A
superb oral history of two generations
at war–sometimes with each
other.
For readers of Ron Kovic's Born
on the Fourth of July or Lewis Puller
Jr's Fortunate Son, it won't come
as a surprise that the Americans
who fought in WWII and Vietnam often
saw their missions in radically
different ways. Takiff has done
a very smart thing in pairing and
playing off the remembrances of
veterans of both conflicts, and
in that alone, this would do Studs
Terkel proud. He adds yet more by
focusing on father-and-son veterans,
some of whom, nearly 30 years after
the second war ended, have trouble
talking about their experiences
with each other, if less so with
the interviewer. Where Gene Camp,
a WWII veteran who was also one
of the earliest American fighers
in Vietnam, rails against "all
the liberals barking and carrying
on" and "the people back
here . . . protesting and making
speeches and running to Canada,"
his infantry captain son Greg says
quietly, "I was young and naive
and very patriotic. Now I would
say we got into Vietnam for lots
of reasons, but it wasn't the sort
of overarching, noble reason that
I had thought. . . . It was like
throwing good money after bad."
Even fathers and sons who more or
less agree on the flawed nature
of the Vietnam misadventure find
difficulty in speaking in these
pages. But speak they do, to each
other and to the world, often eloquently,
often quite movingly. To all their
conversations Takiff adds a smart
introduction and running commentary
that addresses all the "well-rehearsed
generalizations" we've long
heard about both wars, reminding
his readers that plenty of WWII
vets returned with PTSD, plenty
of Vietnam vets returned normal,
and plenty of commentators have
erred in thinking we won WWII just
because we were the good guys and
lost Vietnam because we were–well,
something else.
An impressive and thoughtful contribution,
and one that will be of considerable
interest to both veterans and students
of America's wars.
Starred Review*:
A star is assigned to books of unusual
merit, determined by the editors
of Kirkus Reviews. 
Copyright ©2003, Kirkus Associates,
LP. All rights reserved.
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Military Times Media
Group |
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| September 29, 2003 Issue |
Father-son bond strengthened
through combat experiences
By Karen Jowers, Times staff
writer |
M
ike Novosel Sr. and Mike Novosel
Jr. immediately hook you into this
tome with their stories about World
War II and Vietnam.
Not only did Novosel Sr. fly bombing
missions over Tokyo during World
War II, he later volunteered for
service in Vietnam. Discharged after
World War II, he stayed in the reserves
and rose to the rank of lieutenant
colonel. But the Air Force wouldn’t
take him on active duty for Vietnam,
so he turned to the Army, where
he became a warrant officer. As
a helicopter pilot, he flew medical
evacuations and received the Medal
of Honor.
In a rare occurrence, he and his
son served in the same unit in Vietnam.
During one operation, Novosel Jr.’s
helicopter went down, and his father
rescued him and his crew. Not long
after that, Novosel Jr.’s
crew returned the favor by saving
his father when his helicopter went
down.
Mike Novosel and his father are
close now, physically as well as
emotionally. Their houses are next
door to each other.
“Dad is both my father and
an Army buddy,” the younger
Novosel says.
Michael Takiff’s page-turner,
featuring the stories of fathers
and sons who served during World
War II and Vietnam, paints a picture
of these two wars through new eyes.
Those eyes include a Tuskegee Airman
and his son, a gay soldier who served
in Vietnam; a soldier taken prisoner
by the Germans; one who helped liberate
a concentration camp; and others.
Takiff lets them tell their own
tales in graphic detail, weaving
in bits of history only as needed
for perspective on what’s
coming around the corner.
The two wars were vastly different
in their reasons and in America’s
reaction to them.
But, the men who fought were not
so different.
Combat is combat. Death is death.
As one soldier said, you can’t
fight in combat and not be changed.
Some remember the death of a close
friend; some remember the first
death they saw. Death still haunts
veterans of both wars.
Tony Rivas Sr., a seaman first
class serving on the heavy cruiser
Indianapolis during World War II,
liked to eat fish before he went
into the Navy. But near the islands
of Tarawa and Iwo Jima, he writes,
there were a lot of dead people
in the water, including Japanese,
Americans and natives. “At
Tarawa and Iwo Jima, I saw the little
fish eating the dead bodies. That’s
why I hate fish.”
From Vietnam, Gary Swanson wrote
a letter to his parents March 18,
1969, the day before he joined his
unit in the Vietnam jungles.
“There were three trucks
full of bodies at the dispensary
today — it’s unbelievable
over here, something I’ll
never forget,” he wrote.
Looking back, Swanson says if he
had been his dad, knowing what he
knew after World War II, he would
have told his son to avoid the draft
and go to Canada.
Day-to-day living during these
wars pours through the pages in
sights, sounds, feelings and smells.
One father and son both talk about
the overwhelming stench of burning
excrement.
Some World War II fathers suffered
from post-traumatic stress disorder.
One tried to strangle his wife in
his sleep. Some watched each other
block out memories with alcohol
or other drugs.
Often, World War II fathers didn’t
talk about their combat experiences
until the sons returned from Vietnam,
realizing it helped both.
“It makes me feel better
to have him open up. It gives me
a closer feeling to him —
as father and son and as fellow
veterans — to know that we
have this shared history,”
said Sandy G. Walmsley, a Navy Corpsman
wounded while serving with the Marine
Corps in Vietnam. “I think
you’ll find that most Vietnam
sons idolize what our fathers did
in World War II. And we feel that
we let ourselves and everyone down
because we could not reach the magnitude
of what they accomplished.”
It’s also clear throughout
the book that Vietnam veterans,
while fighting an unpopular war,
are heroes not only to their fathers,
but to the rest of us.
Copyright © 2003 The Army
Times Publishing Company
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T
akiff, an actor and freelance
writer, has compiled a compelling
oral history about two seminal
wars in which Americans fought.
In an original approach, he
uses interviews from 19 pairs
of fathers and sons who served
in World War II and the Vietnam
War, respectively. Organizing
the material ingeniously around
the "chronology" of
war -- from joining the service
to combat and the wars' legacies
-- Takiff cuts from fathers
to sons and back. Each of the
men experienced very different
wars-different times, places,
assignments, and public acceptance-but
we learn that they had much
in common, too, especially the
brute fact that in war "the
bottom line is to destroy other
human lives." Growing out
of Takiff's curiosity about
his own father's World War II
experiences, this cross-generational
approach is clearly an idea
whose time has come, and Takiff
carries it off extremely well.
Although perhaps a bit too long,
this work is a major contribution
to the history of these two
distinct and influential wars.
Recommended for all libraries.
-- Anthony Edmonds, Ball State
Univ., Muncie, IN
Copyright 2003 Reed Business
Information.
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