The Healing by Richard Jellerson

Once upon a time, Pan American Airways sold a special ticket for something called Flight One. It was akin to a magic flying carpet ride. Good for a year, a Flight One ticket entitled its holder to circle the earth, stopping in major cities as often and for as long as desired.

Back in that long-ago time during the Vietnam War—contrary to good reasoning—Richard Jellerson flew back-to-back tours with the 116th Assault Helicopter Company at Cu Chi. After each tour he bought a Flight One ticket.

Jellerson’s first earth orbit lasted only a month, the duration of his leave time between tours. His second trip took time enough to stabilize his mind for re-entry into society—and the onset of adulthood.

Jellerson’s The Healing: Pan Am Flight 001 (Outskirts Press, 148 pp. $15.95, paper) is an account of those journeys. The book is exceptionally well written. For that, Jellerson thanks screenwriter Todd Mattox, a cousin who brainstormed with him about the book, and “then acted as muse, editor, [and] occasional re-writer.”

Jellerson writes about truths that are evident, but unrecognized, in military life. For example, combat demands obedience to the desire for self-preservation, but the need disappears once the shooting starts.

He explains these types of things with lucidity filled with innocence, as if he had heard such truths in the past but only much later began to understand them. Paradoxically, one’s heightened senses reduces concern for one’s self, he says. “Through the war I had become a different person and still didn’t know what I didn’t know,” he admits.

He had to overcome contradictory thoughts to return home and establish a workable relationship with America, a nation that had betrayed him, he believed. Traveling to sixteen countries, Jellerson encountered a variety of people with whom he discussed life—people who “pulled him back from the edge,” he says. That includes:

• A young Thai woman selling soda and telling him her dreamy vision of America
• A news correspondent eagerly seeking war
• Men and women in Australia, Italy, England, and Greece accepting him at face value
• Jellerson himself pondering atheism and the certainty of no afterlife, thereby placing the burden of living on here and now.

At times, I felt the people he met were simply Jellerson’s alter egos, and he was talking to himself, straining to evaluate horrors that the war had revealed to him. He frequently flashed back to combat experiences—particularly rescuing the wounded—to build a foundation for his rehabilitation needs.

He sums up a turning point in his life with an observation that occurred in 1969 on his “second or third day of flying a combat assault” as a nineteen-year-old copilot:

“The enemy below this day was a wonder to see. They ran at full speed through the jungle in those light brown uniforms and pith helmets carrying all their weapons. These North Vietnamese Army regulars were fully committed to get to our landing zone ahead of us. They ran through the humid, deep green, overheated jungle with only one thought: shoot down the helicopters.”

His conclusion: “Until then I had only intellectually embraced even the concept of enemy.”

In those moments, Jellerson discovered a foe and surrendered his individuality to American politicians. Flight One helped him find it again. People of the world taught him a major lesson—that “no one hated me, and I hated no one. I had friends everywhere I went. And only had enemies in one small beautiful country in Southeast Asia by political mandate.”

I rank The Healing alongside my favorite books written by the youngest of men at war: A G.I.’s Vietnam Diary: A Journey Through Myself by Dominick Yezzo and Calm Frenzy: One Man’s Vietnam War by Loring M. Bailey Jr.

The three books tell more about the Vietnam War than a roomful of generals or overflowing stacks of Pentagon documents.

—Henry Zeybel

 

The Capture of the USS Pueblo by James Duermeyer

The Capture of the USS Pueblo (McFarland, 209 pp. $39.95, paper; $9.99, Kindle) by James Duermeyer is an efficient and instructive review of one of the all-but forgotten events of 1968. As with many books these days, there is a longish subtitle which, in this case, is a helpful summary: The Incident, the Reaction, and the Aftermath.

It is important to remember that in January 1968 (when the Pueblo was captured) the Korean War was a recent memory in the American psyche. When you add to this the nation’s turmoil in 1968 over the Vietnam War, then the possibility of this series of foreign policy and military blunders involving a poorly designed spy ship was, in retrospect, almost inevitable.

Within a week after the capture of the ship, the Tet Offensive was unleashed. By the time the crewmen were released in December, Richard Nixon had been elected president, after LBJ chose not to run for re-election. The Vietnam War was a constant presence in the Johnson Administration’s deliberations about how to respond to the capture of the Pueblo. Military options were considered. But in the end, negotiations assured the release of the crew.

Duermeyer. who has master’s degree in U.S. History from the University of Texas, served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. After the war, he continued his Navy career in the Reserves, reaching the rank of Commander. Duermeyer has written five historical novels she he retired from the Navy. In this book, he writes about a time and a subject (naval history) for which he seems well qualified.

The Capture of the USS Pueblo comes in at a compact 172 pages of text, with an excellent preface, introduction, and epilogue. These short sections book-end six chapters, which are a bit over-analytical. What’s more Duermeyer does not provide a compelling narrative arc in the book.

On the other hand, he includes several interesting facts and stories, including some dealing with the negotiations. However, one wishes that he humanized the main players a bit more, especially the Pueblo’s captain, Cmdr. Lloyd Bucher. The book jumps around chronologically, with many references to post-release reviews and findings that disrupt the flow of the story.

North Korea remains a mystery, but Duermeyer does shed some light on North Korean political thought. He devotes an entire chapter to “Juche,” an ideology that demands independence and “self-sustainability” in foreign policy.

Duermeyer also provides interesting background and analysis of the Korean leader, Kim Il-Sung, which could inform our nation’s thinking as we continue to struggle in our relations with North Korea.

—Bill Fogarty

All Present, Unaccounted For by Robert Flanagan

Robert J. Flanagan was born in Mississippi in 1936. He entered the Marines in 1953 and served seven years in the U.S., Panama, and on the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas. He left the Marine Corps in 1960, joined the Army Security Agency, and put in sixteen additional years of military service. He retired from the Army in 1976 as a Chief Warrant Officer.

From 2001-12 Bob Flanagan published six books, including a trilogy of novels based on his ASA service. His nearly five decades years of journal-keeping has influenced much of his published writing. Flanagan, a life member of Vietnam Veterans of America, is currently assembling a new collection of non-war-related poetry. His recently released poetry collection, All Present, Unaccounted For (Connemara Press, 126 pp. $22, paper), on the other hand, is heavily war-related.

The book’s first poem is entitled “Vacation in Vietnam, 1964.”

Small brown sappers, hard core

Of the VC Three-Ninety-Fifth Battalion—

And equally vulgar aspirants to the title—

Dash ashore in the night wash of the South

China Sea at Vung Tau

Orchestrated, choreographed…not a ballet:

A quiet time-lapse jitterbug.

They don’t know that alien planners

Will name this place in-country R-and-R.

This poem gives a fine taste and sample of the selections in this collection. There are more than a hundred pages of such poems, all of them worth reading and all of them beautifully written—and related to the American war in Vietnam. They deal with topics such as heat rash, immersion foot, and crotch rot, as well as Operation Ranch Hand, Agent Orange, John Wayne, Tarzan, and Graham Greene.

This fine book ranks right up there at the top with W.D. Ehrhart’s recently published poetry collection, Thank You for Your Service. With these two poetry books on your shelf, you will have a good start on understanding the totality of Vietnam War poetry.

For ordering info, go to the author’s website, connemarapress.org

—David Willson

Captured by Alvin Townley

As the fourth highest-ranking officer among the prisoners held in Hanoi by the North Vietnamese, Navy Commander Jeremiah Denton set a standard of behavior virtually beyond imagination in fulfilling the rigid expectations of the official Code of Conduct for Members of the Armed Forces of the United States.

Denton’s seven-and-a-half years—from July 1965 to February 1973—as a prisoner have been well chronicled. That includes When Hell Was in Session, Denton’s 1982 memoir. The latest recreation of Denton’s POW experience is Alvin Townley’s Captured: An American Prisoner of War in North Vietnam (Scholastic Focus, 256 pp. $18.99, hardcover; $11.99, Kindle), a book for Young Adults. The two men were friends until Denton’s death in 2014 at age 89. Captured captures the bravery of the American POWs’ resistance against North Vietnamese torture.

Of the Code of Conduct’s six Articles, Denton—who was promoted to Rear Admiral during his captivity—concentrated on two: First, he took a leadership position among prisoners when he was the senior officer of a group. Second, he emphasized providing the enemy with only name, rank, service number, and date of birth.

“And if you say more,” Denton ordered, “make them beat it out of you.” He stressed that a prisoner’s ultimate goal was to maintain personal integrity in order to return home with honor.

“[Jerry] defined leadership with a fearless sense of bold, almost unthinking, self-sacrifice,” Townley says. He “took the punches and the rope first. If he didn’t, how could he expect others to follow his orders?”

The North Vietnamese favorite (and most effective) type of torture was to bind a prisoner in ropes that compressed his body and drastically reduced blood circulation and breathing, and then leave him in that position for hours. Other tortures included long stretches of solitary confinement, often in darkness; imprisonment in a four-by-four-foot concrete cell; a parade through Hanoi that allowed the public to abuse the prisoners; feeding the men soup laced with human feces; and bombarding them with propaganda.

Denton advised his subordinates to “take torture and before you lose your sanity, write something harmless or ludicrous.” At the same time, he believed “a prisoner should not make any statement disloyal to the United States.”

Although he advocated a hard line, Denton understood that no one can hold out forever in the face of torture. During periods of unrelenting, brutal torture, all prisoners “signed the apologies, the confessions,” Townley notes.

The North Vietnamese viewed American prisoners as political tools whose confessions could validate the United States as an aggressor nation in the eyes of the entire world.

In my mind, the degree of man’s inhumanity toward his fellow man is incalculable. From that premise, I attempt to quantify the degree to which political, racial, and economic differences affect a jailer’s treatment of his prisoners. I often have wondered if the men who originally wrote the Code of Conduct ever had even an inkling of similar thoughts.

Retired Navy Capt. Allen Colby Brady spent more than six years as a prisoner in Hanoi during the time Denton was there. He recently published an account of that experience in Witnessing the American Century: Via Berlin, Pearl Harbor, Vietnam, and the Straits of Florida. His attitude and actions as a prisoner slightly differed from Denton’s. Still, considering the intensity of their environment, even the slightest differences provide extremely interesting comparisons.

—Henry Zeybel

Pilgrim Days by Alastair MacKenzie

Born in the U.K., Alastair MacKenzie spent most of his childhood in the Far East before his family settled in New Zealand at the end of his father’s British Army career. At the age of 18 in 1966, MacKenzie joined the New Zealand Army—AKA, the Kiwis. He arrived in Vietnam in May 1970.

The first half of MacKenzie’s memoir—Pilgrim Days: From Vietnam to the SAS (Osprey, 224 pp. $25, hardcover; $9.99, Kindle)—recalls his year commanding platoon out of Nui Dat on search-and-destroy missions to protect Route 15 that linked Saigon to the port city of Vung Tau.

In Vietnam, MacKenzie says, “We operated differently [than] the Americans, South Vietnamese, Thai and Korean forces, who would go and find the Viet Cong and once they found them would ‘pile on.’” Because of their reduced numbers, the Kiwis, “like the Australians,” MacKenzie writes, were “more subtle.”

He goes on to describes field operations that, except for greater respect for mines and booby traps, resembled American tactics that heavily relied on artillery and ground-attack aircraft in encounters with North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong. He emphasizes, however, that his men moved slower and much more quietly in the field than the American troops did.

His unit took part in major operations but fought no large-scale battles. As expected, his men suffered casualties. MacKenzie says he was “disappointed” that his platoon “and I were not able to kill more than we did.” In his eyes, the Kiwis were “small in terms of manpower,” but “big in terms of operational efficiency.”

His account provides evidence of the universal nature of infantrymen who work to avoid unnecessary exposure to danger and complain about unrealistic upper-echelon expectations. Those sections of the book make for good reading.

MacKenzie also writes about a long line of military contemporaries. Their stories occasionally stand alone. Citing the men’s pros and cons, he often uses only a first name and an initial to identify them.

Upon returning home from war, PTSD temporarily alienated MacKenzie from his wife, Cecilia, but he received no counseling—much like Americans.

In 1973, MacKenzie resigned from the New Zealand Army to join the British Army Paras and eventually the British 22 Special Air Service Regiment, with whom he patrolled Northern Ireland. Later, he contracted with the South African Defense Force. On Pathfinder Brigade missions in Angola, he had “moments of excitement” similar to those he felt fighting in Vietnam, he says. His list of esoteric jobs also included counter-terrorism duty in Oman with the Sultan’s Special Forces.

The pace of Pilgrim Days slows when MacKenzie discusses training, which throughout his career was the core of his temporary assignments in Germany, Italy, Sudan, Belize, and Hong Kong. On the plus side, he includes explanations of training exercises that were as dangerous as combat was.

MacKenzie switched to civilian employment in 1989 as a salesman for the Royal Ordnance Ammunition Department. Within a few years, he visited “almost every country in Africa, Asia, North America and Europe,” he says.

Thereafter, he served for ten years with the Duke of Lancaster’s Territorial Army before retiring as a lieutenant colonel. MacKenzie also started an independent security consulting company, which he sold in 2005 before settling down in New Zealand.

Pilgrim Days gave me a clearer view of men and parts of the world that were somewhat vague to me. I admire MacKenzie’s independence and his ability to move between organizations based on his expertise in counter-terrorism and security. As a soldier, he was a man for all seasons.

As is the case with all Osprey Publishing books, Pilgrim Days contains excellent graphics. That includes enough color photographs to produce a television documentary.

—Henry Zeybel

Twilight of the American Century by Andrew Bacevich

Reality demands pragmatism. Idealism too often is illusion or delusion. In Twilight of The American Century (University of Notre Dame Press, 504 pp. $125, hardcover; $25, paper; $10.99, Kindle) Andrew Bacevich makes the case that U.S. foreign and military policy has been flawed since before the Cold War, with mistakes accelerating since 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.

He argues for a conservative, pro-American, non-interventionist foreign policy—while at the same time being sharply critical of President Trump and his “America First” and “Make America Great Again” policies. Still, Bacevich believes that the President is the embodiment of what millions of Americans believe about U.S. foreign policy today.

Bacevich supported Barack Obama over John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. But in this book the former Army officer, author, and Boston University history and international relations professor criticizes the Obama Administration for not a foreign policy vision. “Seldom have well-credentialed and well-meaning people worked so hard to produce so little of substance,” he writes.

Those sorts of wry comments are peppered throughout the book.

Bacevich graduated from West Point in 1969 and served for a year (1970-71) in the Vietnam War as the “misguided and unwinnable” war, as he puts it, was winding down. He saw his mission as doing everything possible to prevent the men under his command from being killed.

“It did not pay to reflect too deeply about the predicament into which the Army and the nation had gotten itself,” Bacevich writes. “The demands of duty were enough.”

He remained in the Army for two decades before becoming a senior professor at B.U. in 1998. Twilight of the American Century is a broad collection of essays Bacevich has written since 2001. They deal with “American imperialism, militarism, civil-military relations and the changing meaning of freedom.”

He acknowledges two deeply personal influences. His wife’s brother—his closest friend since high school—who “never got his life on track” after he was badly wounded in Vietnam.” And his son, Andrew Bacevich, Jr., who was killed in Iraq in 2007.

The book is organized in four sections. The first, “Poseurs and Prophets,” dissects diverse thinkers such as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Gen. Tommy Franks, the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and the novelist Tom Clancy.

Essays in the second and third sections—called “History and Myth” and ”War and Empire”—critique the nation’s foreign policy and military doctrines. The fourth, “Politics and Culture” maintains—without celebration—that that the “Age of Trump” will endure long after the president retires.

Andrew Bacevich

Even so, Bacevich offers what he terms “a new conservative agenda” that includes making common cause with “tree-hugging, granola-crunching liberals” to preserve Earth and—potentially—with “the impassioned antiwar left,” abandon the “conceit” that the United States should exercise “global leadership.” That term, he says, has become “a euphemism for making mischief and demanding prerogatives allowed to no other nation.”

Weighing in at more than 450 pages of text, Twilight of the American Century is a profoundly intellectual, provocative work. It will leave a bitter taste in the mouths of both Democrats and Republicans.

The book is a tough-minded call for liberals and conservatives to come together to “repair our democracy” in the post-Vietnam War, post-Cold War, post-9/11 era.

—Bob Carolla

Sherman Lead by Gaillard R. Peck, Jr.

With the exception of compassion for the deaths and disappearances of fellow flyers, Gaillard R. Peck Jr. presents a lighthearted insider’s view of his Vietnam War experience in Sherman Lead: Flying the F-4D Phantom II in Vietnam (Osprey, 304 pp.; $32, hardcover; $22.40, Kindle).

As a pilot in the 443rd Tactical Fighter Squadron—aka Satan’s Angels—at Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base in 1968-69, Peck flew 163 combat missions into North Vietnam and Laos to destroy the enemy transportation system, day and night. He describes many close calls with disaster, some caused by North Vietnamese Army antiaircraft defenses, and others by his mistakes. He recounts several dangerous misadventures with humor and wonderment about his youthful good luck.

Although the book is Peck’s memoir, he includes a few long passages describing bombing missions written by his pilot systems operator Steve Mosier. For his part, Peck unhesitatingly names names. Occasionally, his appreciation of his crew members’ and buddies’ advice, friendship, and devotion to the mission nears adoration.

When citing a few incompetent individuals, Peck—whose nom de guerre was “Evil”—graciously hides their identities. He expresses intolerance for their ineptitude, especially those who jeopardized his safety simply to qualify for monthly flying and combat pay.

His thoughts on offensive tactics following Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 bombing halt of North Vietnam appear throughout the text. For example:

• “We roamed the area looking for lucrative targets for our ordnance. By this point in the war there weren’t many.”
• “Lack of feedback on effectiveness [from intelligence sources] added to our cynical attitude about these missions.”
• “We joked about the fact that we seldom caused much apparent damage. The results didn’t seem to amount to much—especially given the risk involved in making the attacks.”
• “It was just the continuation of another mind-numbing mission attacking an unseen target that would be defended with a lot of aggressive AAA.”

Peck convincingly shows the difficulties of flying the F-4D under the often-combined challenges of enemy gunfire, clouds and rain, and using the wrong weapons against, as he puts it, “whimsical” targets selected by higher-ups.

Several times, Peck assumes a teaching role and, in great detail, explains techniques of visual, radar, and laser-guided bombing. He taught me a lot with these and other interludes.

The first third of the book deals with Peck’s education at the U.S. Air Force Academy, pilot training, and preparation for deployment to Vietnam. His descriptions of POW, water, and jungle survival training closely parallel my memories of attending the same courses. Similarly, his accounts of off-duty activities at Ubon—on base and downtown—perfectly coincide with what I saw and did there in 1970-71.

Peck refers to letters he wrote and received while with the 443rd. His writing style has a casual conversational tone, and he often repeats facts to refresh a point. This is his second book, following 2012’s America’s Secret MiG Squadron, based on his flying and evaluating captured and stolen Soviet aircraft as part of a twenty-six-year military career, from which he retired as a colonel.

Significant overlap exists between Sherman Lead and other memoirs by USAF Vietnam F-4 jocks such as David R. “Buff” Honodel’s The Phantom Vietnam War. Each book reveals dedication and camaraderie within the fighter pilot trade that was unequaled anywhere else in the Air Force at the time—for good and bad.

Aficionados of F-4 operations might find enlightenment in comparing Peck’s USAF views with those of Navy pilot Don Pedersen in his recently published Top Gun: An American Story. Both books cover the same times and events.

—Henry Zeybel

Thank You for Your Service by W.D. Ehrhart

W.D. Ehrhart joined the U.S. Marine Corps right after he graduated from high school in 1966 and served on active duty for three years. He arrived in Vietnam in February 1967, and went on to experience an eventful thirteen-month tour of duty. He was awarded the Purple Heart for wounds received in action in Hue City during the 1968 Tet Offensive, among other decorations.

His service in the Marine Corps in the Vietnam War became grist for the poetic mill that enabled Ehrhart to produce hundreds of fine poems dealing that subject. Of course, talent and hard work combined with Ehrhart’s experiences to come up with the collection of poems that fills most of the pages of his latest book, Thank You for Your Service (McFarland, 310 pp., $35, paper)

I tried hard to select a few lines from this group of chronologically arranged poems to convey the totality of Ehrhart’s talent, but I failed in that attempt. It was just too difficult to choose among so many outstanding poems.

Bill Ehrhart in County, 1967

If I had to list his best work (if, that is, an editor asked me to do so), I would name the following poems: “Scientific Treatise for My Wife,” “More Than You Ever Imagined,” “Afraid of the Dark,” “Waking Alone in Darkness,” “Desire, “The Fool, “ “Sins of the Fathers,” “Letting Go,” “Golfing with My Father,” “Home on the Range,” What Keeps Me Going,” and “How History Gets Written.”

If I had to choose a poem to quote some of Bill Ehrhart’s best poetic lines, I would go with “What Keeps Me Going”:

Pressed down by the weight of despair, I could sit for hours idly searching the ashes from my cigarette, the darkness of silos, the convoluted paths we have followed into this morass of disasters just waiting to happen,

But my daughter needs to sleep and wants me near.  She knows nothing of my thoughts.  Not one missile mars her questioning inspection of my eyes; she wants only the assurance of my smile, the familiar places just so:

Brown Bear, Thumper Bunny, Clown.

These are the circumference of her world.  She sucks her thumb,

Rubs her face hard against the mattress

And begins again

The long night dreaming

Darkness into light.

Ehrhart’s book is filled with such poems and I delighted in them.

Thanks, Bill, for another great collection.

—David Willson

Hard to Kill by Joe Ladensack and Joseph A. Reaves

Born in 1946, Joe Ladensack has survived and won battles with three formidable foes: the North Vietnamese Army, the Catholic Church, and cancer. He recollects facing these enemies in Hard to Kill: A Hero’s Tale of Surviving Vietnam and the Catholic Church (Hellgate, 270 pp. $29.95, hardcover; $5.99, Kindle), a memoir written with the help of journalist and author Joseph A. Reaves.

Against the North Vietnamese in 1969-70 Ladensack led a platoon of M-113 Armored Personnel Carriers for 2/2 of the 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One.  About half the time, he and his men fought dismounted.

“Most Vietnam veterans were in three or four major firefights,” he says. “I was in more than fifty. The mechanized infantry was like the fire brigade or the ambulance corps. When anybody got in trouble, they called on us to come save them.”

His platoon’s most memorable battle action took place during an ill-conceived sweep up Black Virgin Mountain (Núi Bà Đen) that led the men into an ambush. A general’s direct order prompted the ill-fated maneuver after commanders at several levels challenged it.

Sixty-eight of the company’s seventy men were killed or wounded. During that encounter, Ladensack underwent a near-death experience that convinced him to leave the Army and serve God as a priest. His battlefield exploits earned him a Purple Heart, along with two Silver Stars and six Bronze Stars.

A few years ago, Bill Sly published No Place to Hide: A Company at Nui Ba Den, which provides a more detailed account of the attack on Black Virgin Mountain by 2/2. Ladensack helped Sly research and organize that book. Having read and reviewed No Place to Hide, I highly recommend it for its lessons in leadership—good and bad.

Hard to Kill is also a good read because its stories focus on the men involved in the action. Ladensack describes the behavior of the men he followed and the men he led in ways that bring the reader into the sphere of the moment. He confronts pertinent issues and wastes no time describing mundane things such as the contents of a can of C-rations. Despite his present age, his prose reflects the spirit of a young warrior.

Ladensack’s mentality did not change when he left the Army and spent 1970-86 as a seminarian and Catholic priest in Arizona. He quickly recognized that the church’s most significant problem was child molesters and serial sex offenders within the priesthood.

He identified these men to the police and provided details. His constant pursuit of them resulted in the Bishop of Phoenix, Thomas J. O’Brien, taking away his priestly privileges. As Ladensack shows, O’Brien condoned rampant child abuse among priests in his jurisdiction. What’s more, church members and their political allies threatened Ladensack’s life if he continued his crusade.

He went into hiding until near the turn of the century when investigator Mark Stribling under guidance from Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley initiated action against the Phoenix Diocese for decades of sexual abuse by priests. Ladensack aided their cause. Years of legal work produced success frequently limited by judges’ unwillingness to punish religious leaders to the maximum.

Father Joe 

Ladensack summarizes his bout with cancer—his final enemy—as follows:

“In 2013, I entered hospice six years after being diagnosed with leukemia. Doctors gave me six weeks to live. Luckily, my life lingered past the doctor’s expiration date.

“I was thrown out of hospice after eighteen months. They told me I wasn’t dying fast enough. That was four year ago. I’m still around, still working to bring Bishop O’Brien and his legions to justice.

“The end may be coming, but I’m still hard to kill.”

Occasionally, Ladensack’s stoicism reaches transcendental heights. His ability to overlook slights and accept disappointment falls beyond my comprehension. His deference perhaps stems from the intensity of his time in the crucible. In other words, the magnitude of his exposure to the anguishes of life has diminished the scope of his ego.

Nevertheless, deep down inside he is damn proud of his survival and his medals.

All I can add is: You have to admire a guy who pursues meaningful causes.

Joe Ladensack’s website is hardtokillbook.com

—Henry Zeybel

Beyond the Quagmire edited by Geoffrey Jensen and Matthew Stith

One should not judge a book by its cover. In the case of Beyond the Quagmire: New Interpretations of the Vietnam War (Texas A&M University, 432 pp., $29.95), one should not judge this fine collection of essays by its title.

That’s because the title suggests that after The Making of a Quagmire (1965), David Halberstam’s seminal account of the Kennedy administration’s move into the Vietnam War;  and after –Into The Quagmire (1991), a history of Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of the war from 1964-65; and even Before the Quagmire: American Intervention in Laos (2012), we can now move “beyond” the quagmire.

Beyond strives to move past the Vietnam War “morass,” the editors say, “by providing new ideas and directions,” and it is mostly successful in this regard. But these perspectives ironically deepen the muddle about the war and its remembrance, enhancing the conflict’s well-deserved reputation as “an awkward, complex, or hazardous situation.”

Editors Geoffrey Jensen and Matthew Stith—historians at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and the University of Texas respectively—have compiled a collection of thirteen essays that explore many different issues, including rural development in South Vietnam under the Diem regime and the commemoration of the war through comic books. The book is divided into three sections, exploring the politics, the combatants, and the remembrance of the conflict.

The best of the essays are Nengher Vang’s treatment on the Hmong and Xiaobing Li’s review of Chinese involvement in the Vietnam War and Sino-Soviet relations. Ron Milam’s article on the role of military advisers, Susan Eastman’s on the ‘Nam comics, Doug Bradley’s on music and memory, and Heather Marie Stur’s on women, are all noteworthy additions.

Interesting perspectives, but perhaps ones that do not move beyond other scholarly work, include Martin Clemis’ essay on geography, Jeffrey Turner’s on the student movement in the South, Matthew Stith’s on the natural environment, and Sarah Thelen’s on Nixon and patriotism. The last essay would have benefited from an analysis of why antiwar activists seemed to be duped into allowing Nixon supporters to paint them as unpatriotic. Thelen’s contention that the Nixon team conceived the idea that “unity was not necessary for electoral victory” is belied by history.

Nixon announcing the May 1970 incursion into Cambodia 

Some of the other perspectives are indeed new, but perhaps their originality underscores the limitations of their arguments. Geoffrey Stewart’s analysis on South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem’s rural development programs, for example, is solid in its review of Diem’s plans, but collapses under the weight of Diem’s despotism. The South Vietnamese government was not “struck by” the Buddhist Crisis in the summer of 1963 as he says, but had precipitated it through systematic repression. Even a forgiving understanding of Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu would not suggest that they acted in the best interests of South Vietnam’s peasants.

Geoffrey Jensen’s treatment on the lowering of standards required for induction in the military, McNamara’s Project 100,000, has a provocative but ultimately misguided thesis. Jensen misses obvious connections to the war itself: Both were conceived with the best of intentions, both were ultimately exploited and mismanaged, and neither was adequately reformed due to obdurate and selfish politicians.

In his essay on Vietnam veterans memorials, William Allison proffers a challenging thesis, contending that when the last Vietnam War veterans pass on, those men and women—and the war in which they fought—will be forgotten. Memorials are a physical manifestation to honor the sacrifice of veterans. They are not built as tourist attractions or as a means to foster oblivion about a war. If a memorial fosters solace, this is a positive thing. It does not lead to forgetting, for healing leaves a scar.

Beyond the Quagmire presents a diverse and erudite collection of compositions. It is a welcome addition and a worthy successor to 2002’s A Companion to the Vietnam War.

–Daniel R. Hart