Operation Cure Boredom

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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In serious need of direction, training, something to do with his life post-rehab – and gullible enough to fall for the outrageous assurances of military recruiters – Dan Martin finds himself in Air Force boot camp. Which isn't as bad as, say, what Eugene Jerome went through in Biloxi or what “Joker” Davis endured at Parris Island – but it's pretty bad. Thankfully, Martin can now laugh about it. And he does a pretty good job getting his readers to do the same. Martin's look back on his years in the military is told as a series of comic anecdotes – while he is trying to portray what happened to him, he's doing it to make the reader laugh.

He never sees any kind of action – Desert Storm began and ended too soon for that, but he did travel the world as part of an aircrew maintenance team. Which leads him to all sorts of interesting locales – and even more not-so-interesting ones. Throughout his enrollment, he matures – somewhat – making this a sort of coming-of-age tale, and the Martin that is honorably discharged isn't the same loser that enlisted.

I do think this could be 1/4-1/3 shorter, tightening up the narratives a bit would help. It meanders a bit, both in the individual stories and the overall narrative. I don't know that I found anything out and out funny, but I found much of it amusing. That's probably taste, or just the particular day I read it (although I think a more streamlined approach might have helped).

This could be the Non-Fiction Prequel to Joe Zieja's Mechanical Failure, the sensibilities that characterize Sgt. Rogers are seen very clearly in Martin. Martin's memories are good reminders for us that the military isn't just full of heroes or hyper-violent patriots, it's primarily full of regular Americans just trying to get their jobs done. Less over the top than Heller, Hooker and Abrams – but in the same vein, and hewing closer to the truth. Operation Cure Boredom is the military memoir we all needed.