365 Days - Softcover

Ronald J. Glasser

4.31

719 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0552092231 ISBN 13: 9780552092234

Publisher: Corgi Childrens, 1973

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Over 200,000 copies sold in all editions. A new edition of Ron Glasser's classic account of the Vietnam War. 365 Days stands not only as a compelling account of this tragic conflict, but as a powerful antiwar statement. Nothing speaks so convincingly against the evils of war as the evils themselves.

In this gripping account of the human cost of the Vietnam War, Ron Glasser offers an unparalleled description of the horror endured daily by those on the front lines. "The stories I have tried to tell here are true," says Glasser in his foreword. "Those that happened in Japan I was part of; the rest are from the boys I met. I would have liked to disbelieve some of them, and at first I did, but I was there long enough to hear the same stories again and again, and then to see part of it myself."

Assigned to Zama, an Army hospital in Japan in September 1968, Glasser arrived as a pediatrician in the U.S. Army Medical Corps to care for the children of officers and high-ranking government officials. The hospital's main mission, however, was to support the war and care for the wounded. At Zama, an average of six to eight thousand patients were attended to per month, and the death and suffering were staggering. The soldiers counted their days by the length of their tour—one year, or 365 days—and they knew, down to the day, how much time they had left. Glasser tells their stories—of lives shockingly interrupted by the tragedies of war—with moving, humane eloquence.

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From the Author:

"These pages were not written in desperation, nor were they written out of boredom, or even, I think, to prove a point, but rather to offset the sinking feeling we all had that some day, when the whole thing was over, there would be nothing remembered except the confusion and the politics.

I certainly did not see it all, and in truth I have dealt with only a small part, but I saw enough, more than enough. They all came through the hospitals of Japan, one of which I was assigned: the 9th Division fighting in the Delta-the Riverines-the 1st Air Cav, the 101st, the 4th and the 25th, the 1st and the 173rd, the chopper pilots and the RTO's, the forward observers, the cooks, the medics and the sergeants... the heroes and the ones under military arrest, the drug addicts and the killers. Sooner or later they all came to us at Zama.

The stories I have tried to tell here are all true. Those that happened in Japan I was part of; the rest are from the boys I met. I would have liked to disbelieve some of them, and at first I did, but I was there long enough to hear the same stories again and again, and then to see part of it myself."

About the Author:

Ronald J. Glasser, M.D. was as army medic at the U.S. Army Hospital, Zama, Japan from 1968 through the end of the Vietnam War. This is his first novel.

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