SANTOLI : Everything we had (fülszöveg)
Al Santoli, the genius and gentle leader of this project, fought the Vietnam War twice: once as an eighteen-year-old infantryman up against the Tet offensive of 1968; and then again, eleven years later, as a veteran with a tape recorder, when he journeyed across the physical and psychic American countryside, talking, laughing and crying with other veterans and their families. Everything We Had is both wars, and it creates through shared human pain and triumph a simple and undeniable authority.
That authority, the soldier-to-soldier truth, makes clear that those who watched the war on television can make no claim to understand what happened in Vietnam. "We fought as soldiers," Santoli has written, "not as journalists, moviemakers or politicians. So what we say in our book should be taken literally: what we saw, what we did, what they did, and how we felt. Talking about the war that way, as you will see, produces a torrent of contradictory emotions as well as a detached and eerie clarity of mind and spirit.
"And for this," Santoli says, "at least thirty-three of us don't want a parade, a monument, or pity. We want instead an account of the war held together by the combat soldier's bond of trust – a person whose life once depended on another's instincts and skip." That trust and a profound sense of human intimacy this book has: the reader becomes the soldier as the veteran recalls a Vietnam reality he has kept hidden from his closest friends.
Thirty-three tours of duty are presented in rough chronological order, from December of 1962, when John Kennedy was still alive, to April of 1975, when Saigon fell. One hears mostly from ordinary soldiers, along with some brass. Robert Santos was officially regarded as a hero by the Army, but as a platoon leader he taught his men to do nothing by the book, and that if they did nothing stupid, all would go the only way to go – home. Jonathan Polansky fell deeply in love with a Vietnamese woman, whom the VC then butchered for being an American sympathizer. Admiral William Lawrence, once tortured as a POW and now superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy, did compound interest in his head to stay sane in Hao Lo. Lynda Van Devanter found life in the midst of death when she delivered a baby in a battlefield hospital. Herb Mock had a bullet-dodging knack and hated the media and the brass; he also tells an exquisite story and possesses a compelling moral sensibility.
The American people have yet to come to terms with the experience called Vietnam. The truth that there is in that experience lies deep within the lives of the once-idealistic young Americans who actually fought the war. The soldiers here, therefore, feel that the war's truth, and the human honor and love yet to be comprehended, can be discovered between the covers of this book. Everything We Had presents to our country a chance to find out what it was really like once in a distant place. And so move on with out forgetting.
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| KATALÓGUS | TARTALOM |
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