Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam (English Edition)
[Kindle Edition]
Bernard Edelman (Herausgeber)
Vor meiner Vietnam-Reise im Januar begonnen, las ich es erst in den letzten Monaten langsam zu Ende. Es ist sicher eines der besten Bücher über den Vietnamkrieg, lässt es doch Beteiligte zu Wort kommen, nämlich die amerikanischen Soldaten. Die Anthologie versammelt ausgewählte Briefe, welche diese Soldatenkinder (viele unter 20 Jahre alt) an ihre Familien und Freunde schrieben. Die teilweise haarsträubende Lektüre gibt nicht nur einen Einblick in den Kriegsalltag auf amerikanischer Seite, sondern ist auch ein vernichtendes Dokument dessen, was Kriege mit Menschen machen:
My morale is not the best because my best buddy was killed the day before yesterday. I was standing 20 feet from him and a 60-mm mortal exploded next to him. He caught a piece of shrapnel in the head. I carried him over to the aid station where he died. I cried my eyes out. I have seen death before but nothing as close as this […] I think with the destruction I have seen in the past week I have aged greatly. I feel like an old man now. I am not as happy-go-lucky as before, and I think more maturely now.
I’m sick of facing, every day, a new bunch of children ripped to pieces. They’re just kids – eighteen, nineteen years old! It stinks! Whole lives ahead of them – cut off. I’m sick of death of it. I’ve got to get out of here.
Das letzte Zitat ist von einer Krankenschwester im Kriegseinsatz. Es sind nicht alle Briefe so brutal, aber auch jene, wo ein junger Mensch seine Lebensträume beschreibt und anschließend steht “KIA (Killed in action) x weeks later” sind keine Gute-Laune-Lektüre.
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Pressestimmen
"Not a history book, not a war novel... Dear America is a book of truth." "Dear America is painful, but it must be difficult to be realistic and entertaining about war...
Reading it, I felt I was listening to the voices of the men and women who lived and fought in Vietnam." "
Dear America tells of an ache as ancient as time-adolescents off to war with high expectations, who soon change greatly. Ambiguities abound-from pain, disillusionment and sorrow for dead comrades to a hard-earned measure of individual strength and survival." "Here is the sad and beautiful countermelody of truth, audible at last, now that we have trashed the drums and cymbals of yet another senseless war."
-- Kurt Vonnegut
"No full understanding of the most disastrous foreign war in American history can be complete without reading these letters from the GIs to their loved ones back home."
-- Peter Arnett, Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnam correspondent
Reading it, I felt I was listening to the voices of the men and women who lived and fought in Vietnam." "
Dear America tells of an ache as ancient as time-adolescents off to war with high expectations, who soon change greatly. Ambiguities abound-from pain, disillusionment and sorrow for dead comrades to a hard-earned measure of individual strength and survival." "Here is the sad and beautiful countermelody of truth, audible at last, now that we have trashed the drums and cymbals of yet another senseless war."
-- Kurt Vonnegut
-- Peter Arnett, Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnam correspondent
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