Charlie Company's Journey Home
The Forgotten Impact on the Wives of Vietnam Veterans
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- $27.99
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- $27.99
Publisher Description
Using countless interviews as well as original diaries and letters, Andrew Wiest lays bare the horror of the Vietnam War for those left behind and the enduring battles they must continue to fight long after their loved ones have returned home.
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, Wiest shines a light on the shared experience of combat and both the darkness and resiliency of war's aftermath.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wiest, a history professor at University of Southern Mississippi, offers something rare in the literary canon of the Vietnam War: an in-depth look at the families primarily the wives of the company of U.S. Army 9th Infantry division men he chronicled in The Boys of '67 (2012). For that book, Wiest spent three years interviewing nearly 100 officers and enlistees of Charlie Company and their significant others. He conducted additional interviews with the soldiers' wives for the new book and made use of eight "major letter collections." Through oral histories and his own scene-setting, Wiest tells of the experiences of college students, young housewives and mothers, and working women before, during, and after their husbands' service in Vietnam. Among the women are Kaye French, who recalls changing her wedding date to accommodate her husband's training and finding out she was pregnant just after he shipped out; Mary Ann Simon, who endured an agonizing wait for updates after her future husband was shot in Vietnam; and Sue Reed, whose marriage foundered partly due to her husband's wartime experiences. 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.
