The Education of Corporal John Musgrave:
Vietnam and Its Aftermath
"When you were out in the bush and someone screamed, it was easy to tell the difference between someone who was scared and someone who'd been hit bad. There's both pain and terror in the scream when someone gets hit. Suddenly I heard someone screaming that way, and, God, it sounded so fucking horrible, and I couldn't figure out who it was. Then, and instant later, my mind caught up with my body, and I realized the scream was coming from me." (p 157)
Growing up in a small midwestern town in the fifties and sixties is something I share with the author of this memoir. It is a story about joining the Marines, going to war in Vietnam, and surviving both the war and its aftermath. Fortunately, I did not share the going to war part nor the aftermath, at least not in the same way as the author, but as one of his fellow Americans who lived through that era and experienced its effects on both those who went to war and those who did not.
I suppose it was that connection which was part of what made choose to read this book. Once I started I could not put it down for it was a riveting story of an innocent boy of 17 who dreamed of joining the Marines and managed to live that dream and the nightmarish consequences that he had to endure as a result. The book enthralled me because his story was real and believable. The personal details from boot camp to Nam and his return on a stretcher thinking that he would not survive were narrated with prose that would make professional writers proud. That his story did not end there made it even more readable and took this reader into parts of post-Vietnam history that were unfamiliar territory. Through it all I got to know this, now not so young, man and his story of going into the depths of hell (for that is what war is) and reclaiming his life with purpose through raising a family and standing up with and for other Vietnam veterans who all too often did not receive the support they deserved from their fellow Americans.
I would recommend this sincere and informative memoir to all who are interested in how even one individual with a few close friends can make America better and surmount the terrors, both physical and mental, that come from going to war.
2 comments:
I tend to stay away from books that can be disturbing. I read too much for escapism but that's wrong. We have forgotten the Vietnam War vets and the vets from Afghanistan and Iraq and here is a book where a brave man tells us what it was like and how he recovered. I will put this book on my list and thanks for a very fine review.
Kathy,
I do not think you will be disappointed. I, too, seldom read books like this, but I was glad that I read this man's story of how he went to war and survived and how he was changed by the experience in good ways. His story is one that demonstrates the strength that can be found in one's self and one's family.
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