Customer Reviews

A Sniper's Journey: The Truth About the Man Behind the Rifle

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Whenever I see a veteran start to opine about his PTSD, it sends up a red flag for me, especially when mixed with assassination stuff.

The book deals with a guy who was selected for a very short sniper school while in Vietnam, and he then is sent into the field in order to basically assassinate people. He also claims the word "sniper" was never once used during his training.

As I read on, my suspicions were confirmed when he described being assinged to the "2nd Battalion, 7th Infantry", (in the 1st Cav Div), which he also described as "the Garry Ownen battalion". Now those two gaffes right there show me he's a poseur. And I don't think you can hang that one on his ghost writer, who also allegedly was in VN.

He also slipped up later, when he described being shown a photo of his intended target, who had a scar over his eye. After dispatching that guy, a couple missions later he looks through his scope and identifies a female he is supposed to snipe, and he recognizes her by a scar over her eye. Oops! The other thing is: you can not expect me to believe that he could just be given a photo to examine for a few seconds. That's ridiculous.

Yeah, the book is a joke and the last half of it has a bunch of useless filler about PTSD etc.

In "A Sniper's Journey" Gary Mitchell (with Michael Hirsh) lays out a supposed story about a small-town Texas youngster, new to the Army, who is pulled into the Phoenix covert program as a sniper in Viet Nam. In fairness, the reviewer is far more familiar with the Marine's program, but this overall story simply did not seem to ring true to a real sniper's techniques and mental processes from that long-ago time.

Possibly as much as a third of the book deals with Mitchell's domestic problems with his wives and for filler, outlined a primer on PTSD. All this was "part of his journey" I suppose, but of marginal interest to outsiders.

We should thank Mr. Mitchell for his 24-year service to our country, but in respect for the fine Army snipers, the great Carlos Hathcock and other 'Corps "One Shot-One Kill" shooters from the past, I cannot recommend this book.

I bought the book because it was supposed to be about Phoenix and a sniper in it. It flunked on both issues. I was in Phoenix, the real program.
It is full of technical errors, not the least of which Phoenix was not an assassination program, Doug Valentine to the contrary notwithstanding.
Phoenix advisers knew the rules against assassination and followed them. We wanted people alive. I cannot tell you what this guy
really did or when. Phoenix was about capture, harassment, information sharing, agent handling, and running operations against the Viet Cong
Infrastructure. They were legitimate targets, following the rules of land warfare. Valentine had it right in his introduction. Real people in the
program would have problems with this book. Like his book on Phoenix, he has problems with being able to verify facts or verify real
incidents. Phoenix was declassified over 30 years ago. At least four other books on Phoenix, two written by real operatives, tell the truth
and not the assassination story given here. Valentine knows what I think about his reputation on being accurate on Phoenix. I think the same
about this book. It does not pass my test. It just confirms what I thought earlier about his abilities.

Having worked with snipers in Viet Nam, I can assure you that this book doesn't have any relationship to the real thing.
Reader's Digest condensed version would read - Served in the Army, collected some war stories, wrote a book with a grabber title (and little else), made money.
This guy is right out of "Stolen Valor".

This has got to be the worst excuse for a "war story" that I have ever read. The author was NOT a sniper and has absolutely NO IDEA of what it means to be a sniper. Don't waste your time or money on this joke. Having just comleted a tour as a sniper for the Army's 3rd ID on Task Force Baghdad, I can assure you this guy knows NOTHING.....

Like others have said, this book doesn't pass the "b.s." test.

The book starts off suspiciously with the canned "emotionally-scarred-soldier-struggling-with-PTSD-years-later" scene we've all seen in the movies, then very quickly devolves from the improbable to, by around p. 85, the absolutely unbelievable. Never being told you're actually in sniper school? Getting orders to take out two people with similar identifying facial scars? Conveniently having absolutely no records to support your story? Being sent to execute Buddhist monks by . . . a Buddhist monk? Come on.

Even when viewed as a work of fiction, the writing comes off as cliched and repetitive. After reading the phrases "I realized then that I was expendable" and "I knew I was never getting out alive" approximately 100 times apiece, you too will wish you had saved your money.

For any of us that have spent time behind a scoped rifle in the service of our government from military on down to local police SWAT, there were many flags of this book being utter BS.

The one that has stood out to many of us that have discussed this garbage piece, is when this trained truck driver goes to the office where his rifle is kept, looks at the optic and describes knowing it is his by seeing that his scope is set "two clicks south of level".

WTF is that?

If you need a serious look at someone who fills pages full of nothing but lies, waste your money here... otherwise, keep looking.

This was an ok story but would like to have known more about the sniper training, and the "black" ops being performed. The book hints of CIA involvment and Project Phoenix, but there is no further explanation. As far as I could tell he only had 7 or 8 confirmed kills in Vietnam. The book description made it sound like he was a career army sniper, but mainly he was a truck driver, and motor pool sergeant. Nothing wrong with that, but a little marksmanship trainig and being helicoptered out to the target is not really being a sniper. The book also tells alot more about his family life than I was interested in. He had no real training like real snipers have, and someone just used this young kid to accomplish rogue killings because he was to stupid to get out of it. While he also served in Desert Storm, it was not a sniper. The last half of the book dealt mainly with his relationship with his wife, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and counseling. BORING! Finally, the book includes resources and articles about PTSD, also boring, unnecessary, and out of place in a book about a sniper.

I don't believe the author's story for a minute. There is one technical error after another all the way through the book. Sounds more like a phony combat vet trying to pick up the maximum disability check from the veterans administration. A total waste of money!

I had great hopes in enjoying a book about the sniper's world as pertains to the CIA and its contracting out shooters from the ranks..having met a few through my years overseas. As it was I found the copy more of a recollection of events that are lost to history and emotional blocking: it was way too convenient memory-wise to have the first two kills both have scars above the eye--the officer and the woman...please!

Still, I can recommend this book, as I found it to have a similar PTSD section to my own memoir that is also available on Amazon. I like the variety in letter responses from different PhDs specializing in the recognition of PTSD and treatment...which is what I can see resulted in Mitchell's book...considering the topic I sure wish I could give it more stars, but this was very thin in description and clarity of rememberance...a very far departure from Valentine's co-written pieces.

I would suggest getting this book, as I did, to read the PTSD and then resell it on Amazon, which is what I'm preparing to do right now...the 3 stars are mainly for the PTSD section.