Father, Soldier, Son: Memoir of a Platoon Leader In Vietnam - Softcover

Tripp, Nathaniel

4.23

103 ratings by Goodreads

9781586421083: Father, Soldier, Son: Memoir of a Platoon Leader In Vietnam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1586421085 ISBN 13: 9781586421083

Publisher: Steerforth, 2006

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Nathaniel Tripp grew up fatherless in a house full of women, and he arrived in Vietnam as a just-promoted second lieutenant in the summer of 1968 with no memory of a man’s example to guide and sustain him. The father missing from Tripp’s life had gone off to war as well, in the navy in World War II, but the terrors were too much for him, he disgraced himself, and after the war ended he could not bring himself to return to his wife and young son. Tripp tells of how he learned as a platoon leader to become something of a father to the men in his care, how he came to understand the strange trajectory of his mentally unbalanced father’s life, and how the lessons he learned under fire helped him in the raising of his own sons.

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Review:

A beautifully written book and a stunning achievement. Thanks to Nathaniel Tripp's extraordinary depiction of war in Vietnam, based on his own experiences, I finally understand what it was like to fight there. Here is the savagery, the terrible anxiety, the sheer unreality of the conflict, and above all the appalling innocence and unpreparedness of the young Americans who were sent into that incomprehensible war.

Skillfully interwoven with the war story is how the author comes to terms with his own terror, with his failed father and their failed relationship, and how he makes up for the lost love of a parent by becoming something like a father to the men in his platoon. I can't recommend Father, Soldier, Son highly enough.

From the Inside Flap:

""Father, Soldier, Son will stand as one of the finest soldier memoirs of the Vietnam War . . . If all that has been written about the war in Vietnam, in fiction and nonfiction, has made it a familiar story to some, Tripp overcomes cliche by individualizing every well-known fact." -- "The Boston Globe
NATHANIEL TRIPP GREW UP fatherless in a house full of women and he arrived in Vietnam as a just-promoted second lieutenant in the summer of 1968 with no memory of a man's example to guide and sustain him. The father missing from Tripp's life had gone off to war as well, in the Navy in World War II, but the terrors were too much for him, he disgraced himself, and after the war ended he could not bring himself to return to his wife and young son. In "some of the best prose this side of Tim O'Brien or Tobias Wolff" ("Military History Quarterly), Tripp tells of how he learned as a platoon leader to become something of a father to the men in his care, how he came to understand the strange trajectory of his own mentally unbalanced father's life, and how the lessons he learned under fire helped him in the raising of his own sons.
"Not since Michael Herr's Dispatches has there been anything quite as vivid, gripping and soul-searing," raved the "Washington Post, and the "Chicago Tribune said "the description of combat in the jungles of Vietnam are authentic and terrifying, as good as any I have read in fact or fiction."

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