THE SOLDIERS' STORY Vietnam in Their Own Words

Only those who have trudged through mud and lived for weeks on C rations really know war. So reader Ed Holland takes us through those experiences. We get the mud on our faces, go hungry, cry in pain as he reads of the 77 men who comprise Steinman's story. Holland matches the ease or intensity of each particular account to the character behind that account. His voice thus becomes the voice of any 19-year-old from the heartland or Anywhere, USA. In taking us through America's ten-year struggle in Vietnam, Steinman focuses on six major sections: the battle of the Ia Drang Valley, Khe Sanh, the Tet offensive, Cambodia, and the air war, concluding with the painful drama of the fall of Saigon. The personal stories don't tell the whole of it, but they do remind us that, though war is senseless, it raises men to unimaginable heights of courage and compassion and so give us some good, finally, to carry away from Vietnam. P.E.F. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 02]