Sixteen stories of middle-aged Texas veterans of combat in Vietnam coping with their war experiences and the judgments of their stay-at-home peers.
More than thirty years after the Vietnam war was lost, its aging American combat veterans cope with the judgments of their stay-at-home peers and the fighting that still goes on in their heads.
Here are sixteen stories of middle-aged Texans who are not in prison, panhandling on street corners or sleeping under bridges. They have learned to live, with varying success, with the dreams that stalk them at night and lurk in the background during the day, although one also has murder on his mind.
Another has a new baby whose birth surprisingly snuffed all of his father's war nightmares, except for one that gained new meaning as it moved to the daytime. Two have memento mori from the battlefield which they would like to be rid of, but only one may have finally found a way. And a widowed career officer spends his nights in the locked Alamo shrine seeking redemption for an old hero.
Source: Amazon.com
Date: Jan. 18, 2010
Exquisite, poetic stories
By Alice M. Dinizo "J.B. DiNizo" (Toms River, New Jersey)
Dick Stanley's well-written book of short stories, "Leaving the Alamo", mingle the thoughts and memories of Vietnam War veterans with their Texas homeland. The main characters of each story deal thoughtfully with their war memories, their comrades in arms, either living,missing in action, killed in the war or dying afterwards, and their own adjustments to life afterwards in a poignant way that will penetrate to the reader's soul.
Mr. Stanley recounts so very well, often with humor and always with great dialogue, the experience of those who went to fight and now are old, aching, full of recollections, resentful sometimes of how they and their fellow soldiers were treated. A good solid addition to libraries' books on the Vietnam War and a must own, must read for followers of this tragic period in our history.
Professional Reviews
Feathered Quill Book Reviews
So many Vietnam veterans found their lives, thoughts and minds were suspended in time, but not because of a joyous event like the birth of a child, but because something inexplicably pulled them back . . . back to a place they never wanted to be. It was a place that ridiculed them, tore at the very fiber of their being, and sent them home with a living hell that would haunt them for a lifetime. It was Vietnam. Places like "The Wall" were meant to "symbolically bringing the past and present together," but with so many living with PTSD that simply wasn't going to happen. Vietnam combat veterans pepper the American landscape, forgotten by most and inexplicably despised by others. Many are silent, but cannot silence the demons in their heads. In Dick Stanley's hauntingly real Leaving the Alamo, you'll meet sixteen Texans and will become privy to the voices they hear, but cannot reveal to others because no one cares to listen. Do you?
* Ben Caldwell stood at the deathbed of John Garrett, a former Officer Candidate School classmate. He was dying of AIDS, but it didn't matter. Loyalty to a fellow soldier was of utmost importance to Ben. A nurse later closed the door, saying that only family would be allowed. A fellow soldier was family. He soon would travel to The Wall to visit with the others where they say the past would merge with the present. But could it?
* Sometimes men took souvenirs from the bodies. A Southern sergeant took the belt buckle from a Northern lieutenant. He was later told, "You'll get used to it." He put the "five-pointed star" in his pocket and left the memory of the man lying without dignity in the "foul paddy water." Or so he thought. Would the buckle and the memory travel with him until his last dying breath?
* The civilian kept asking Glen about the location. It was something he didn't want to think about, let alone talk about. The "government was still trying to track down evidence for all of the Americans missing in Vietnam." He had a picture in his hand and the Pentagon man pestered him with a map printed off the internet. There must have been two hundred guys. Why with a war on terrorism going on were these people still trying to "dig up bones?"
* After twenty-eight years Thuy Carter, a disabled woman, had found her aging parents in Da Nang. There was a collection jar at a convenience store so she could make the trip. They'd "hardly collected enough for gas to San Antonio, let along a roundtrip ticket to Vietnam." Ed and Tim put in a couple of twenties, but would they just be able to walk away from that pickle jar and Thuy?
The evolution of Vietnam memories was captured perfectly in these unique short stories. It is as if the reader became a part of each protagonist and was able to slip into their minds and understand why their quirks and unusual behaviors came to the fore in certain circumstances. For many people Vietnam was and is a forgettable war, eclipsed by the war in Iraq. Vietnam vets did not come home to ticker tape parades, but rather were often scorned. Memories were seldom talked about, but this book perfectly captures the pain of men who were there. The writing is uncannily eerie and no one can write like this unless they have somehow experienced combat in Vietnam up close or have been with men who have. Stanley made me remember and feel Vietnam once again because I once again could hear the voices of my peers as they returned home and remembered my own time in S. E. Asia watching B-52s take off, one after the other. Memories don't die easily.
Quill says: This is an important book about a time most people would rather forget. Let's not.
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