al. This is an important part of US history because it was the first war inwhich there was no clear winner. 57,685 US soldiers were killed, and triplethat amount were wounded. Even those who returned to the United stateswithout physical damage suffered from depression, and had to live withmemories of the carnage and destruction that they saw. What bothers meabout the war is that even though these men risked their lives to fight awar that had nothing to do with them only because their country wasanti-Communist, they have been seemingly forgotten by their country. Many,especially those who suffered physical trauma, have no jobs and are forcedto beg for food on street corners and live under bridges. The first book I read was Bouncing Back. It was a collection of theexperiences of a group of Air Force pilots who were gunned down and takenas prisoners of war. The post-POW lives of the Air Force pilots I readabout contrasted greatly with those of the Marines I read about in The War In ICorps. The Marines lived dirty lived in the Jungles of Vietnam. One of thebest things about The War In I Corps was its great descriptions of thethings the Marines had to go through. As Richard A. Guidry put it : “In a drivingrain, laden with heavy packs, our platoon lumbered toward its place in the longline of men sprawled in the thick sticky mud.... The rain added a slimy qualityto the crust of dirt and fungus that encased my body. Running my fingersacross my arm was like following the tracks of a snail.”3 It really gave mea feel for what they were going through. It made me wonder how they didn’tjust not fight. The war wasn’t theirs, but due to bad luck they were stuckin this horrible jungle forced to fight an enemy they had no reason to hate.Living like animals with practically no food and little or no contact withTheir families. Under the same conditions I think I would sit under a tree andwait it out. While finishing ...
