Vehicle For Dissertation

Books I read, music I hear...My imperious opinion on both.

Sunday, January 16, 2005

Escape In Iraq: The Thomas Hamill Story


The cover photo... Posted by Hello

I saw this book at the library a few weeks ago and remembered reading news about Mr. Hamill's kidnapping. So I picked it up and started scanning through it. I "scanned" for so long I decided to take it home and give it a full read.

The book, by Thomas Hamill & Paul T. Brown, begins with a prologue describing Tommy's farm raising and leads up to the circumstances which led to his taking a job as a KBR trucker in Iraq. The prologue gives a good background for the rest of the book. This isn't one of those that goes way back and works forward, finally arriving at the main narrative.

The account of the ambush and following kidnapping are followed by a relation of his experiences while being held at various locations and by different people. It's interesting to get an inside look at the different Iraqis who "handled" him. Some were fairly considerate, (he gave them nicknames like: Wimpy, The Silent One and Curly) and others, like "The Guards on Death Row", were the masked, hard, guerrillas that usually come to mind. The last chapters get very repetitive, however that is exactly how his days were: redundant. It's great to see how he kept up his mental strength and faith in God despite physical problems (he was shot in the arm during the ambush).

And of course you always want the guy to escape! He does. I always like to find out the story behind the headlines. This was a good chance to do it.

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