Customer Reviews

The Ghosts of November: Memoirs of an Outsider Who Witnessed the Carnage at Jonestown, Guyana

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Jeffrey Brailey's account of being one of the first Americans on the scene of Jonestown in November 1978 could have been told much better. The book is an easy read with the Jonestown white night final transcript of Jim Jones ordering his followers to drink the poison to kill themselves. The book isn't descriptive enough and there are no picture or illustrations like maps to help explain the author's background and experiences in there. I felt the best written materials were not his like Dr. Rebecca Moore's article about how the Jonestown victims were dehumanized after death by an embarrassed government of our own. The American government should have been ashamed of themselves at the time of this catastrophe of epic proportions. In all including Jones, there was 914 bodies in Jonestown, 4 in Georgetown because his right hand lieutenant Sharon Amos killed her three children before herself, and the shooting at the Port Kaituma air strip that left five including Congressman Leo Ryan dead. In all 923 human bodies not to mention the animals such as JOnes' chimp, Mr. Muggs, or the pet dogs who were all shot to death. The only witnesses left were two macau parrots. I can't imagine what Brailey went and still goes through from experiencing the trauma of the evacuation of bodies and the discovery of the many children and infant who laid beneath them. The pictures could have shocked us and should have jolted us to remembering the humans that were once there.

The author was among the first Americans to enter and view the aftermath of the worst mass suicide in modern times. As an American Army medic, SPC Brailey had seen terror on the battlefields of Vietnam and was, in 1978, assigned to Panama. It was from here that he and his team of soldiers were sent to Guyana to recover the bodies of the Americans found in Jonestown. Some twenty years later, Brailey has set out to tell the horror of the clean up of Jonestown. The post-Vietnam Army had some real characters, and often the standards of conduct were much less professional than we would expect from soldiers currently. While it is understood that these men and women faced a terrible task, the task force itself became a scandal, and this record of poor and often drunken behavior can explain much of the way the situation was mishandled, with unfortunate consequences.

The MAJOR downside to this work is the writing style of the author. He is badly in need of an editor. His tangled verbage makes for a difficult and sometimes confusing read. I have read elsewhere that the author is in the process of rewriting his work. I hope that he finds a good editor and follows his or her advice.

This is a good study, both for the unique situation involved and for the warning of a poorly administered circumstance. Let's hope a more readable edition is soon forthcoming.