Charlie Company Journeys Home: The Forgotten Impact on the Wives of Vietnam Veterans

Description

The Boys of '67 and the War They Left Behind The human experience of the Vietnam War is almost impossible to grasp - the camaraderie, the fear, the smell, the pain. Men were transformed into soldiers, and then into warriors. These warriors had wives who loved them and shared in their transformations. Some marriages were strengthened, while for others there was all too often a dark side, leaving men and their families emotionally and spiritually battered for years to come. Focusing in on just one company's experience of war and its eventual homecoming, Andrew Wiest shines a light on the shared experience of combat and both the darkness and resiliency of war's aftermath.

Dr Andrew Wiest is University Distinguished Professor of History and the founding director of the Dale Center for the Study of War & History at the University of Southern Mississippi. Specializing in the study of World War I and Vietnam, he has served as a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Warfighting Strategy in the United States Air Force Air War College. Since 1992 Dr Wiest has been active in international education, developing the award-winning Vietnam Study Abroad Program. Wiest's titles include Vietnam's Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN (New York University), which won the Society for Military History's Distinguished Book Award, Rolling Thunder in a Gentle Land (Osprey), and The Boys of '67 (Osprey), which was the basis for the Emmy nominated National Geographic Channel Documentary Brothers in War. He lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi with his wife Jill and their three children Abigail, Luke, and Wyatt.

"A painful yet impressive account of the effects of war on the families left behind." --Kirkus "This is a serious book and as such deserves a dedicated effort to fully understand and absorb." --IPMS/USA "This book chronicles the Vietnam War thought the perspectives and experiences of the families and loved ones left behind" --Military Heritage ""[The wives'] reminiscences unfold, along with Wiest's perspectives, in an oral-history style. "When I spoke to these women, they had been alone for so long and their experiences had been invisible for so long, that they were sure they didn't have a story to tell.... They do. Collecting their and their husbands' voices is commendable." --Military Times "Reading Charlie Company's Journey Home might provide an eye-opening lesson for the average American. Today's society often overlooks or takes its all-volunteer armed forces for granted.In comparison, the men of Charlie Company were almost entirely made up of draftees whose lives were involuntarily disrupted by military service. The difference in self-sacrifice is incalculable and Wiest shows it." --VVA Veteran "Wiest writes well and with empathy for what the women went through. This is a novel look at the Vietnam War's legacy that speaks to the experiences of military families today." --Publishers Weekly "Wiest has written an important work about veterans and their courageous spouses, preserving their stories for us to analyze and reflect upon." --Washington Independent Review of Books "Wiest provides a compassionate look at how the conflict impacted these individuals to the present day. Although specific to this Vietnam experience, readers will appreciate the common threads that run through the sacrifices of military duty during conflict ... Although there are plenty of other works that discuss the home front, the uniqueness here lies in the cohesive yet distinctive experiences of the Charlie Company itself, offering a deeper understanding of the soldiers through the actions of their wives during their year away ... Historians, military spouses, and those impacted by Vietnam will find this work sensitive, familiar, and uplifting." --Library Journal "Written with such compelling narratives, you immerse instantly into one family after another. Unlike tales of war that end with a peace treaty, these battles continue decades later with haunting re-occurrence. The victories are for those that overcome." --Seattle Book Review "This is a book for the casualties and survivors of that war-including the men, women, and children who loved them." --Clarion-Ledger / Hattiesburg American