About book Guns Up!: A Firsthand Account Of The Vietnam War (2002)
So I'm really trying to find some nonfiction of quality that would convert my students to this different kind of reading. I'm reading a LOT of nonfiction, but having particular trouble finding accounts of soldiers and war that might appeal to my male students but without sexual references and language that would bring community wrath down upon us. This version treats a soldier's experiences as a gunner in Viet Nam, with language very much censored by the author; however, he DIDN'T censor quite enough. Though one of his closest companions is a Christian who continually refers him to relevant scriptural passages to get him through this horrific set of experiences, he includes accounts of his fellow soldiers considering gang raping a POW (woman) and of experiences with prostitutes. Of course, the account also includes a lot of nauseating detail about the violence of the war. This frank account portrays the Viet Nam war experience vividly, but should be for adults only.
Recommended as "one of the top Vietnam War memoirs" (I think actually by a UK newspaper, possibly by a UK war writer), GUNS UP! is a sort of full-blooded, full-throated war memoir that follows a Marine ranker and his best friend, Andrew Chan, a Chinese-American, who are both machine gun operators and summoned by the call "Guns up!" when their platoon makes contact.It's an odd feeling, dealing with war classics. You know on the one hand that posterity has declared this to be a memoir classic, but the enormity of 60,000 US dead and 3 million Vietnamese just seems so tragic. Would PH and Thailand have gone red had the US not fought in Nam? So declare some military writers. But I'm not sure.Well, putting aside politics, this is a full-blooded war memoir. Filled with combat, filled with the buddy relationship, and packed with period detail. Oh and Chan is a devout Christian, so there's plenty of biblical quotation too.
Do You like book Guns Up!: A Firsthand Account Of The Vietnam War (2002)?
Just finished up this awesome book..and want to reread it again already!! Everyone should read this book! It is REAL and it is gut wrenching and very sad...But... it also shows such emotion, bonding, friendship, humor, camaraderie...Being since I was a child a military supporter, enthusiast and huge war buff...I found this book riveting...but like I said..I really think that everyone should read it...I still can't wrap my head around what our soldiers went through...what a true nightmare...it is just incredible the selfless courage, bravery, pure guts and sacrifice that these men, many of them teenagers, showed day after day under such God awful conditions...I will have to do a blog post about this book soon!
—Joe Gande
