FATHER SOLDIER SON: MEMOIR OF A PLATOON LEADER IN VIETNAM, by Nathaniel Tripp.

I have probably read a score or more of Vietnam war memoirs, some good, some not so good. But Tripp's is unique, both for its eloquence and for the family and emotional baggage he brings to his story. "Baggage" is probably the wrong word, with its negative connotations, but it will have to do. Tripp grew up with a mother and grandmother, an only child. His father, a Naval veteran of WWII, suffered from mental illness much of his life, and so was largely absent from Tripp's childhood. So there was that. And Tripp, during his tour in Vietnam, plagued by doubts and fears of his leadership capability, often wondered if he might be going a bit mad himself, although he denied this when his father asked him outright. He felt guilty at times that he abandoned the mission, worrying instead only of "the continued safety of my men." Early on he questioned the sanity of the war itself, understanding implicitly -

"There was nothing heroic here, we were being pushed by old men, with self-serving ideas, pushed to the brink of death just to glorify old men."

Tripp becomes very close with the men of his platoon, young men he comes to love.

"But we had all become family by now. For me, and I suspect many others, it was the closest, most loving family we had ever known. The loneliness which is so much a part of being a man, which stalks us from the cradle to the grave, was gone now. We only wanted to be with each other."

Tripp reveals truths about our involvement in Vietnam that are still true today with the current ongoing wars in the Middle East. "The war had evolved out of naïve misconceptions and cynical misrepresentation of facts ... this brought bad leadership to the fore, particularly among senior officers whose careers rested upon a successful tour of duty ..."

The half-serious comments the author makes about simply walking north, "all the way up Highway Thirteen to Cambodia and beyond" and "Cambodia sounded wonderful, like the Emerald City, a place of peace" reminded me of Tim O'Brien's fictional soldiers' magical journey in GOING AFTER CACCIATO, a book I savored many years ago.

FATHER SOLDIER SON is a deeply personal account of a pivotal time in Nathaniel Tripp's young life, a time that scarred him permanently. He still feels, as he did then, that in such a war, "there are no winners, that there are only survivors, forever scarred by the agony and humiliation of war."

Tripp waited nearly thirty years to sort it all out and write it down, but I for one am glad that he did. I am sure he is not alone in how he felt about the war, but I'm also pretty sure that his assessment of it all may be cause for controversy, even among the men who fought in Vietnam. But, as I said, this is a deeply personal account, perhaps undertaken as a form of therapy. Nathaniel Tripp is a fine writer and I will recommend his book highly. (four and a half stars) ( )

3759. Father, Soldier, Son: Memoir of a Platoon Leader in Vietnam, by Nathaniel Tripp (read June 15 2003) This is a well-written account of a not too admirable person who went into the Army and spent 1968-1969 in Vietnam. He tells a pretty realistic-seeming story of how scared he was when he first came and how he bonded with the men of his platoon. After six months as platoon leader his job changed to one supposedly building trust with the Vietnamese. He intersperses his account with accounts of his time after the war, when he marries, gets divorced, and his love-hate relationship with his father. The language was often literal, though he does use the word "urinate" more often than its four-letter equivalent so I was grateful for that small favor. This book was probably not worth reading, though it had its moments. ( )