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Fives and Twenty-Fives

Michael Pitre

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Jan 18, 2015 Booknblues rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: war, iraq

Fives and Twenty-Fives
By Michael Pitre
5 stars
401pp
Publication date: 2014

Having just finished Fives and Twenty-Fives by Michael Pitre, I want to continue reading about Dodge, Doc and Donovan. I don't want to let them go. I want to know that they will be alright. That things will get better. That Dodge will be happy with a pretty girl in Tunisia and that they will all find a purpose and reason for what they did and a way to live with it. I think also of Zahn and how he tried to make everything rig Fives and Twenty-Fives
By Michael Pitre
5 stars
401pp
Publication date: 2014

Having just finished Fives and Twenty-Fives by Michael Pitre, I want to continue reading about Dodge, Doc and Donovan. I don't want to let them go. I want to know that they will be alright. That things will get better. That Dodge will be happy with a pretty girl in Tunisia and that they will all find a purpose and reason for what they did and a way to live with it. I think also of Zahn and how he tried to make everything right and the brave, tough and beautiful Sergeant Gomez.

We often hear about the disconnect that returning veterans feel and their sense of isolation, and certainly Michael Pitre highlights this feeling in Fives and Twenty-Fives, but each of his characters has been drawn with care. Each member of the road repair platoon lives with a feeling of isolation, Donovan as a lieutenant will never be quite a full-fledged member of the platoon and as Dodge tells him his rank is translated as unnecessary in Arabic, Doc the medic, has always been treated as hick until he excelled and medical training and technique and now he feels an overwhelming obligation to the platoon and Dodge, a good and sturdy vehicle has lost his name and turned his back on his Iraqi family while finding solace in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Pitre shifts his novel between each of these characters with each section beginning with a document from the characters past. The novel shifts between the present and stories from Iraq. The platoon is a road repair one requiring them to repair potholes. The access the perimeter 5 meters out to be sure that it is safe before exiting vehicle and then twenty-five meters out to be sure they will be safe. An armored member is sent to look at the pothole which each and every time contains an IED and than the robots are sent to disarm them.

Pitre's gift of storytelling and characterization engages the reader in caring for Donovan, Doc and Dodge. He certainly builds a sense of the bleakness of Iraq during the war and the shifting forces within it. Early in the novel one of the characters says:
Those spots where blood soaks in? Right into the dirt? Plants always grow there. I never knew that before. We’d convoy by the same places all the time, and all those places where I knew there’d been a lot of blood? Sure enough: green, healthy plants.

I was deeply moved by this book. I found it to be very human and very engaging. ...more

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Shelves: nonfiction

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