A valuable text in both the reporting, the remembrance, and the healing of the experience of war. Vietnam was weird because over the years troops were cycled in and out. You would arrive and after a week in a transit unit you would be assigned to a unit where you would be the newfer until you became a short-timer. In that period you would bond with with members of your squad and then lose them - to war, to their ETS dates - and the experience of your tour was a constant one of loss.

At the end of the Vietnam war there were few books on the subject. You could count them on your fingers. A couple of novels, a couple of incomplete histories, a few stray films. It took a while for that youthful generation to find its voice. And the novels started coming, Sand in the Wind, Fields of Fire, Body Count, Going After Cacciatto. But most veterans were initially at a loss. PSTD was yet to be diagnosed as such and few of us thought we actually were suffering from shell shock. The first time I heard about PSTD, which then was called "Delayed-Stress," was on the TV show, Magnum P.I. There were few guides for us. The books I turned to were the WW2 books. In particular the Thin Red Line and some of the early Nick Adams stories by Ernest Hemingway.

"Veterans of War" offers a framework for old and new vet alike. Unlike earlier oral histories, such as Everything We Had or Nam, we get a more complete picture here because time has allowed the veteran to adjust and explore and understand his experience. I would recommend this book to the young warrior and to his loved ones.