Review of "The Legacy of the Twins Platoon" by Christy Sauro Jr.

Score: 96/100 (9.6 out of 10)

We often think of war from a Hollywood lens: big explosions, heroic speeches, dramatic last stands, and maybe a swelling orchestra in the background as the credits roll. Or we have the ancient, Iliad-esque way of viewing war: glorious, glamorous, and mythical--something that happened a long time ago to someone else somewhere far away. We think about the reasons for war--the expansion of empires and kingdoms, the clash of ideologies and religions, the rise and fall of nations, the ambitions of rulers, the redrawing of borders, the grand chessboard of history.

But what about the soldiers on the ground? The real people who served?

What about their personal lives? Their families? Their hopes? Their dreams?
The things that motivated them? Scared them? Excited them? Made them tick?

That is where The Legacy of the Twins Platoon really shines.

This book does not treat war like an abstract concept, a patriotic slogan, or a collection of battlefield statistics. It treats war as something lived by actual human beings. Christy Sauro Jr. brings the conflict down from the level of maps, governments, and headlines and puts it squarely where it belongs: in the lives of the young Marines who had to carry it.

And that makes all the difference.

One of our favorite things about this book is that Sauro refuses to flatten the platoon into a generic group of “young patriots.” Instead, he individualizes them. He presents men from different backgrounds, temperaments, family situations, and motivations. Some join out of patriotism, some out of family tradition, some for identity, some for toughness, some because they believe the Marine Corps is the hardest path and that is exactly why they want it.

Larry Buske, for example, is introduced as a rough-edged kid from Hutchinson who likes the challenge and the reputation of the Marines. Mark Mulvihill is shown as being shaped by Cold War idealism and President Kennedy’s rhetoric about service.

Wallace “Skip” Schmidt is driven in part by a need to prove himself, especially given insecurities about his size and academic struggles. Kenneth “Kenny” Goodman is deeply influenced by his father’s Marine service in World War II and grows up seeing military duty as part of family honor. By building the book around these kinds of personal sketches, Sauro makes the later losses feel specific rather than abstract.

These men are more than soldiers, they're brothers, husbands, and sons.

One of the standouts in the group is Kenny. He comes across as one of the book’s warmest and most memorable figures because Sauro does not just present him as a Marine, but as a deeply caring, almost tenderhearted person whose love for living things says a lot about his character. We learn that Kenny loved animals and kept all kinds of pets, including rabbits and baby raccoons, and there is even that striking story about him finding a dead mother fox at a gravel pit, searching until he found her two orphaned pups, and bringing them home so the family could help raise them. That detail does a lot of work. It shows that beneath the uniform was a compassionate, nurturing, service-minded young man, the kind of person who could not just walk away from something helpless and suffering. In a book full of combat, trauma, and loss, details like that make Kenny feel vividly human, and they make what happens to men like him hit even harder. These aren't "killers" or bloodthirsty monsters like some painted them as being: they were boys, men, human beings.

These are not faceless soldiers. They are specific young men from Minnesota with families, insecurities, values, personalities, and dreams. Some joined out of patriotism. Some wanted challenge. Some were influenced by family legacy. Some were trying to prove something to themselves. Sauro makes room for all of that, and the book is much better for it. We do not just see uniforms. We see people.

Another angle of this book that's great is that it does not begin in combat and it does not end there either. Sauro is not content to simply show us firefights, casualties, and famous battles. He wants us to understand who these men were before Vietnam, what shaped them, what drove them to serve, and what happened to them afterward. That broader human framing gives the book a lot of its power.

The Minnesota Twins ceremony is also one heck of a framing device. There is something almost haunting about the image of these young recruits being publicly sworn in before a cheering crowd at a baseball game. It feels so American. So ceremonial. So full of optimism and pageantry. But that scene becomes deeply ironic once you realize what these young men are heading toward. Their story begins in applause and patriotic pride. It leads into mud, terror, bloodshed, trauma, and lifelong scars. That contrast gives the entire book a strong emotional undercurrent.

And yes, the Vietnam material itself is gripping.

When Sauro gets into the battles, the patrols, the confusion, the medevacs, the constant danger, and the brutal uncertainty of combat, the book has real weight. Khe Sanh, Hue City, Hill 861, Dai Do, and the other locations here do not feel like distant bullet points from a history class. They feel immediate. Personal. Costly. You can feel how thin the line is between survival and death. You can feel how exhausting and disorienting this world is. War here is not clean, noble spectacle. It is chaotic, frightening, and cruelly random.

Many books have been written about these specific battles. Indeed, they tell rich, heroic, and tragic stories. Some are hard to believe. Yet, they're real. The Battle of Khe Sanh, for example, was fought in the middle of the Tet Offensive--an all out attack, multi-pronged by the North Vietnamese military and Viet Cong. It is actually a battle in which our founder's father fought and served, earning him a Purple Heart. The Marines during the battle were severely outnumbered, some say as high as six to one, surviving largely with artillery, air-support, and grit. Imagine if this battle had turned out differently. OCA might not exist. We might not be here. We wouldn't exist.

It really gives you a chilling perspective of what these men were fighting for and how much was at stake.

What really elevates this book is that it refuses to stop when the war "ends."

That is huge.

A lot of books can handle combat. Fewer handle aftermath well. Sauro does. He understands that the real story of war is not just what happens overseas. It is also what comes home. The post-traumatic stress. The emotional shutdown. The strain on marriages. The pain carried by children, siblings, and spouses. The silence. The grief. The inability to fully explain what happened. In many ways, the postwar material is where this book becomes especially moving, because it forces us to confront the fact that these men did not simply leave Vietnam behind when they boarded a plane home.

Vietnam came home with them.

We also appreciated how much this book values brotherhood. That is not just a buzzword here. It feels earned. The title itself tells you what Sauro cares about: legacy. Shared identity. Shared suffering. Shared remembrance. These men were connected not only by training or geography, but by what they endured together and what they carried afterward. The book feels like an act of loyalty in that sense, almost a promise that these men will not be flattened into statistics or forgotten by time.

There is also a memorial quality to the entire project that we found very effective. This is not just a military history. It is a tribute. It is Sauro trying to make sure these Marines are remembered as whole people. Not just as fighters, but as sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, survivors, and, in some cases, the beloved dead. That gives the book a lot of heart.

The reunion material later in the book is especially poignant because of that. Seeing these men return to the baseball field decades later, after everything they endured, is the kind of image that just lands. The first time they stood there, they were young men headed into the unknown. The second time, they were veterans carrying memory, trauma, and absence. Some of the men were no longer there. Some families had to stand in for them. That is powerful stuff.

Something we noticed about this book is the tonal whiplash from the first section compared to the second and third. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. If anything, it again highlights how these very lovable and relatable guys got thrust into this dangerous, violent, chaotic, and often tragic war. It exemplifies how their otherwise normal lives got shaken and upended by war. And, perhaps more importantly, it highlights how immensely courageous and brave these men were.

That tonal shift is part of what makes the book so effective. The early sections let us get comfortable with these men as people, to laugh with them a bit, admire them, and understand what kind of boys they were before war got its claws into them. Then the book pulls the rug out from under you, just like history did. The warmth gives way to dread, the camaraderie gives way to carnage, and the youthful optimism of the Twins ceremony is replaced by the mud, blood, fear, and psychological wreckage of Vietnam and its aftermath. That progression hurts, and it should. It makes the book feel less like a detached military account and more like a human tragedy unfolding in slow motion. At the end of the day, The Legacy of the Twins Platoon is powerful not because it glamorizes war, but because it reminds us what war takes from real people and what some families spend decades trying to piece back together. It is gripping, heartfelt, haunting, and deeply respectful.

Check it out on Amazon!