Basking in the Cold War : A Marine?s Story

What happens when a naïve eighteen year old newly minted U.S. Marine is dropped into the ancient, exotic, (also erotic) and distinctly foreign environment of the Far East? This book relates the experiences and adventures that occurred during the young man's journey to coping with the Cold War.



There is no blood and guts here. No laudable heroism or sacrifice attends this young American's memoirs. He served his country as did tens of thousands of other Americans during the jittery period of the Cold War, with honor, loyalty, steadfastness, readiness, and as much tomfoolery and peccadilloes as could be conjured up.



Although the hilarity and devilment described in the book belong in the past, the effect of this period of coping with a strange and powerful culture became a permanent part of character development. Our young American boy would be an entirely different man should he never had been one of America's guardians manning the far off ramparts during that perilous time.



It is to honor those unsung warriors that this book is written.

Joseph Barry was a cold-war warrior. He entered the U.S. Marine Corps in 1955 at age eighteen and served the next four years in Japan and Okinawa. While he served abroad, the era of Rock and Roll and the hippie culture captured his hometown generation. After attempting to reintegrate, he returned to the Orient as an itinerant student, writer, and wanderer in search of an elusive desire. He met that desire on a boat to the Philippines and married her. She and their son are his companions in Joseph's first book: Across Europe by Kangaroo, ISBN 1-4033-90088.