Boys of '67: From Vietnam to Iraq, The Extraordinary Story of a Few Good Men.

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Author: Hoffman, Jon T.1

Boys of '67: From Vietnam to Iraq, The Extraordinary Story of a Few
 Good Men
Jon T. Hoffman
Charles Jones. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2006. 416 pp.
 Illus. Notes. Index. $29.95.

Boys of '67 chronicles the tales of three Marines who had fascinating but very different careers in the Corps. James L. Jones Jr. rose to four-star rank as the 32nd Commandant of the Marine Corps, then became the first Leather-neck ever to head the European Command. Martin R. Steele was a tank officer who retired as a lieutenant general after serving as the head of Plans, Policies, and Operations at Headquarters Marine Corps. Major General Ray L. Smith, better known by his nickname "E-tool," was widely regarded as one of the best warriors the Corps produced in this era. The book tracks the three men from their baptism as second lieutenants in the same class at the Basic School in 1967. Although they seldom served together thereafter, each distinguished himself in the Vietnam War and in the long years of rebuilding the Corps that followed.

Jones, a reporter for a Richmond, Virginia, newspaper, is no stranger to the Corps. His father served as a battalion commander in some of the fiercest battles of World War II and remained on active duty through the rank of lieutenant general. His uncle also played a major role in the war against the Japanese, heading up the elite Fleet Marine Force Pacific Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion, before becoming a reserve officer when the fighting was over. The uncle's son â€" the author's cousin â€" is one of the three main subjects of the book. Growing up in a Marine family, Charles Jones thus has some firsthand understanding of his subject. Supplemented by his reporter's penchant for verifying the facts, he avoids most of the silly errors that seem to creep routinely into works by non-Marines.

Boys of '67 ultimately is a good story and is reasonably well told. The shortcoming of the volume, apparent from the opening Author's Note, is that it has no obvious theme that guides the narrative or gives it an overarching purpose. Charles Jones observes that his "book is bound together by the colorful threads of the lives of three men with a distinct set of talents and traits." But the author never satisfactorily explains why he selected these three men out of all their compatriots or how their stories might shape the readers' view of the world. They were not the only generals to emerge from their TBS company, nor were the experiences of their class profoundly unique.

The framework of the book is suggestive of James Kittfield's Prodigal Soldiers, which used the careers of representative officers from each of the services to explain how the junior leaders of the Vietnam era set out to reform the American way of war and succeeded in achieving an overwhelming victory in the first Gulf War. But Jones makes no such pretensions in Boys of '67. He explains the relationship of each of these three men to the renaissance of the Corps in the last two decades of the 20th century, but none of them was a primary driver in that saga. Nor were they significant ligures in the Gulf War itself; Steele and Smith served in staff billets in the States, while Jim Jones came late to the conflict and only participated in humanitarian operations with the Kurds. The account carries forward through the current war in Iraq, by which lime two of the three were retired. In telling the stories of these three distinguished Marines, the book does provide random snapshots of the Corps from the middle of Vietnam through today. But again, Jones does not use this as a platform to try to explain the history of the Marines during this period or why the institution evolved as it did.

Absent any higher aim, Boys of '67 is primarily biographical in nature, with the odd feature that it covers three men rather than one. It suffers somewhat in that genre as a consequence of spreading its interest among multiple individuals, since it necessarily falls far short of fully covering the life of any one of them (a fact Jones readily acknowledges). The reader is treated only to highlights and snippets, albeit very interesting ones. Combined biographies usually make a systematic attempt to compare and contrast the characters and styles of their subjects, but the author forgoes even that approach. The experiences of Jim Jones, Marty Steele, and "E-tool" Smith provide more than "a measure of insight and inspiration." though Charles Jones makes no systematic endeavor to compile or analyze in this area, either. In the end, the hook is well worth the effort, but it could easily have been a much more compelling and useful saga.

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REVIEWED BY Jon T. Hoffman

Colonel Hoffman, author of Chesty: The Story of Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller, USMC (New York: Random House, 2001), serves in civilian life as chief of the Contemporary Studies Branch of the U.S. Army Center of Military History.