Product Description

They say it was an easy war. They say it was a popular war. But for those who fought it, nothing was ever the same again.

Nineteen year-old Chet Brown arrived home from the Gulf War in the spring of 1991 and found that, for him, the war was only beginning. Betrayed by his friends and lover, ignored by his family, Brown travels across the country in search of meaning behind the horrors of his war.

Charles Sheehan-Miles' acclaimed debut novel was called "a work of pure psychological conflict" by Gannett Newspapers. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh said Prayer at Rumayla is an "...honest and unsparing account...a much needed corrective about a much-misunderstood war."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1523244 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 196 pages

Review
...A fast-paced, in-the-trenches Gulf War novel... -- VVA Veteran Magazine

...Honest and unsparing account...A much needed corrective... -- Seymour Hersh, Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize

As timely as tomorrow's newspaper headlines...Brutally honest, direct, and meaningful -- Midwest Book Review, February 2002

Bleak and disturbing... dead-on-target ...This first novel is a work of pure psychological conflict. -- Gannett Newspapers, December 22, 2001

Exposes the dirty underbelly of war... a must for anyone interested in the Gulf War as it really happened...highly recommended -- Desert-Storm.com

Profoundly moving, raw, exceptionally well executed...an expertly written psychological thriller...Prayer is easily one of the most impressive books reviewed in this blog. -- The PODler Book Review, May 6, 2007

About the Author
Charles Sheehan-Miles served in combat with the 24th Infantry Division during the 1991 Gulf War, and was decorated for valor for helping rescue fellow tank crewmen from a burning tank during the Battle at Rumayla. He is a former President and co-founder of the National Gulf War Resource Center and later was executive director of Veterans for Common Sense.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Angry, I reply, "No, you think you can change it, not me. You think you can step in like some guardian angel and suddenly change who I am. Well, let me tell you something, sheriff -- maybe I'm not what I used to think I was, but at least I know. At least I know. I'm not interested in being helped or changed by you, I got my own life. And let me tell you, I'm sure as hell not going to change myself just to make you feel like Vietnam was worth a shit. That's why you've been talking to me -- to convince yourself that your friend getting his head blown off mattered, that that old lady y’all blew away for no reason had some meaning. It didn't. It didn't mean a goddamn thing, anymore than the poor pathetic Arabs I killed."

"Tell me about it."

"Isn't it enough to tell you that it was a war? What need is there to say any more? You're a Vietnam vet. You should know. We're the ones who grew up in the shadow of Vietnam. We grew up in the shadow of Mylai and Hiroshima and all that shit. And you sit there and tell me there was no ground combat in the gulf. Do you really think the media was telling you the truth? Do you think the government was telling you the truth?"

He leans back away from me, his eyes narrowing, but I am to far gone, and I say, "I'll tell you the truth, Sheriff. We charged across Iraq and killed everything in our goddamn path, we left a trail of burning vehicles and broken bodies hundreds of miles long. If it moved, then it was the enemy, and we killed our fair share of civilians too. And you people sat back here and cheered us on and waved the goddamn flag and didn't ask questions and that blood is on your hands just as much as mine. I say fuck you, and fuck your goddamn parades and fuck your country. I didn't deserve a welcome home parade. I deserved a prison cell. You people made us into monsters. Do you hear me? You made me into a monster, and I look in the goddamn mirror now and all I can see is blood, all I can see is the blood of the lives I took."

I lean forward and speak, my words rough. "I remember the day we left Iraq. We were back on highway eight, lined up in battalions and brigades for the road march back to Saudi Arabia. Columns of smoke from burning oil wells rose into the darkened sky, and hundreds, maybe thousands of refugees were streaming out of Basra into the interior of Iraq. I don't know what condition the city was in, where they were going. Families, women, children, deserting soldiers, all of them in this slow exodus past us. Sergeant Mayer had picked up somebody's pet dog, was carrying it inside the tank. And the kids -- all those kids, so many of them had lost their fathers, and they were hungry, hungry, they were willing to pay almost anything for a MRE."

I look away at the wall, at anything. I don't want to talk anymore, and Daniels is still staring at me as if he wants me to continue.

Customer Reviews

After the War
I climbed into bed last night and started reading, intending only to read for a few minutes. Several hours later I finished "Prayer at Rumayla." Charles has captured the feel of what we combat vets know to be true. It was all there: Anger, rage, self-loathing, mental anguish. The list goes on. The next time I get asked "how did the war affect you?" I'll simply say: READ THIS BOOK.

I saw so much of myself in Chet's character. Questioning how I could have done the things I did, why I'm doing the things I do now. Searching for answers to questions I can't even formulate. The in-garrison sections were so true, I'd swear he had a hidden camera at my outfit when we got back! The REMFs, the ones who didn't go--they could never understand what the war did to us. They saw it on the television; we saw it on the faces of our buddies and the people we fought. I still see those faces every night when I go to sleep. As for relationships with families, girlfriends, wives? Charles nailed that too. These were the silent casualties of war. Readers will see the effect that war has on those who stayed behind as they try to understand the soldier who left as one person but came back as another.

Gulf War vet? Read this book and see yourself. Know a Gulf War vet? Read this book for insight into why he is the way he is. Want to know what it was like? Read this book and look at the unspoken side of war.

An interesting book
I was a tanker in Desert Storm so I was very anxious to read this book. It is a good book and accurately depicts what life was like for us overthere. It shows Desert Storm was not some slick footage that civilians saw on television every night, but real soldiers doing real killing in face to face combat. My only problem with this book is the character's angst became boring after awhile. He obviously needed some help but everybody who offered a chance for this guy to unburden on, he hurt or turned away in some manner or another. Overall this book is well written and clearly shows the pain soldiers face after surviving battle.

Gives the feel of the Gulf War for those who were not there.
Sheehan-Miles does a great job of showing us what the day to day was like for a tank loader in the Gulf War. The sleep deprived crew is counted on to make the right, split-second decisions in the middle of combat. It was not all ice cream and rounding up prisoners.
He also shows what the struggle was like for a young man returning to the "sanity" of America and trying to work out his feelings about what he had to do to keep himself and his fellow soldiers alive.
Chet Brown has elements of Catcher in the Rye in his back-in-the-states persona. He is complex and does things he does not fully understand because of his inward struggle. It is a brutal portrayal of someone fighting his demons about actions that he truly had no control over.
I agree with an earlier review that called for the copy editor's head for the spelling and sentence problems that were left in the book.
I look forward to reading more from Charles Sheehan-Miles.