Around the World in 36 Minutes

When I first picked up the book Warrior Soul by Chuck Pfarrer, I had a hell of a time getting into the plot. It wasn't for lack of a big bang at the beginning (let me just say "parachute jump - no parachute), or failure to write about something that interested me about his memoir of being a Navy SEAL. In fact, I really don't know what the hold up was. But all that changed about a week ago when I picked the book up once more.

I'm so glued to it I dream about it. I'm nearly done now, but the fascination has not ended.

The greatest concentration of the book is about his deployment in Lebanon in the early 80's. He and his SEAL platoon were stationed there as Peacekeepers in an increasingly hostile environment that only got worse, until it finally climaxed with the car bombing deaths of 240 marines. I was too young to remember it, but the way he has written the chapters are so clear that in my mind I can see the bombed out buildings.

But there's seeing... and there's seeing.

Some people are brave enough to travel around the world to country's that are hostile to any American. I am not one of them. Although I would love to see things with my own two little eyes, it is simply not worth losing my life.

It was the morning of the second dream about dusty dirt roads and bombed out buildings that I remembered that there are ways to see the world without being able to smell the heat in the air or hear the buzz of mosquitoes going up the coast. There was a way to see Lebanon and I was going to do it.

I logged on to GoogleEarth and let the planet spin until it came to a stand-still miles upward of the land designated as Beirut. Landmarks and photographs positioned approximately where they were taken on the globe. Not a dusty, dirty country as I had imagined, but green and lush and busy. Cars showed in the pictures traversing from here to there.

Sadly, however, there were also pictures of bombed out buildings, and if you zoom in you can see the building tops, some missing.

It has been 20 years since Mr. Pfarrer was deployed into the middle of a war and not much from what he describes looks as though it is the same, but it was still a way for me to look into his mind and maybe, if only virtually, see where he was and what the country looked like then. In some ways, it brings reading to a whole new level.

Now if only they had satellite images from... oh 1880... I could go and see the land of Judith McNaught's books. Travel through Hyde Park. Go from the city townhouses to the castles of the countryside!

Or maybe, I could give Diana Gabaldon's Outlander books a whirl and find Iverness and Edinburgh. Look for the stones an Culloden. Travel the dirt roads Claire and Jamie once walked.

But then I remember that though it is not the same now as then, I can. I can go to Iverness and to Hyde Park. I can visit Culloden and see the war memorial. I can see the castles of the countryside.

And I can do it all, go around the world, in 36 minutes. As many times as I want. No airfare required.

I don't recommend a lot of books. Usually, I recommend authors. But if you ever have a chance to pick up Warrior Soul, it's a wonderfully told story of a man's journey dodging bullets, overriding cynicism, and finding himself.