delta-FBI-ATF goatf**k was prevented
from killing Weaver and the rest of his family by Bo Gritz.
Bo Gritz? Isn't Col. Gritz the SF officer who successfully led hundreds
of Hill People in raids against NVA, Viet Cong, Pathet Lao and other Commie bad guys for years in SE Asia? Didn't he try to rescue known
POWs from Commie prison camps but was so thwarted by REMFs in DC that he
went public with his 'War against Hanoi and Washington?'
Didn't Gritz try to stop the slaughter at Waco like he did at Ruby Ridge?
Waco? Isn't that where Delta-FBI-ATF Glory Hounds wanted to kill everyone
at the Davidian compound to make up for not destroying everybody at Ruby
Ridge? Yep! Under threat of arrest---or worse---Col. Gritz (USArmy retired) was removed from the area surrounding the Davidian compound
so that the 'good guys' could 'Do their stuff.' And did.
Mission Recap: About 80 men, women and children bar-b-qued or shot
by the 'good guys' as they tried to escape the Fed started fires.
F-Troop 'good guys' dying---mainly from 'friendly fire.' Then lying.
Lots of F-Troop and Delta lying. Shoulda been wired for sound; or,
at least polygraphed. Anyway...
(See: Waco: Rules of Engagement.)
Although there were great SF successes in Afghanistan, most of those
were not Delta. In fact, the Deltas were so messed up by the high
altitude fighting that they had to be rescued a few times.
Didn't Delta screw up so many times that when a British SAS unit accidently came up Bin Laden and friends post 9-11, that the REMFs in
DC forbade SAS from engaging bin Laden and his force? The SAS unit
was told to maintain contact til a Delta Team could be inserted so Delta
could get credit? Glory, Glory, Glory Hallaluyah! ...
So, Delta, Whut happened?
If you notice in Boykin's book, you always see him clean shaven.
In fact, after the grunt SFs did the incredible and routed the Taliban
with lots of grunt help from the Northern Alliance, many of these bearded, long-haired SF heroes were told to get shaves and
a haircut---dut-dut; and, IF they needed to go back into Injun territory, they were ordered by REMF HQ Pukes to wear wigs and fake beards---and
not very good ones at that.
I give this book 3 stars. 2 for accomplishment and 4 for honesty,
because there are a few details left out---deliberately. And, some
should have been left out so as not to compromise native friendlies
or divulge 'Sources and Methods.'
Thanks, Gen. Boykin for your breathtaking honesty, maybe you started
to question the DC REMFs at Waco. An epiphany?
Formerly assigned to 401st SOD USASA and to be attached to 8th SF,
Ft. Gulick, Panama. (1967-69) I'd have accepted the invite; but,
SF wanted me to jump out of perfectly good aircraft and wouldn't
listen to my concerns about my dying in a stupid LALO jump
during a night jungle mission. Loved to have done HALO with
my DLIWC buds from 40,000+ feet. Oh well.
Obviously, they never saw BA Baracus of the TV show the A-Team.
Oops! That was years in the future.
Helpful, Illuminating, and Inspiring October 12, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
20081214 DEPARTED AMAZON WITH OUTRAGE OVER THE MANIPULATION OF VOTES.
I ordered this biography on a whim, as one of a dozen books on irregular warfare that I am using to review the thoughts of others before I publish my own book. When the three boxes from Amazon arrived, this book was buried under others, but was immediately the most attractive for the week-end.
Several important insights are available from this book:
1) Charlie Beckwith, whose book Delta Force: The Army's Elite Counterterrorist Unit I really enjoyed, especially the part where he refused to leave a British field hospital for an American one, learned from the SAS the most important lesson it had to teach, and brought it to DELTA: to be *truly* unconventional, to be *truly* irregular, you must be UNMILITARY. From this page (69) I simply relaxed and enjoyed a great account. I got what I was looking for, sooner than expected.
2) The 12-hour long march from point to point is a time-tested method of screening for individuals who have inherent resolve that cannot be trained for. I quote from page 78: "The Army can train a man to spy, shoot, blow things up, and kill with his bare hands. But it cannot instill in a man the series of two-sided personality coins that cash out as a successful operative: patience and aggression, precision and audacity, the ability to lead or fall in line. Above all, the Army cannot instill resolve beyond physical and mental limits."
3) In the above context, faith is helpful, and faith cannot be taken for granted. Early on I enjoyed the author's explanation of how he reconciled faith with a profession that wages death (for life), finding that every war is a spiritual battle. The author explicitly identifies America as God's land of faith and tolerance, and I agree with him.
4) On page 130, he concludes that some men are evil and simply need to be killed. I agree with that completely. In the 1990's when I first started advocating the need to shift away from the Soviet Union and toward Third World terrorists and criminals, I used the phrase, "one man, one bullet." We still cannot do that today, while the Navy and the Air Force continue to buy fewer really big things for more and more money.
I enjoyed every minute with this book. This is not a "shoot 'em book." This is, as the subtitle communicates, the story of an extraordinary individual, a man born and trained to be the best possible fighter, who found faith and kept faith with God and America. He is "the way it ought to be."
Here are some side notes.
Rumsfeld created the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence because he was furious that his Special Forces had to be "led" into Afghanistan by the CIA (see my review of Jawbreaker: The Attack on bin Laden and al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander.
George Bush Junior betrayed all of us in crucifying and disavowing General Boykin in the face of media lies and exaggerations for which the author was fully exonerated by two Inspector General endeavors.
Media--the out of control largely ignorant media--is the best weapon that terrorists and others who hate America can use. I agree with that, and I am especially concerned at the ignorance of both our current presidential candidates, neither one of whom can talk substance in the context of a balanced budget--and they get away with it because the media has no idea what the substance of governance is (see the free online book, also on Amazon, Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography).
9/11 struck the author as the opening salvo in a long battle for our own soul. I agree with the soul part, but the battle started when we decided to run the world for 50 years, very badly, while ignoring the spread of violent Islam funded by Saudi Arabia. See these four books:
Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage)
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century
Other tid-bits:
+ 1 of three officers to make cut in creating DELTA. Peter Schoomaker was another.
+ DELTA pool was 118 of whom 25 finished the Long Walk, of whom 19 were selected (in the first class)
+ Boykin's dad was one of five brothers who served in "The Good War," three in the Army, two in the Navy.
+ He was 6 feet tall and weighed 180 lbs in the eighth grade.
+ Played guitar and wound up playing at World's Fair in 1965 (the thought, "well-rounded" came into my head--not a thug stereotype)
+ Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets
+ Drawn to brotherhood of infantry, inspired by Viet-Nam stories.
+ One of his coaches taught him that faith and reality could go together
+ Once married, his first child drove him to the Dean's List
+ "I really wanted to learn everything the Army had to teach."
+ Found faith for real in the Army, it filled a void.
+ He LIKED Ham and Lima Beans in C-Rats. That alone makes him strange in an amusing sort of way. I always thought of that C-Ration as one step down from bread and water.
+ He had his failures, in both school and the Army, but they drove him to excel and honors came his way when he bore down.
+ Aide de Camp tour in Korea got him to Viet-Nam for three months, and gave him a strategic understanding of the Army
+ Lost the general's dog, ended up running him down. Very funny.
+ Was one of the originals as paratroopers migrated into air assault.
+ Almost shut out of DELTA by the shrink for "excessive faith in God," but he connected with Beckwith in the final interview and got in, the clear message being that the faith was not misplaced.
+ Excellent discussion of the time value of instinctive shooting (with the necessary training) over aimed fire--life of a hostage, the first takes one second, the second takes two seconds, time for the hostage to be killed.
+ Beckwith understood the killing nature of bureaucracy
+ I have a note, this book is the anti-thesis to Colin's Powell's biography, My American Journey and a shorter different book-end to Hackworth's About Face: Odyssey of an American Warrior
The author takes us through a number of operations in a manner that does not compromise any tradecraft and is not tedious. I appreciated very much the light once over on Tehran (the students thought they would have to get out in three days, they under-estimated the timidity of the US under President Carter), Sudan, Graneda which was not a surprise and for which CIA had no intelligence of substance for the fighters, Panama, Somalia, and then Bosnia.
Sixteen pages of photos are in the middle of the book, all appropriate and helpful. There is no index.
I thought to end this review with several of the phrases from the Bible that the author quoted in the book. I bought Leadership Lessons of Jesus: A Timeless Model for Today's Leaders because it was on sale in the uniform store at MacDill, and now that I have read this book, believe that our Irregulars of the future will be well-served by being required to understand faith, and to memorize portions of the Bible, the Koran, and other Holy Scriptures (just think of the impact as shown in Lawrence of Arabia, when his completing a reading instantly won over King Faisal and sidelined the conventional colonel).
"I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." John 9.4-5
"He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint." Isaiah 40
"For they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up on wings of eagles, they shall run and not be weary and they shall walk and not faint." Isaiah 40.31, faxed from around the world as he struggled to survive a 50 caliber bullet shattering a radio into his body.
Amazon won't let me have more than ten links, but this one, by Navy Capt Doug Johnston, is worth a close look: Faith-Based Diplomacy. There is an intersection of UNMILITARY, faith, and Irregular War: Waging Peace that no one in power seems to understand.
A man yielded to God's purposes October 12, 2008
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This is an excellent book. I work with wounded warriors and know that Jerry Boykin's book will be an encouragement to many of them to fight the good fight, and 'never surrender'. Thanks be to God who gave General Boykin the victories in defending Freedom for our land, and more importantly, freedom for the souls of our brave men and women who daily stand in defense of this great land.
 Review September 29, 2008
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Never Surrender: A Soldier's Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom is a wonderful emotional story about one man...Lieutenant General William G. Boykin. Boykin shares every step of his journey with readers from the first moment that he decided to go into the military to the end with he retires from it. I do want to state that Never Surrender: A Soldier's Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom has nothing to do with attacking republicans or democratics but instead shows readers things that the media doesn't tell you about including the strong bond that is formed between friends and turns out becoming the strongest band of brothers you will ever meet.
The one thing I really found amazing about Lieutenant General William G. Boykin was his unwavering dedication to his faith in God. I thought this fact really made Boykin a man of honor, respect, and of great character. There are not many non fiction volumes that were so powerful in addition to leaving such a lasting memory as Never Surrender: A Soldier's Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom. After reading this book you can't help but feel proud to be an American. It's people like Lieutenant General William G. Boykin who we have to give our thanks to for giving us our freedom to live out lives the way we want to and I have one comment to make and that is...We will Never Surrender!
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