Dean R. Cherry: 1095 Days, Kartoniert / Broschiert

Klappentext

They said the military is 90% boredom and 10% horror. This is both.

You have read the Vietnam War books filled with firefights, ambushes, and impossible heroism. But you have always sensed there was another story, one lived by hundreds of thousands of young men who spent long stretches waiting, enduring absurdity, and counting down the days until they could go home. If you have ever wondered what the full, unfiltered experience of serving during Vietnam actually felt like, day by ordinary day, 1095 Days: Three Years in the Green Machine is the memoir you have been looking for.

Dean R. Cherry was twenty-three years old when he walked into a chaotic processing station in Jacksonville, flipped through a massive book of military jobs, and chose his fate in fifteen minutes. From freezing in World War II barracks at Fort Benning with windows permanently propped open, to throwing live grenades while silently praying just to get rid of the thing, to showering naked alongside fellow soldiers while scrubbing mud off their M14 rifles, Cherry recalls three years of Army life with sharp detail, dry humor, and an everyman honesty that is impossible to fake. His journey takes him from basic training through a tour in Vietnam, where his battery mates made an 8mm war movie only weeks before a real sapper attack shattered the monotony.

Inside these pages, you will discover:

• The bizarre, often comic daily realities of Army life that most war memoirs leave out

• A vivid, ground-level view of Vietnam service from a personnel specialist's unique perspective

• The countdown mentality that defined every soldier's existence, one day at a time, for 1, 095 days