Publisher's Weekly Review
Ebert combines interviews and printed primary sources in this brilliant reconstruction of the infantryman's experience during the Vietnam War. Though accounting for less than 10% of the American troops in Vietnam, the infantry suffered more than 80% of the losses. Ebert, a secondary school teacher in Wisconsin, tells their story chronologically, from the grunts' induction and training, through their arrival in Vietnam, their first encounters with battle and their final rendezvous with the airplane that would carry them home--the ``freedom bird,'' one of the numerous military terms, abbreviations and Vietnamese words defined in the glossary. The infantrymen confronted environments from rice paddies to jungles, from densely populated cities to virtually empty countrysides. They fought in patrol skirmishes and in division-scale battles. They learned to kill, but few understood a war with no clear objectives. They survived, but most paid a price for their survival. The book belongs in every collection on America's longest and most controversial war. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Vivid, creative use of oral history (here, with the remembrances woven together by incisive commentary) that takes the conventional combat-report format--induction, boot camp, raw recruit, seasoned vet--and breathes new life into the war experience. Ebert (who teaches high-school history and social studies in Wisconsin) interviewed approximately 40 Army grunts and Marines for this report, and also drew on interview-transcripts of South Dakota's Vietnam Veterans Oral History Project. He and his subjects paint the Southeast Asian battleground in its true, unglamorous colors: One soldier likens his first exposure to the country's heat ``to having someone hold a hair-dryer up to his nose''; the author says that Vietnam's pervasive odor was characterized by many as ``seminauseating and often likened to dead fish''). In this Vietnam, grenades are dangerous to friend and foe alike (one soldier describes standing in a chow line as someone accidentally pulls a pin, killing two and wounding 26), and ``humping'' the bush is a miserable, surreal existence, but one that most grunts stick to in order to avoid being branded a quitter--the lowest of the low--even though most days nothing is attained but total exhaustion. Also detailed are offensive operations, corpse mutilation, booby traps, drug use, racial conflict, and varied atrocities. As the soldiers' time in Vietnam gets ``short'' (Army men serve 12 months; Marines, 13) their primary aim becomes survival before their luck runs out. Finally--as detailed in a too brief epilogue--the soldiers fly home, muster out of the service, and then often must withstand criticism for their part in a hated war. Even jaded or knowledgeable Vietnam War-readers will find fresh material here.
Booklist Review
Every new account of what grunts went through in Vietnam, whether personal narrative or scholarly history, claims that the story of the infantryman is finally being told--when, in fact, it has been told many times. Ebert's beautifully titled A Life in a Year, then, simply captures old ground, but, even so, no one has ever treated the infantryman's role in Vietnam with more sympathy or thoroughness. Mixing a scholarly reserve with extensive quotations from soldiers, Ebert explores the stateside mood the draft inspired; what went on in basic training and advanced infantry training; what it was like to go in-country and face combat for the first time; what the jungle--or "triple canopy"--was like; the major offenses of the seven years (the years of heaviest fighting) he covers; how grunts dealt with Vietnamese nationals; and, finally, the nervous life of short-timers. Again, it has all been covered before, but never with such organization and authority. A fine effort.Though Howes' work on POWs is also a synthesis, it's rather an unusual one, commenting on the "only heroes" of the Vietnam War, its POWs, and on their own narratives--one of which, James N. Rowe's account of jungle captivity, Five Years to Freedom (1971), has become a sort of classic. Howes is a sympathetic chronicler--How could one not be?--but also ably reports on the media event the POWs of Operation Homecoming became. In the process, the ordinary enlisted man or woman (the POWs were almost all aviators and commissioned) was inadvertently assigned a nonheroic, even dishonorable role--underscoring once again the difficulties the average Vietnam veteran encountered. There's an interesting chapter here on James Stockdale (of the Perot campaign), and Howes' writing on hapless, court-martialed Robert Garwood is valuable, too. His is clearly the most original of the three titles discussed here. The superpatriotism that characterizes most POWs is really the stuff of Leading the Way, in which Santoli sought out Vietnam vets whose experiences contributed to the turnaround of morale and prestige in the U.S. military. Santoli's book is a collection of oral histories, and he has edited them well, though the relentlessly positive, no-nonsense tone of many of these professionals can grow tedious. Colonel Kenneth Bowra's description of what it was like to serve in Somalia will be a treat for the military enthusiast, however, and so--particularly--will be Chief Warrant Officer 4 Lou Hall's riveting account of Desert Storm: "I was the flight lead of Red Team on the first combat mission of the air war. Our objective was to open a hole in Iraq's forward defense radar." Leading the Way waxes and wanes in interest, but accounts like Hall's are invaluable. ~--John Mort
Library Journal Review
Because of the relative lack of large, readily identifiable major battles during the Vietnam War (Hue, Khe Sanh, Hamburger Hill, etc.), military histories of the war can be difficult for the average reader to comprehend. Endless operations and campaigns without the anchor of a turning-point battle easily confuse and disorient. Vietnam literature retains an enthusiastic following, however, because it features a large number of oral histories and personal narratives. The reader follows the individual soldier rather than the large campaigns. Ebert, a high school history teacher, describes the combat experiences of 60 Army and Marine Corps infantrymen from basic training through their year in Vietnam. This is an outstanding example of history through the eyes of the ordinary person. Ebert's book is the finest of its type since Al Santoli's Everything We Had ( LJ 4/15/81). Highly recommended.-- John R. Vallely, Siena Coll. Lib., Loudonville, N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.