Thank You, Cyril O'Brien: The Most Flattering Review I Ever Received: The Late Great Cyril O'Brien

I wrote a novel in 2007, The Chorito Hog Leg: A Novel of Guam in Time of War.  

I was disappointed in the book as I did not do a very good job of editing the work, I had paid an editor to do.  Plenty of typos.

Nevertheless, the book was favorably reviewed by Rose Keefe , the noted Crime biographer and historian, the late Martin J. Tully, USSF(ret), CPD (ret) and several combat veterans.

One of those heroes was the great Cyril O'Brien*, a Baltimore journalist and former White house correspondent who was Marine Combat correspondent on Guam. His review appeared in the Mariannas Islands Press and on Borders Books Review.

I have a very blessed life and this man's opinion of my work means almost as much to me as the good wishes from the hundreds of "kids" that I have taught over these past forty years,

Here is Cy O'Brien's review:

Guam Novel Praises the Chamorros as well as Marines

3190 days ago

Book depicts Chamorros going above and beyond By Cyril J. O'Brien There's an interesting novel with a different scenario on the liberation of Guam by Chicago, Ill., school teacher Pat Hickey. It depicts the often underwritten action on Chonito Ridge, and describes the Chamorro people as going above and beyond. It relates the battle story through fictional as well as actual leaders as a way of demonstrating the caliber of the people who fought that war on Guam. A student of the battle, Hickey is well into Able Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, led by Capt. Gary Bundshu in its impossible, day-and-a-half assault straight up to the crest of Chonito Ridge, a cliff overlooking the Asan beaches on Guam. The top was taken late in the second day after Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines, secured the rear and flank to let Able finish its ascent and hold it.

Using the Marines' nickname for the ridge, Hickey, in The Chorito Hog Leg' '(AuthorHouse 2007, Bloomington, Ind.) intersperses the story with surprising incidents, heroic actions, including the gratuitous cruelty of Japanese captors on the Guamanian people. The book is also punctuated with bits of holiness of sisters, mothers and girlfriends back in Chicago with rosaries and novenas. Hickey spices it with some seasoned ribald troop vernacular and surprises you with incidents and anecdotes that could make you lose the course of what is going on. Hickey also brings in the colorful gangster days that represented the Windy City at its zenith because it is from where the young Marines he describes are from.

Action started at sea And you may have forgotten how the first combat action of Guam was at sea. Pat describes it: the Japanese Kate spinning a torpedo toward the troop-jammed tank landing ship. (I was on the starboard side where the torpedo beaded). But a little LCI (landing craft infantry) ship in our assault convey, there to protect the troopship, nosed her bow into the torpedo bound for our ship. It blew off the LCI's bow and killed all on station there. We watched the next morning as a destroyer sunk the remains of the heroic little LCI.

Within the carnage of battle is a conflict arrayed in the book pitting a young man named Tim Cullen against his battalion commander over the possession of an 1860 Army Cold .45 Hog Leg revolver, which can be traced back to a captain who was with Custer. It brings in diversion and other interests, and continues the novel, but makes no 'neverminds' to history. Hickey, well anointed as an author, is a career educator, graduate of Loyola University, Chicago and now with St. Leo's High School in the city.

 

*Cyril J. O'Brien was a combat correspondent with the 3rd Marine Division in World War II, which helped liberate Guam. He lives in Silver Spring, Md.

John McCain: Wright's Oafish Slur of 3rd Marines & Calvary at Guam - for real.

But Mr. McCain took a different approach at a news conference here when he criticized Mr. Wright for, as the senator paraphrased him, “comparing the United States Marine Corps with Roman legionnaires who were responsible for the death of our Savior, I mean being involved in that” and for “saying that Al Qaeda and the American flag were the same flags.” …
Mr. McCain said that he did not believe that Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, shared those views and that he was still against the advertisement in North Carolina. But he suggested that Mr. Obama had made the subject fair play by declaring in an interview shown over the weekend on “Fox News Sunday” that questions about Mr. Wright were “a legitimate political issue.”

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/the-early-word-mccain-takes-up-wright-issue/


McCain and other Americans should be concerned about Wright's words - here's the real context: 3rd Marines at Guam reported by Cyril O'Brien, later White House Correspondent for the Baltimore Sun and a combat correspondent with the 3rd Marines:


The Taking of Chonito Ridge*
The following is a dispatch written by Marine Combat Correspondent Private First Class Cyril J. O'Brien in the field after the combat action he describes in his story. It was released for publication in the United States sometime after the event (always after families were notified of the wounding or death of the Marines mentioned.) This story is reprinted from the carbon copy of the file which he retained of the stories he filed from the Pacific.

Guam July 24 (Delayed)—The first frontal attack on steep Chonito Ridge was made one hour after the Marine landing.

An infantry squad, led by Second Lieutenant James A. Gallo, 24, 172 Broadway, Haverstraw, NY., approached to within ten yards of the tip. The crest bloomed with machine gun fire. In the face of it the Marine company tried its first assault. The company was thrown back before it had advanced forty yards.

For fifty hours the company remained on the naked slope, trying again and again to storm the Jap entrenchments hardly one hundred yards away. Battered almost to annihilation, the tenacious Marines finally saw another company take the ridge from the rear.

Failing in the first rush the company had formed a flimsy defense line not fifty yards from the enemy. Cover was scant. Some Marines had only tufts of grass to shield them. The Japs were rolling grenades down the crest, and blasting the Marines with knee mortars from over the summit.


Under the cover of dusk the company commander led a second attack. As the Marines rose machine gun fire swept into them. The commander, and three Marines reached the crest. The last fifty feet were almost vertical. The attackers grasped roots and dug their feet into the soft earth to keep from falling down the incline.

The commander went over the ridge. He never came back. The remaining three Marines were ripped by cross fire. One saved himself by jumping into an enemy fox hole.

Beaten again, the company retired to a small ravine, and remained there all night. One Marine, shot through both legs, was asking for morphine. Another's thigh was ripped by shell fragments. A PFC, his dry tongue swollen, tried to whisper the range of an enemy sniper.

At eleven in the morning of the 22d, with little more a third of their original number, the company rushed hillside again.

Lieutenant Gallo led an assault on the left flank of the hill, but was thrown back. Sergeant Charles V. Bomar, 33, 4002 Gulf St., Houston, Tex., with nine Marines attempted to take the right ground of the slope. Five were killed as they left the ravine. The sergeant and three others reached the top of the slope.

The Japs again rolled grenades down the incline. One exploded under the chest of a Marine nearby, blowing off his head. Another grenade bounced off the helmet of the sergeant. It was a dud.

The Marines charged into the Jap entrenchment. The sergeant killed a Jap machine gunner with the butt of his carbine. The assistant gunner exploded a grenade against his body. The blast threw the Marines out of the hole. They jumped into vacated enemy foxholes. A lieutenant who had come to join them was shot between the eyes by a sniper. The sergeant killed the sniper with his carbine.

Unable to hold their positions, the sergeant and his companies returned to the shelter of the ravine. With the shattered remnants of the company they waited for nearly another 24 hours, until darting Marines on the top of the ridge showed Chonito had been taken from the rear.

Field commanders soon came to appreciate the effect these so-called "Joe Blow" stories had on the morale of their men. The stories were printed in hometown newspapers and were clipped and sent to the troops in the Pacific who could then see that their efforts were being publicized and appreciated at home.

* 'Chonito' was misnamed on dated American Naval Maps in 1944 - The Chamorros of Guam called it Chorito Cliff

For more context- click my post title