Fergus Cassidy

BOOK REVIEW: Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam Edited by Bernard Edelman. Published by WW Norton 326pp

IN April 1975, the last of the ambassador's security staff and other personnel at the US embassy in Saigon were hurriedly airlifted to ships anchored off the coast.

So many people were transported out that helicopters had to be pushed over the side and into the sea to make room. In a symbolic gesture North Vietnamese tanks broke through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon and America's involvement in Vietnam was over.

It was an humiliating defeat for the US, one that was to leave a lasting legacy on the American psyche. The might of the US military had been driven out by a peasant army with little in their stomachs and communism on their lips.

As former president Gerald Ford said: "That was probably the hardest day of my presidency for me... I think we made a very heroic effort and did the best we could under the worst of circumstances. I look upon it as the sadness of a retreat that I'll never forget."

What Ford called retreat others called defeat and the schism in American society created by the war became directed against those who had fought in it. There were no official ceremonies to welcome home or honour those who had served or lost their lives. For a nation that had a long historical memory of its soldiers as victors and heroes, Vietnam became a wound that would take a long time to heal.

In 1978 when Hollywood put its script on the war in Michael Cimino's Deer Hunter, the divisiveness was still strong. Although the film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, critics were quick to round on the film's perceived bias and portrayal of the enemy as bloodthirsty savages. Hollywood steered clear of Vietnam until Sylvester Stallone strapped on his headband.

So it was left to the veterans themselves to deal with the aftermath of war and Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam occupies an important place in that story.

As the Washington Vietnam Memorial Wall was unveiled in 1982, it offered not just a focus for veterans and their families but also a sign that maybe at last the deep scars were beginning to heal.

This book has its origins in New York in 1985, where the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission intended to unveil a memorial in Lower Manhattan. In response to a request for material from veterans - some of which would be etched in the memorial - some 3000 letters, tapes, poems, newspaper clippings, petitions and journal entries were submitted by 600 people. This book came from that initiative.

The vast majority of the letters were those from soldiers to their families and friends. Very little of the correspondence sent to Vietnam survived and certainly not the bad news or 'Dear John' letters.

Two parameters were used in selecting the letters: all correspondence must have been written during the war and each should provide descriptions or psychological insights that would in some way amplify the human dimensions of Vietnam experiences.

Dear America doesn't set out to put meaning on the war, nor does it attempt to frame what happened against any historical or political background. What's provided here are 208 letters from 125 people, finally chosen by editor Bernard Edelman. Edelman served in Vietnam in 1970, collecting material and stories for the Army Information Office.

The letters in Dear America are presented in the order of a tour of duty, beginning with arrival in Vietnam."Our mission is to find VC and kill them. I should be operating like this for the next two months before I get a chance to take a shower. At least it is something unique. You were right, I managed to get myself right in the middle of it all", wrote Alan Bourne wrote to his friend Chris in 1968.

As soldiers experienced more and more time in Vietnam, the letters intensify with terror and pain. Yet in between the body counts and horror, there is laughter and dignity - a sentiment extended sometimes toward the enemy.

Dear America is not a pleasant read. Details on each contribution are revealed at the end of each letter. And sometimes the writer didn't make it home, dead or alive. Other contributors came back but the final chapter contains letters written by soldiers who lost their lives within days after sending their mail home.

This book contains no new insights or revelations into the brutality and hopelessness of war. Instead it allows those who experienced war to speak for themselves. Where the only context is that of their own lives and of their families and friends.

Dear America is a very important contribution to understanding what happened to them and to all combatants in war.

(c) Fergus Cassidy