Made in America, Sold in the Nam (Second Edition) (Reflections of History) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1932690247 ISBN 13: 9781932690248

Publisher: Modern History Press, 2006

Synopsis

Hope and Healing For All Who Have Been Touched by War

Made in America, Sold in the Nam brings together the writings of more than two dozen Vietnam-era veterans who have never before had the chance to speak their peace. Through diaries, essays, and poems, each contributor brings a unique first-person perspective that will be appreciated by veterans, their families, and historians. Taken together, this book represents the conscience of a nation: patriotic, duty-bound, and mired in a swamp of confusion and pain.

New Second Edition includes material by the spouses, adult children, and other survivors of the war. Made in America, Sold in the Nam is Book #2 in the Reflections of History Series from Modern History Press.

• For Viet Nam Vets: an opportunity to verify their experiences against experiences of others leading to validation and perhaps even an airing of their suspicions and fears about themselves. No matter how long it has been, healing is possible.
• For Families of the KIA: peace and understanding about the experiences of their loved one and if they have letters from their loved ones, perhaps a way to fill in what could never be spoken.
• For Adult Children and Spouses of Vets: empathy for their war experience, in spite of whether or not there has been communication about how it really went down.
• For Vets of Recent Conflicts: a shortcut to understanding the overall experience of war and how one copes with its indelible marks. Discover the commonality of those who have endured their time as warriors.
• For Society and Generations to come:
  . Learn what really happens during a modern military conflict.
  . A plea for wisdom in how we deal with other peoples on Earth.
  . A chance to break the cycle of doing the same things and hoping for magically different outcomes.
  

"That there is conflict and confusion over how we are to view the Viet Nam War and how we are to feel about those who sacrificed for this effort, makes this book all the more important. These pieces give the average person insight into what really happened to those that served and what they thought that they were trying to accomplish. There is some personal truth, buried emotion, and a few heroes in their own right." -Tami Brady, TCM Reviews

Modern History Press is an imprint of Loving Healing Press (www.LovingHealing.com)

About this title

From the Publisher

The Reflections of History Series

This series provides a venue for contemporary authors who have lived through signficant times in history to reflect on the impact of events and lessons learned thereof. The timeless words George Santayana wrote in "Life of Reason" (1905) still ring true more than a century later: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

My Tour in Hell: A Marine's Battle with Combat Trauma by David W. Powell

Made in America, Sold in the 'Nam: A Continuing Legacy of Pain (2nd Ed.), by Rick Ritter and Paul Richards

F.N.G.: A Year In Vietnam by Don Bodey (20th Anniversary Edition)

From the Inside Flap

Soldiers... in Their Own Words: Uncut and Uncensored "While in the Nam, a change began to occur that would con¬tinue for years afterward. I began to see how I'd been lied to, how the indoctrination had been a veiled attempt to charge us up to do the impossible for the ungrateful." --Charley Knepple (1948-1997), US Army veteran

"Combat burdens every warrior with guilt, anger and fears. The Viet Nam combat veteran is burdened also with the guilt, anger and fears of America. Sometimes he has been charged with crimes. Other times he has simply been ignored as a symbol of embarrassment. Very seldom has he been welcomed, honored and embraced. A warrior so burdened can never escape the battlefield." --Chaplain Cephas D. Williamson, VA Med Center, Ft. Wayne, IN.

"My mind was like a blank tape on a tape recorder, with a low or underly-ing hum of death and destruction as the rewinding of the tape. I had no time out there to rationalize or wonder, or just scream from fear. If I would have rebelled against the war, any time in Viet Nam, any more than I did, the ca-reer officer would surely have done me in, one way or another." --Nick Rizzo (1948- ), US Army veteran.

"The ground troops in Nam were given the type of training that made them killers. They were taught to react to certain types of stimuli in a physically aggressive manner. What seems to unnerve the people of this land is that the same Nam vet is fully capable of using those same destructive skills against the general population."

--Rick Ritter, MSW, USMC veteran.

"The soldier is a non-person, an alien, a thing expected to function, while everything around him is strange and lacking in meaning. His view of his surroundings is startlingly expressed in the phrases `The Nam' and `The World'; Viet Nam is, in his perception and experience, someplace removed from the real world." --Stephen Howard, M.D. US Army surgeon veteran

"Rape does not need any elaborate political or socio-economic motivation beyond a simple and general disregard for the bodily integrity of women, plain and simple. The very intensity of maleness that the military demand can only be seen as the beginnings of the power addiction that ultimately leads to female subjugation--rape." -- A Woman (non-veteran)

"Torture, rape, and murder: `Access and opportunity' are only two of the prerequisites. There has been a lot of rape in wars; I keep thinking what it would have been like to be Vietnamese. They never sold their sisters." --A Viet Nam Veteran (male)

"On Sunday, the last day of the exhibit, during the reading of the addi-tional 110 names for the wall, I saw a dear friend of mine crying... I too started to sob. He had a right to weep, all the rows of names on this `WALL OF LOVE' and now more to add. God please make us remember what hap-pened so it is not forgotten and this horrible waste of precious human life will not happen again." --Karin A. Hancuff, bereaved relative of a veteran

"The Wall is a sphinx that will endlessly pose its riddle to those who seek power and will, let us pray, devour those who cannot answer or who answer poorly. It is a sear upon the monumental landscape of our capital; like all scars, it is at once evidence of a wound's healing and a reminder of its hurt." --Rev. Michael Scrogin

"It was a moment in time when you realize: this is it, this is the end, I am only 20 years of age and my life has been cut short. Our lives depended on God, on a platoon of protective troops, and luck. We had no weapons, but our bare hands and our courage to protect ourselves if the worst happened. And believe me, at that time you thought of only the worst." --A Nurse veteran

"I felt that the country was embarrassed by me, that the government had used and then flushed me, that my classmates condemned me, and that my family and few acquaintances were unable to understand why I didn't act normal." --Rev. Timothy Calhoun Sims (1949-2002)

"Survival is the reality of all war. Battlefields have no flags, only the bod-ies dead and wounded. High ideals have no meaning against the terror of ambush. In the final and most prac¬tical analysis, all wars are fought for the possession of dirt. Soldiers do not fight to defend god and country, but to save themselves and as many of their friends as possible." --Roger Melton

"The first few years in the Marine Corps were filled with a sense of confi-dence that bordered on arrogance. By the time I got out, there was nothing inside. Not even coldness. Leaves had more sense of direction than I did." --Paul Richard Wappenstein, Jr.

Edition details

• Publisher: Modern History Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1932690247
• ISBN 13: 9781932690248
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Ritter Rick, Richards Paul, Ritter Rick