United States History - 20th Century - General & Miscellaneous, War Narratives, U.S. Armed Forces - Biography, Historical Biography, United States History - 20th Century - Wars & Conflict, Vietnam War/French Indo-Chinese War, Family Memoirs - Biography, M

Brave Men, Gentle Heroes

Name: Brave Men, Gentle Heroes
Author: Michael Takiff
ISBN: 9780066210810

by Michael Takiff

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Overview

Brave Men, Gentle Heroes presents the frank, moving, and harrowing stories of men who served in World War II and of their sons who served in Vietnam — fathers and sons bonded as deeply by their common experience in war as by blood.

These are men who served in the army, navy, air force, and Marine Corps. Officers and enlisted men, career servicemen and citizen soldiers. Men of European, African, Asian, Latino, and Native American ancestry. Men who speak with the authentic voices of an Indiana farmer, a Brooklyn bus driver, a Louisiana businessman, a Seattle machinist. The contrasts between World War II and Vietnam are everywhere in these compelling accounts: the clear aims of World War II, the muddled goals of Vietnam; the heroes' welcome accorded World War II veterans, the scorn heaped upon their sons. But the stories in Brave Men, Gentle Heroes are also rich with elements intrinsic to all wars and all soldiers: courage, honor, service, duty, youth, adventure, fear, idealism, love of country and of family, exasperation with military bureaucracy. In these pages you will find war's carnage and war's heroism, war's purpose and war's futility, war's meaning and war's tragic meaninglessness.

Taken together, the stories in Brave Men, Gentle Heroes tell the history of two wars, each the defining experience of a generation. This is history told not at the level of presidents and generals, but through the recollections of men who shouldered the rifles, manned the ships, and flew the planes. We're familiar with the effects of the two wars on world politics. But what did they do to American families? Molded by the awful crucible of war, these seemingly ordinary men offer extraordinary insights into what it means to be a warrior, an American, a father, and a son.

Brave Men, Gentle Heroes is a book for those who have been to war and those who have been spared its horror. It is a book for individuals to reflect upon and families to share.

About the Author, Michael Takiff

Michael Takiff is a Yale graduate whose writing has appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is the son of a World War II veteran and lives in New York City with his wife and son.

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Editorials

The Washington Post

As Brave Men, Gentle Heroes reveals, there were indeed Vietnam vets who came home to welcoming friends and families, as well as World War II vets who suffered immeasurably from post-traumatic stress disorder. All of them are united by terrible acts of violence that the rest of us, as the author concedes, will never comprehend. But by sharing the deeply personal accounts of these fathers and sons, Takiff reminds us "how far we can go -- by their pursuit not of glory but of honor, by their willingness to die for what they believed precious." — Victorino Matus

Library Journal

Takiff, an actor and freelance writer, has compiled a compelling oral history about two seminal wars in which Americans fought. In an original approach, he uses interviews from 19 pairs of fathers and sons who served in World War II and the Vietnam War, respectively. Organizing the material ingeniously around the "chronology" of war-from joining the service to combat and the wars' legacies-Takiff cuts from fathers to sons and back. Each of the men experienced very different wars-different times, places, assignments, and public acceptance-but we learn that they had much in common, too, especially the brute fact that in war "the bottom line is to destroy other human lives." Growing out of Takiff's curiosity about his own father's World War II experiences, this cross-generational approach is clearly an idea whose time has come, and Takiff carries it off extremely well. Although perhaps a bit too long, this work is a major contribution to the history of these two distinct and influential wars. Recommended for all libraries.-Anthony Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, IN Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A superb oral history of two generations at war—sometimes with each other. For readers of Ron Kovic’s Born on the Fourth of July or Lewis Puller Jr.’s Fortunate Son, it won’t come as a surprise that the Americans who fought in WWII and Vietnam often saw their missions in radically different ways. Takiff has done a very smart thing in pairing and playing off the remembrances of veterans of both conflicts, and in that alone, this would do Studs Terkel proud. He adds yet more by focusing on father-and-son veterans, some of whom, nearly 30 years after the second war ended, have trouble talking about their experiences with each other, if less so with the interviewer. Where Gene Camp, a WWII veteran who was also one of the earliest American fighters in Vietnam, rails against the "all the liberals barking and carrying on" and "the people back here . . . protesting and making speeches and running to Canada," his infantry captain son Greg says quietly, "I was young and naive and very patriotic. Now I would say we got into Vietnam for lots of reasons, but it wasn’t the sort of overarching, noble reason that I had thought. . . . It was like throwing good money after bad." Even fathers and sons who more or less agree on the flawed nature of the Vietnam misadventure find difficulty in speaking in these pages. But speak they do, to each other and to the world, often eloquently, often quite movingly. To all their conversations Takiff adds a smart introduction and running commentary that addresses all the "well-rehearsed generalizations" we’ve long heard about both wars, reminding his readers that plenty of WWII vets returned with PTSD, plenty of Vietnam vets returned normal, and plenty ofcommentators have erred in thinking we won WWII just because we were the good guys and lost Vietnam because we were—well, something else. An impressive and thoughtful contribution, and one that will be of considerable interest to both veterans and students of America’s wars. (Starred Review)