I know the next book on my summer reading list is The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek, but I've taken to reading three books at the same time (I finished up Boots on the Ground, while I was five chapters into The Infinite Game, and just starting Caleb Carr's amazing, The Alienist). The next book I will blog about will be Sinek's.
Boots on the Ground by Elizabeth Partridge was highly recommended by way of our media specialist, Stacey Leake. And it didn't disappoint.
Even though thanks to Mr. Matzke in high school I fell in love with history, which led me to earning a history minor and - very briefly - toying with the idea of being a social studies teacher, and earning what amounts to a master's in history from Hamline thanks to the incredible Teaching Minnesota History grant from the Minnesota Historical Society, I never knew much about Vietnam.
As an English major the war I was always most interested in was World War I thanks in large part to the Trench Poets. In high school I recall learning about "island hopping" and "blitzkrieg" and "isolationism," but I don't recall much of anything about Vietnam. I don't know if it was the fact that it wasn't really dubbed a true "war" or the fact that we didn't win it or that so much political turmoil was involved, but I never took an interest.
But after reading it, I was amazed at how much the climate of the 1960's reminds me of the climate of 2020 in terms of political distrust, a divided country, and protests and violence.
Boots on the Ground tells the story of Vietnam through a wide array of perspectives. Each chapter is told from a different perspective - protestors, nurses, a medic, a machine gunner, a green beret, politicians, refugees, and veterans.
I am no fan of traditional textbooks. I think they bore kids to death and actually turn them off of whatever it is they are learning. To borrow from Seth Godin, "When was the last time anyone walked in to Barnes and Nobles and said, 'I'm really interested in learning about a subject. Do you have a text book on it?'" Of course not.
I'm not saying that it's not important to have the facts and dates and important figures behind the war to help a reader make sense of a book like Boots on the Ground. But the book is far more engaging due to the personal stories it tells than any textbook I've ever come across.
The book begins with the author and some of her friends driving to a friend's cabin. They spot a hitchhiker late one evening and pick him up. Even though they are all staunch anti-war, the hitchhiker reveals himself to be a Vietnam vet. He says little yet they take him to the cabin to spend the night. He is gone in the morning.
The author was never able to forget his sad look and she began to wonder what he must have seen in Vietnam and how hard it was to adjust to that upon returning home.
The next chapter delves us in to November 1963 when President Kennedy supported South Vietnam president, Diem, who would be overthrown and killed soon. Unfortunately, so would President Kennedy, leaving the debacle that would be Vietnam to fall to his Vice President, LBJ.
From there the books alternatives from different perspectives on the war, which I found to be very engaging. Just when I found the view of a soldier in the jungle too horrifying, it would switch to a politician back home. Just when I found that too boring, it would switch to a nurse caring for the shredded soldiers. Again, when that carnage became too much, it would switch to Martin Luther King Jr. and his painful decision, though needing Johnson's support fo the Civil Rights, to speak out agains the Vietnam war . . .
What I found fascinating about this - and why it's vital to teach history not just in high school but especially in elementary school (where it has been almost eliminated in the name of teaching reading skills to raise test scores) - is that it reminds me so much of our world today.
This passage on the pain President Johnson felt about dividing the country reminds me of where we are right now in terms of being divided on every single issue, whether it's wearing masks, who was in the right or wrong - the kid in the MAGA hat or the Native American drummer staring him down, LGBT rights, police brutality and the need for reform, protests and riots, pipelines, kneeling during the National anthem, or even whether Caitlyn (Bruce) Jenner deserved an ESPY: "At home the war had created a sharp, angry division between the hawks' who supported the war effort and the 'doves' who wanted peace . . . Johnson was convinced the battlefield was not where he had been unable to win the war. It was at home, with the country convulsing in turmoil and protest. Instead of Johnson having the country behind him, America was more divided than it had been since the Civil War."
Sound familiar? The failure of the masses to know their history is evident in every time I see a Tweet of FB post that says something like "What has happened to America" when it comes to a protest or riot? Haven't you been paying attention? Or haven't you done any reading or research?
We've always been a country of protests and riots. Look at the Boston Tea Party. Look at The Draft Day Riots of 1863. Does this rage and anger sound familiar?
Thousands of white workers – mainly Irish and Irish-Americans – started by attacking military and government buildings, and became violent only toward people who tried to stop them, including the insufficient numbers of policemen and soldiers the city’s leaders initially mustered to oppose them.
As if that isn't bad enough, we have a history or rioting and protesting over the strangest things. Hence the Straw Hat Riot of 1922.
I certainly would hope we would learn from our past mistakes, but it seems that we haven't. At all.
My favorite parts from Boots on the Ground were from the nurses' perspectives. Her name is Lily Lee Adams. She opens the chapter with this statement - "When I witnessed the carnage, the suffering, I blamed God and was s angry at him for letting war happen. To let grandmas, children, babies, soldiers, mothers, and fathers suffer so. I said, 'God, you're dead.' But every time I had a patient, I'd be praying to God to keep him alive, because I didn't want them to die on me."
Imagine that.
In addition to treating soldiers who have been blown apart, burned, and shot, the nurses also must treat people who have been injured in normal day to day activities. She treats people injured in motorcycle accidents, expecting mothers, and babies.
She notes - "one of the engineers on the base kept bringing Vietnamese children into triage who needed treatment. One day he brought in a baby with an abscess. The doctor refused to take care of the baby. 'I totally lost it,' said Adams. 'I started yelling at him. 'You are going to refuse t take care of a baby? What is this baby going to do to you? I you don't want to take care of the baby, I know doctors who would love to.' The doctor was shocked at her anger. 'Wait a minute,' he said. 'Wait, wait! Changed by mind.'"
Again, imagine that!
Soon Adams learns that the children are coming there from Rose Orphanage, a Catholic orphanage, set up to care for the hundreds of children whose parents were killed or who were abandoned by their parents.
I think Rose is the greatest hero in this entire book!
Rose reminds me of how years ago as part of the MNHS grant, we had a former Vietnam nurse speak to our class. It was a day I'll never forget.
She was from Buffalo, MN and put a unique perspective on the war that I had never thought about. She related how heartbroken her father was that he had four children: three boys and one girl. Yet it was his girl he has to send off to fight in a war!
She recounted the sheer horror of her first night in Vietnam. She said that the enemy target the Red Cross hospital she was stationed in. During her first night there, the enemy began shelling the hospital. Men fell out of their beds. IV's came out. Blood was everywhere. To top it all off, there was a Vietnam baby there. Its parents had been killed when their village had been napalmed. In fact, the baby had significant burns over its entire body.
When the bombs began to fall, the baby began to scream. She said that amid all the chaos everyone rallied around the child.
Now, think of that for a second. Forget self-perseveration. Forget having an agenda. This nurse - from what I got - was very anti-war. Yet, look at the story she told. Everyone focused on calming that child.
She said the nurses held it and tried to soothe it. She said very soldier who could hold it did so to try and calm it down.
But nothing helped.
Finally, she said, "I am sure that that little baby screamed itself to death."
I'll never forget those words as long as I live. Nor will I ever forget the image of everyone rallying around that baby to try and help it.
That is the power of story to get at the heart of the human condition and the true horrors of war.
This nurse from Buffalo was instrumental in getting the Vietnam nurses memorial set up and in fighting for the rights of nurses who served in the war. You see once it was over and America was quick to move on, politicians turned a blind eye toward the nurses who had done so much work and given so much time and effort to save the soldiers who were slaughtered thanks to the politicians efforts to stem the tide of Communism.
I can't imagine the things the nurse who spoke to our class - or the nurses featured in Boots on the Ground - saw on a daily basis. Every time they heard a helicopter approaching, it meant more wounded soldiers pouring in. And the helicopters never stopped. Imagine that. Let that sink in.
The most interesting chapter - and one I had never though about - was from the perspective of a young South Vietnamese girl. Since America was withdrawing from the war in defeat, the NVA communists were pouring into the South. This was horrible if you had helped the Americans or South Vietnamese in any way. It meant certain death.
I had never given any thought to what happened to tens of thousands of South Vietnam refugees. How Thi Nguyen tells her tale as her family seeks escape before the NVA arrives - "As the Communists advanced, they had overrun one ARVN fighting unit after another. Routed from their positions in total disarray, tens of thousands of South Vietnamese soldiers deserted. They'd kept their weapons, but stripped off their tell-tale uniforms, begged or stolen clothes, and joined the tide of refugees fleeing toward Saigon. Some desperate civilians and soldiers were looting stores, stealing food from shopkeepers, and callously killing to get what they needed."
I can't image being in that situation. What if I had to abandon my house with Kristie and the kids and flee. What would I do to protect them? What wouldn't I be willing to do?
I never even thought about the plight these refugees were put in.
Boots on the Ground was the most engaging historical book I've read since Bomb: The Race to Build -- and Steal -- The World's Most Dangerous Weapon.
Next up - Simon Sinek's The Infinite Game.
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