Reflections on the Vietnam War

Book excerpt: ""An important contribution to the literature on the war."" Gary R. Hess, Emeritus Distinguished Research Professor, Bowling Green State University. Author, --"Vietnam: Explaining America's Lost War." In his Reflections on the Vietnam War: A Fifty-Year Journey, Warren E. Hunt chronicles his long struggle to come to grips with the meaning of the Vietnam War and how it affected him before, during and after his tour in Vietnam with the U.S. First Infantry Division. Using a stylistic mix of personal anecdote, historical reflection and essay, the author weaves his experience of the war into a broad context encompassing the course of his life. Starting out as a naive and patriotic teenager drafted at age 19, he traces his path through military training, his impressions of Vietnam and its people, the absurdity of daily basecamp life, and the crucible of enemy fire. Returning to a nation torn apart by the war, he soon realizes that, even though he is no longer in the army, he cannot escape the war''s insane grasp. Catastrophic events in Vietnam and on the home front, along with the dawning awareness of suicides among his fellow veterans, prompt him to seek answers to the questions that haunt his daily life: Why did America go to war in Vietnam? How could we lose? Why did so many people have to suffer in vain? His quest leads him to the unveiling of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., where painful memories and powerful emotions merge to initiate a healing process for the author, his fellow veterans and the country at large.