Today is Veteran's Day, a day to remember, honor, and thank our veterans for their service to our country. This month, as a Salute to the Troops, I've been reading books about soldiers, wars, and the military. This isn't a genre I ordinarily read, but I realize how little I know about the history of the land of my birth, so it's time to broaden my horizons. Some of the books I've read so far this month are:
ALWAYS TO REMEMBER - Brent Ashabranner
©1988 Illustrated with his daughter’s photography of the memorial and its grounds, the author tells the story of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial, from its humble beginnings in the mind of a Vietnam veteran, to its prizewinning design by a 21-year-old Yale undergraduate named Maya Lin, through its construction, and dedication on Veteran’s Day, 1982.
The book also gives a brief overview of the history of the war and how America became involved in the fighting. But most of the book was about the memorial and how it brought together a nation so divided over the conflict.
OUR BROTHER’S KEEPER - Jedwin Smith
©2005 When 19-year-old Marine PFC Jeff Smith was killed in action during the Vietnam War, his family back home fell apart. His alcoholic mother blamed his ex-Marine father for his death. They divorced, and over the years his 5 siblings lost touch with each other. His oldest brother, the author of this memoir and a talented sportswriter, found his life spiraling out of control as an alcoholic trying to drown his grief.
This is the story of one man’s amazing 30 year road to recovery as he set out to avenge the death of his brother. After getting a handle on his drinking problem through the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, Smith’s first step was a visit to the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington, DC. But that only made him more determined to find out how his brother died and to track down and kill the enemy soldier who took his life.
I enjoyed reading about the close bond the two brothers shared when they were children. The author gives a lot of family background as he explores how Jeff’s death affected his parents and siblings and led to his own failure to cope. I’m not going to give any more details because the ending is both surprising and inspiring.
DAYS OF INFAMY - Harry Turtledove
©2004 What if the Japanese had invaded Hawaii right after their surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7th, 1941? That’s the theme of this alternate history novel that’s an action-packed and visually graphic look of what might have been.
Several storylines are woven into this disturbing epic, which continues to its dramatic conclusion in the sequel End of the Beginning. Jane Armitage, the estranged wife of an American officer who becomes a POW, is on her own when the attack occurs. Japanese-Hawaiian fisherman Jiro Takahashi welcomes the Japanese take-over of the islands, but his two sons who were born in Hawaii consider themselves true-blue American citizens. Joe Crosetti is a young man out to avenge the deaths of his uncle’s family at the hands of Japanese bombers by training to become a fighter pilot, eager to enter the war. And the strangest character of all, Oscar van der Kirk, a blond, American surfer-dude who goes on with his simple lifestyle, despite the war going on around him. There’s also a complete cast of Japanese military characters. I liked how the story was told through different viewpoints of people on both sides of the conflict. This is a meaty book that roars on to its finish and then leaves you hanging, eager to continue with the sequel.
I AM FIFTEEN AND I DON’T WANT TO DIE - Christine Arnothy
©1956 (translated from the French) When we think of civilian suffering during WW2, the Nazi death camps always come to mind, and rightfully so. This book is about a Hungarian family who had to hide for months in their smelly, damp cellar with assorted other neighbors when their apartment building was damaged in the Siege of Budapest, one of the bloodiest campaigns of WW2.
Although the book is a quick read, the images of starvation, rape, rotting corpses, and general mayhem leave a disturbing impression of the atrocities that both sides (German and Soviet) inflicted on the people of the Hungarian capital near the end of the war.
JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN - Dalton Trumbo
©1939 Earlier in the year I read how one of the best-loved American artists lent his talents to the “war effort” in NORMAN ROCKWELL’S FOUR FREEDOMS by Stuart Murray & James McCabe. Patriotism had to be whipped up if American mothers were going to give up their sons to the military, especially so soon after losing so many of them in WW1.
Rockwell painted proud pictures of patriotism and freedom, the way we’re supposed to feel when our boys march off to war. Trumbo word-paints the grim reality of war’s aftermath “when Johnny comes marchin’ home again.”
Joe is a young American soldier who wakes up in an Army hospital in 1918 to learn the extent of his combat injuries. As he fades in and out of consciousness, he dreams of home and family, and passes time with tender memories of the world he left behind. His reminiscences soften a story that is sometimes very hard to read.
This was a reread for me, and not one I was looking forward to. But I wanted to see if this book would have the same impact on me that it did 40 years ago when I was a senior in high school during the Vietnam War. After reading it back then, I was ready to run off to Canada with my boyfriend, who had recently lost his older brother in combat in ‘Nam. And I believe the book solidified my own feelings against war in general.
With all the global conflicts and wars that my country has been involved in since then, I can say that rereading Johnny Got His Gun has had an even greater impact than that first reading did.
Politically controversial since its publication between the two World Wars, it was revived and reprinted during the Vietnam War. Raw and graphic and bitterly truthful, I feel everyone should read this book, because we tend to take war for granted in this modern world of ours. If we truly knew its devastation and questioned its necessity, we’d all be beating our swords into plowshares.
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