Semper Cool: One Marine's Fond Memories of Vietnam - Hardcover

Barry Fixler

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0982518404 ISBN 13: 9780982518403

Publisher: Exalt Press, 2010

Synopsis

Semper Cool is the wrenching, sometimes hilarious and always thought-provoking true story of a mischievous teenager who enlists in the U.S. Marine Corps seeking adventure and his father's approval and finds both, plus more danger than he ever could have imagined. With its vivid imagery, Semper Cool thrusts readers into a grunt's-eye view of the blood, guts, tears and laughter of war, as told by a Marine who returned home a man and a patriot. Be prepared to laugh and cry and ultimately thank God for the men and women willing to risk their lives for the freedoms that so many Americans enjoy.

About this title

About the Author:

Barry Fixler is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968 and fought in the legendary Siege of Khe Sanh. After receiving an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps in 1973, Fixler used the G.I. Bill to finance his undergraduate degree from the Gemological Institute of America and joined his father in the jewelry business. Today he lives with his wife Linda in Bardonia, New York.

Barry is donating 100% of his royalties from Semper Cool to veterans wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. His goal is to raise ONE MILLION DOLLARS for the troops.

From Publishers Weekly:

Many Vietnam veterans look back in anger on their wartime experiences, but Fixler, who endured one of the bloodiest battles of the war, isn't one of them. The gruesome 77 days he spent defending an isolated hilltop near the border with North Vietnam forms the core of this nostalgic memoir. Growing up in a predominately middle-class Jewish neighborhood, Fixler was dazzled by his father's stories of WWII and volunteered for Vietnam to earn his respect. As a teen, Fixler got into his fair share of trouble and that cockiness seeps into these pages. Arrival at the Marine Corps' Parris Island boot camp is compared to "being thrown into a Nazi concentration camp." He celebrates his sexual escapades and never sugarcoats the nasty business of war; he'd do "everything again in heartbeat." Yet as wistful as he is about the "discipline" and "camaraderie" of the Corps, he's unrelenting in his scorn for the soldiers who return in psychological pieces, suggesting that soldiers should just get used to killing. Nowhere near the league of We Were Soldiers Once...and Young, Fixler is nonetheless an intriguing, rare bird: a man who survived "hell in the raw" without a trace of trauma-or remorse.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Exalt Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0982518404
• ISBN 13: 9780982518403
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320