A Life In a Year

Finally, a book that focuses completely on the life of the "grunt" (infantry soldier) in Vietnam. The voices of more than sixty army and marine infantrymen speak with restrained elegance of their experiences from induction to the jungles and rice paddies of "Indian country" to their return to "The World."
From I Corps in the north to IV Corps in the south, and from the early days of 1965 to the American withdrawal in 1972, A Life in a Year offers a unique look at the grunt's war in Vietnam - as seen through the eyes of the soldiers themselves. The insights of these combat veterans are woven into the narrative, giving the reader a sense of what it was like to serve in an infantry unit fighting Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese regulars. Veterans can compare their own experiences to those of infantrymen who served in different time periods during the Vietnam era and in different parts of the country. Civilians and veterans who did not experience life in the "boonies" will appreciate the author's candid explanations of the war in terms that will help them to better understand the individual soldier's experience. This lively, topically arranged account will appeal to both scholars and casual readers alike. A Life in a Year is sure to become a classic and is a valuable addition to Vietnam War literature.

Ebert combines interviews and printed primary sources in this brilliant reconstruction of the infantryman's experience during the Vietnam War. Though accounting for less than 10% of the American troops in Vietnam, the infantry suffered more than 80% of the losses. Ebert, a secondary school teacher in Wisconsin, tells their story chronologically, from the grunts' induction and training, through their arrival in Vietnam, their first encounters with battle and their final rendezvous with the airplane that would carry them home--the "freedom bird," one of the numerous military terms, abbreviations and Vietnamese words defined in the glossary. The infantrymen confronted environments from rice paddies to jungles, from densely populated cities to virtually empty countrysides. They fought in patrol skirmishes and in division-scale battles. They learned to kill, but few understood a war with no clear objectives. They survived, but most paid a price for their survival. The book belongs in every collection on America's longest and most controversial war.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Vivid, creative use of oral history (here, with the remembrances woven together by incisive commentary) that takes the conventional combat-report format--induction, boot camp, raw recruit, seasoned vet--and breathes new life into the war experience. Ebert (who teaches high-school history and social studies in Wisconsin) interviewed approximately 40 Army grunts and Marines for this report, and also drew on interview-transcripts of South Dakota's Vietnam Veterans Oral History Project. He and his subjects paint the Southeast Asian battleground in its true, unglamorous colors: One soldier likens his first exposure to the country's heat ``to having someone hold a hair-dryer up to his nose''; the author says that Vietnam's pervasive odor was characterized by many as ``seminauseating and often likened to dead fish''). In this Vietnam, grenades are dangerous to friend and foe alike (one soldier describes standing in a chow line as someone accidentally pulls a pin, killing two and wounding 26), and ``humping'' the bush is a miserable, surreal existence, but one that most grunts stick to in order to avoid being branded a quitter--the lowest of the low--even though most days nothing is attained but total exhaustion. Also detailed are offensive operations, corpse mutilation, booby traps, drug use, racial conflict, and varied atrocities. As the soldiers' time in Vietnam gets ``short'' (Army men serve 12 months; Marines, 13) their primary aim becomes survival before their luck runs out. Finally--as detailed in a too brief epilogue--the soldiers fly home, muster out of the service, and then often must withstand criticism for their part in a hated war. Even jaded or knowledgeable Vietnam War-readers will find fresh material here. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Because of the relative lack of large, readily identifiable major battles during the Vietnam War (Hue, Khe Sanh, Hamburger Hill, etc.), military histories of the war can be difficult for the average reader to comprehend. Endless operations and campaigns without the anchor of a turning-point battle easily confuse and disorient. Vietnam literature retains an enthusiastic following, however, because it features a large number of oral histories and personal narratives. The reader follows the individual soldier rather than the large campaigns. Ebert, a high school history teacher, describes the combat experiences of 60 Army and Marine Corps infantrymen from basic training through their year in Vietnam. This is an outstanding example of history through the eyes of the ordinary person. Ebert's book is the finest of its type since Al Santoli's Everything We Had ( LJ 4/15/81). Highly recommended.
- John R. Vallely, Siena Coll. Lib., Loudonville, N.Y.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.