Summary Of Charlie's Charlie Company

The origin of this book was not typical. Andrew Wiest, a professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, had invited John Young a Vietnam veteran called to speak to his students. After the video introduction, Young collapsed leaving Wiest to wonder “What could have happened so long ago – what events were so terribly powerful,” he asks, “that they could reach across the decades and pull the man with the piercing eyes back into their awful embrace?” (9) After Wiest spent three years interviewing 61 officers and men of Charlie Company of the 4/47th Infantry; this is his answer to what happened not so long ago. Their acknowledgment, and the personal evidence of other veterans, has enabled Wiest to collect a most full portrayal of a company-sized unit in Vietnam. At times Wiest book is not easy reading. The 9th Infantry Division's Charlie Company was

Within a couple of months the unit had lost to death and injury half its members. One such individual was Fred Kenney, a twenty-one year-old carpenter from Chatsworth, California, whose wife Barbara found she was pregnant shortly after his deployment. Kenney was killed in while his platoon was on patrol by the Viet Cong. It even caused one to wonder if “this crappy, smelly country of Vietnam was worth such a price”. (153) For the men of Charlie Company there was no time to mourn. As more members of the company were slain, mutilated or posted to other units, the survivors grew to be more and more crestfallen. “As each mission goes on I become more and more disenchanted with this war and its aims,” wrote one. The last straw was when upon their return to the USA in 1968. They were not welcomed home with celebrations and parades as those of the previous World War II. There were protestors at the airports and the ongoing controversy over the war had somehow combined to cheapen the loss of so many good