10/30/2023
A retired military lifer and non-commissioned officer who served tours in Bosnia and Iraq, Pinion reflects on his experience with a book that’s partly a compendium of funny stories and leadership lessons, but also a sort of memorial and expression of grief for soldiers lost along the way. The book is funny, as the title suggests, but also resonant thanks to Pinion’s willingness to be vulnerable and expose issues regarding mental illness in the military. Still, it's obvious throughout that he loves the Army and believed in his missions. As a cavalry scout, specializing in frequently dangerous reconnaissance missions and house-to-house fighting—life-or-death situations for him and the soldiers under his command—he had to believe.
Each story is told in roughly chronological order over the course of his career as a soldier, and each chapter describes an experience that taught him a lesson. Early on, a “ballsy” platoon sergeant sent a company of soldiers back from a gunnery range to complete prerequisite training they hadn’t yet taken. Pinion sees the wisdom in this: you should never turn down the opportunity to train if a lack of it could prove fatal. Another story finds Pinion impersonating an officer to help his platoon sergeant get out of trouble, something he did willingly because the sergeant loved his men, while a wild incident in which a superior asked for help proving his wife’s infidelity taught Pinion to question illegal or immoral orders.
As a leader, Pinion emphasizes training and discipline so soldiers know their jobs—and strived to show his troops that he cares about them by being willing to get out in the field, unlike one commander in Iraq who never wanted to leave the base. Pinion is emotional in detailing the stories of one of his men who jumped on a grenade to save others and a beloved, enthusiastic soldier killed by a sniper. His unflinching discussion of PTSD, treatment that saved his life, and his deep concern for his soldiers all have real power.
Takeaway: Wit, lessons, and touching tributes from a career soldier.
Comparable Titles: J. Pepper Bryars’s American Warfighter, Tom Satterly and Steve Jackson’s All Secure.
Production grades Cover: B Design and typography: A Illustrations: A Editing: B Marketing copy: A
2023-10-09
In this memoir, a man recounts a wide-ranging career in the Army and the lessons he drew from his experiences.
Pinion hails from an impressive lineage of military service—his grandfather Frank Richards fought in World War II. Unsure what to do following high school, the author enlisted in the New Jersey National Guard, a momentous decision that sparked a 28-year career in the Army. He served in a variety of roles, from managing the hygiene of a platoon’s latrines to leading men into combat on foreign soil. The book’s title is drawn from an anecdote revolving around latrine duty—when the author encountered the “most giant shit in the history of soldier turds,” he was ordered by a superior officer to “CHOP THAT SHIT UP!” That experience, as unpleasant and grotesque as it was, offered a lesson to Pinion: “But in the end, a fantastic thing happened: I learned a huge lesson that day. One of the reasons I made it to command sergeant major in the United States Army was that I never let any obstacle stop me from completing the mission. I simply rolled up my sleeve and CHOPPED THAT SHIT UP!!” This establishes the memoir’s formula, conveyed in a series of anecdotes: A story, often genuinely funny or dramatic, is related, and the author infers a lesson from it. In other episodes, he discerns the importance of preparatory training, the need to question authority, and the significance of healthy, if heated, conflict. Of course, these are sensible and useful discoveries. But some lessons are so uncontroversial that they register as items of common sense of the kind readers can find in several self-help business books. Pinion’s tributes to his fellow soldiers, especially those who died valorously in combat, are heartbreakingly rendered, and he presents a stirring portrait of military honor. But while his writing is clear and companionable, the various lessons he presents are a bit uneven.
This moving account of an eventful, admirable military career delivers helpful but sometimes familiar lessons.
