When the Tempest Gathers

March 1, 2020
Colonel Milburn retraces his long, windy road in this excellent memoir chronicling over two decades of military operations. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps after graduating from law school in England, having never been to the U.S. and without much knowledge of the Marines, before receiving a commission from Officer Candidate School. This, then, is the story of a learned Leatherneck with a British accent travelling from battlefield to battlefield, collecting a family of choice and many honors as he rose up the chain of command. As smooth as this sounds, Milburn's story is filled with action from start to finish, even as he passes along erudition and wisdom about strategy and statecraft in between his accounts of firefights. He takes the reader across the shifting battle lines of the Middle East, where missions change almost as often as the combatants. Milburn has constructed a real tour de force of recent military history, strongly written and executed with the dedication and attention to detail you would expect from a Marine Special Operations Commander.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)