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Title: What Are They Going To Do, Send Me To Vietnam? by Jack C. Stoddand, Jack C. Stoddard, Thomas White ISBN: 0-9678055-0-3 Publisher: Sunrise Mountain Publishing Pub. Date: 01 January, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4.8 (5 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: The Real Story
Comment: Finally a book that tells about the war without some overblown heroics. The story of one man and the close bonds that form with the people you relie on to survive. The days of boredom interrupted by moments of hell.

Rating: 4
Summary: Newswatch UK review
Comment: Forget the high-budget, action-packed, grenade-fuelled war movies.

If you want to really know what the Vietnam War was like, you need to get hold of a copy of Jack Stoddard's 'What are they going to do? Send me to Vietnam?'

Stoddard arrived in 'the 'Nam' in 1968, a 22-year-old career soldier in his first war role.

Thirty years later he was impelled to write this book after his young son asked him what the war was really like.

Stoddard took on a difficult task - how can you relate the fear, the courage, the comradeship, the desperate times, the deaths in mere words?

But Stoddard completes his task admirably.

What's so refreshing about 'What are they going to do? Send me to Vietnam?' is the fact it makes no judgements. There's no political wrangling, no debate over the rights and wrongs of the war.

This is a soldier's tale - straight from the horse's mouth.

Written in a pleasant and easy style, this book takes us through Stoddard's life in the 'Nam.

From his first day as a tanker when he was attacked by vicious jungle vines, to his life as a special combat soldier - entering dangerous areas to 'sniff out' the enemy.

He talks about his own personal battles - from the humorous incident when he suffers from haemorrhoids to the heart-wrenching descriptions of the death of close friends.

He chats about his fellow soldiers - and the camaraderie and genuine love that built up around them in the most inhospitable of conditions.

And he talks of the effect the war had on his life. How thirty years later he was drawn to the grave of dead friend, how he talked to the families of soldiers who were killed in combat, and how he misses the friendships and purpose a war situation brings.

It seems wrong to call this an entertaining book - but it is.

At times it's hard to believe what you are reading is fact, not fiction.

I also found it a hard book to put down. It's more a collection of stories than a formulated record but even so, Stoddard possesses a rare gift, in that he draws the reader in and won't let them go.

It's obvious he wrote this book as a kind of 'letting go' of his own memories - a burial of the past - but this is not a criticism, it merely makes the book even more readable.

Rating: 5
Summary: No whining, no anti-war BS, no blame...just life as it was!
Comment: All Vietnam Veterans experienced the same war, but from a different perspective. Here is what I am talking about. As a helicopter pilot, I remember watching the Grunts and Tankers on the ground sitting on their tracks and thinking, "God!, am I glad I don't have to live like those poor bastards with all the dust, mud, bugs, heat and mines on the ground looking for the VC and Charlie." Little did I suspect that the Grunts and Tankers on the ground were saying, "God, I'm glad I am not one of those poor bastards who flys one of those frail little choppers, and have my as shot off by the VC as I fly around exposed in the sky!" You see what I mean? Perspective is very important.

So, do yourself a favor, whether you are a veteran or not. Pick up Jack Stoddard's book and read it. You will find easy reading with compact and colorfully graphic short stories which will amaze you. And, the stories will remind you that war, especially the unpopular Vietnam War, was fought by real men, just like you.