In the fall of 1969, Ehrhart attended Swarthmore College at the age of twenty-one. Also during this time the student body of Swarthmore College “were middle class, academically paranoid, politically aware, and the students were antiwar” (Ehrhart 7). This proposed a problem for Ehrhart because during the spring of 1968, while Ehrhart was still over seas, the college had asked for a picture of him in his Marine uniform. Ehrhart realized that after he sent the photo, it would be used for the school’s Freshman booklet while all the commotion in school existed. He spent most of his days alone to avoid publicity and to keep a “low profile”. By October, however, the reporter for the campus newspaper Phoenix asked if he could interview Ehrhart. Ehrhart went to college to experience a normal life but after he revealed his secret about being a veteran in the school newspaper, he realized that he was only a celebrity.
After Ehrhart was mentioned in the Phoenix newspaper, the effect was so polarizing that students would drop by and check on him. Students would come to his dorm room, the library, and the students would interrupt Eahrhart’s meals. Ehrhart described the event as “instant celebrity” (Ehrhart 9). Ehrhart loved being the center of attention and meeting the entire student body. No one was ever rude to him and students seemed interested in Ehrhart’s story. Ehrhart just wanted the students to understand his hardship and the struggle that went along with being in the Marines for three years, which played a major role in his life because Ehrhart truly wanted to serve for his country. As time progressed, however, Ehrhart realized that a “pattern to the process began to emerge” (Ehrhart 9). Ehrhart began to have doubts abo...
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...o get to know that veteran as well. It was all superficial. A veteran isn’t really recognized for their valiant effort to defend their country during this time period, but you have folk hero’s according to Ehrhart. Folk hero’s such as John Braxton. John Braxton was considered to be a hero because he was a senior facing a prison sentence for his open refusal to register for the draft. Basically students such as John Braxton and Bill Ehrhart were just objects during this time. They were both celebrities because society allowed them to be celebrities. The students didn’t really understand why each individual took the route that they did. It was just convenient to support their troops. As a result of Ehrhart disclosing his “secret” identity to the student newspaper, the Phoenix, he lost sight of being a normal person and was only a celebrity or just another figure.
Dr. Andrew Wiest graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is currently a Professor of History at The University of Southern Mississippi. He is a founding director of the Center for the Study of War and Society, and has served as a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Warfighting Strategy in the United States Air Force Air War College. He is a widely published award winning author. In addition, he appears in and consults on historical documentaries for several publishers. He began with a desire to help students understand Vietnam better. He met a Vietnam veteran, John Young, and discovered that the story of Charlie Company was a tale that needed to be told. He researched using personal papers, collections of letters, newspaper...
Growing up, Ehrhart lived in a small town called Perkasie, where he had a very safe and comfortable life. He had always felt prideful of his country. He would ride around with red, white, and blue crepe paper hanging from his bicycle and was brought to tears by the ceremonies on Memorial Day. As a child, he played war with his friends and loved the battery powered toy gun he got one Christmas. It only seemed natural to him that he would join the service someday.
As he immerses his audience into combat with the soldiers, Shaara demonstrates the more emotional aspects of war by highlighting the personal lives of the men fighting. For example, when Shaara reveals the pasts of James Longstreet and Lewis Armistead’s, I started to picture them as the men that they were and not as soldiers out for blood. After suffering a devastating loss of three of his children to fever, Longstreet is tossed into battle. In Armistead’s case, he not only suffered the loss of his wife, but also of a friend fighting on the Union side, General Winfield Scott Hancock. Shaara saves his readers a front row seat to the inner turmoil of General Chamberlain regarding his hindering duty as a soldier clashes with his duty to family as he strived to serve the Union as well as protec...
John Wade craved love, admiration and affection. All his life, all he wanted was to be loved, and his father’s constant taunting hurt him immensely. In going to the war, John fulfilled his dream to become a figure who was both admired and respected. He was not a strong, macho man, who thrived upon violence and bloodshed, yet he was young and ambitious. Wade saw the war as a way of gaining ‘hero’ status in order to reach his lifelong ambitions of reaching the U.S Senate. When the revelations about his acts in the war were made, John Wade lost everything that he had fought so hard to build for himself. In this superficial way, one may argue that it was the war that ultimately led to who John Wade became at the end of the novel, yet many other factors involving his life before the war must be examined.
...ust deal with similar pains. Through the authors of these stories, we gain a better sense of what soldiers go through and the connection war has on the psyche of these men. While it is true, and known, that the Vietnam War was bloody and many soldiers died in vain, it is often forgotten what occurred to those who returned home. We overlook what became of those men and of the pain they, and their families, were left coping with. Some were left with physical scars, a constant reminder of a horrible time in their lives, while some were left with emotional, and mental, scarring. The universal fact found in all soldiers is the dramatic transformation they all undergo. No longer do any of these men have a chance to create their own identity, or continue with the aspirations they once held as young men. They become, and will forever be, soldiers of the Vietnam War.
Harold Krebs was a soldier in World War 1 who got back afew months later than the rest of the men from his town. He was forced to tell lies about his war experiences in order to get along and fit in with the people in his town. “His lies were quite unimportant lies and consisted in attributing to himself things other men had seen, done or heard of, and stating as facts certain apocryphal incidents familiar to all soldiers” (Hemingway 654). Even though the lies did not really matter in the overall scheme of things, the lies impacted Krebs. The lies Krebs made changed him and devalued his actual war experiences. Krebs was aware that if he continues to lie he would no longer be true to himself. “In ‘Soldier’s Home,’ Hemingway uses conflict to show how society demands conformity and the unfair struggl...
America was changed greatly by the events of the war in the 1940s; these changes are mirrored in the characters of the story. Hazel Motes, the protagonist, is a veteran of World War II who comes back to America with shrapnel in his shoulder and a sheer sense of disbelief filling his mind. He is a soldier which represents the nearly four million americans who were enlisted at the time (Beckam). Nearly every man in America was a soldier in the time of the novel therefore O’Connor uses a basis in military within her protagonist to better illustrate the society of the time.
All the veterans in the novel seem to be haunted by the war in some way, even those who deny that they think about the war. These men reminded me of a study, which found that men who fought in Vietnam had difficulties reintegrating in U.S. society when they returned. In Vietnam, they had been acting out a “warrior” version of masculinity and lost that status upon returning. They did not know how to reconnect with normal masculine roles. Pete seems to be the best example of this observation, with his inability to keep a job and his supposed keeping of ears of t...
...though people believe that, those on the home front have it just as a bad as the soldiers, because they have to deal with the responsibilities of their husbands, there is nothing that can compare to what these men have gone through. The war itself consumed them of their ideology of a happy life, and while some might have entered the war with the hope that they would soon return home, most men came to grips with the fact that they might never make it out alive. The biggest tragedy that follows the war is not the number of deaths and the damages done, it is the broken mindset derives from being at war. These men are all prime examples of the hardships of being out at war and the consequences, ideologies, and lifestyles that develop from it.
The character that stood out was the speaker Yusef Komunyakaa 's he is also the writer of the poem called “Face It”. The speaker himself endures mistreatment especially growing up during the Civil Rights Era. It was a privilege for an African-American to be able to fight in the war or to be selected to fight through a draft. He probably had seen everything from segregation between blacks and whites to ever innocent black men losing their lives. It takes a lot of courage to write about his experience during the Vietnam War. The speaker was the voice for the victims and the survivors of the war; he honored them in his own special way by creating this poem, he represented the minority who fought in the war by using his unique character traits.
Busch uses the narrator's English professor to represent the ignorant people that always stereotype Vietnam War veterans as somewhat less than human. The narrator obviously despises the professor and pokes fun at him the entire story. The narrator definitely sees his professor as unintelligent. When he has to jump start his professor's car, the narrator thinks to himself "But he couldn't get a Buick going on an ice-cold night, and he didn't know enough to look for cells going bad" (Busch 866).
...am Vet from Lakewood became a famous story not only in the halls of St. Edward, but throughout the city of Lakewood. With the ghost of the vet haunting Lakewood Park, the entire city was haunted by the tale, with sightings of the ghost being made by many different citizens. However, the story is special to St. Edward because it is believed that the vet who committed suicide attended St. Edward High School before going to war. Urban Legends help to tell a history and share a culture with those who listen to them. The Legend of the Vietnam War Vet did just this. The story was easily relatable to kids of the area, as most kids either attended Lakewood High School or St. Edward. The story of the Vietnam Vet from Lakewood is one that has served to create a culture for Lakewood, Ohio, and is one which will live on in the city, and the halls of St. Edward High School.
An interesting combination of recalled events and editorial commentary, the story is not set up like a traditional short story. One of the most interesting, and perhaps troubling, aspects of the construction of “How to Tell a True War Story” is O’Brien’s choice to create a fictional, first-person narrator who might just as well be the author himself. Because “How to Tell a True War Story” is told from a first-person perspective and O’Brien is an actual Vietnam veteran, a certain authenticity to this story is added. He, as the “expert” of war leads the reader through the story. Since O’Brien has experienced the actual war from a soldier’s point of view, he should be able to present the truth about war...
Also portrayed is a black man being held up by his crutches, who has lost his leg in the war. The white men in leadership are supposed to be more trustworthy, but they are simply trying to become her favorite by giving her compliments. However, the black man is not trustworthy even though he gave everything that he had towards his cause, including his leg. Just because his skin is of a different color, his views and opinions are not to be trusted. This image shows how skewed public opinion can be, the man who fought for his county should be considered just as trustworthy as any white man. Nevertheless, soldiers were not considered as highly as they are
Forgotten Heroes They were the best of times; they were the worst of times. The effects on a man’s soul are limitless; when it comes to a bloody game we call war. Whether it is from a movie, novel, or personal testimony, the entire account can never be retold. There will always be facts missing, exaggerated points, or skewed visions. You can never tell when a war story is real or completely made up. You can only close your eyes and pray to god it wasn’t ever that bad. During the Vietnam War, or the ‘unpopular war’, many men faced things unimaginable today. Soldiers kept quiet to avoid the pain and humiliation that American citizens put them through upon coming home. Often times the soldiers discarded their uniforms to avoid public humiliation. They faced rejection and verbal, sometimes physical assault. Needless to say the war was not a welcomed topic. Just as in Tim O’Brien’s short story of ‘How to Tell a True War Story’, the American people were not so supportive. Just after Bob Kiley lost his best friend, Curt Lemon, he decided to write his sister and speak of how great of a brother she had had. He went on how they became brothers and how he was one of the best men he knew. He told her how he had made the war almost fun, and what a great sense of humor he carried. (pg.543) His letter was never given a response. Just as quickly as curt had died; Bob’s letter would be forgotten. There’s a story of two Vietnam Vets from the state of Massachuses who had always felt as if they were forgotten heroes. They heard mention of a war memorial in Washington that would consist of a wall with the names of every lost soul engraved into its granite. As soon as they heard of its release date they hit the open road. In some way they felt as if it were to be a homecoming long denied for the veterans in a black period in our nation’s history. They had hoped their participation in the war would be put into a better perspective, that even though the war was bad, the soldiers were not. To them it was as if the memorial brought the Vietnam War out of the closet, and into the public consciousness.