Desertion in the Time of Vietnam: A Memoir

by Jack Todd

Book Overview

In 1969 Jack Todd was twenty-three and happy beyond his dreams. He had left behind a hardscrabble youth in a small Nebraska town, had an exciting job as a reporter for the Miami Herald , and was in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803239815
• ISBN13: 9780803239814
• Release Date: March 2012
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 1.03 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A coward?

If you're not afraid of ideas and opinions that may differ from your own, read this book.Is it cowardly, or un-American, to avoid a war if you truly feel it is wrong? The U.S. government does not rule by divine right. Our country was formed as a direct result of Americans revolting against what they considered to be unjust government. If it is our obligation, today, to blindly follow our government's "authority", then it was equally the obligation of our fore-fathers to do so in the 1700's. How many Americans think the Fathers of the Revolution were traitors for not submitting to the authority of their government?After WWII, many Germans said, "we were just following orders...". It was not a legitimate excuse then, no has it ever been. We each have the power of reason, the power to judge right from wrong, and it is our moral and ethical obligation to exercise that power. It is NEVER right to turn that power over to someone else - not to the government, not to Ronald Reagan or to Bill Clinton, not to religious "authority" - not to anyone! "Desertion" is an account of one young man, an average American, exercising this power. Jack Todd's account of his stuggle in determining what his duty was is well worth reading!If you want to read a tremendous account of soldiers selflessly answering the call to arms for what they knew was a just cause, read "We Were Soldiers Once...And Young". Whether you thought the war was right or wrong, these men were laying their lives on the line, doing their duty as they saw it, no matter what the personal consequences. That in and of itself deserves respect.On the other hand, if you want to read a great story about an American avoiding a war he knew to be unjust, read "Desertion". That action, when motivated by a desire to do the right thing, is also deserving of respect. It is possible for people to hold opposing opinions about the same issues. We shouldn't feel the need to ridicule or persecute those that hold beliefs different than our own (although, unfortunately, THAT seems to be the American Way). JFK said, "War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." Apparently, from reading some of the reactions to this book, that day still lies in the distant future.

Breaking the Silence

Between 50,000 and 100,000 young men and women fled northward to Canada during the Vietnam War era. Yet, their voices have remained largely silent during the past three decades while a significant body of literature concerning the war experience has been evolving. Jack Todd has broken that silence with the publication of Desertion: In the Time of Vietnam, a moving memoir of a young man who followed his conscience to Canada in 1970 and waged his own private "war" as an exile in search of himself in an unknown land.This intensely personal account follows Todd from childhood growing up in a small Nebraska town to a promising career at the Miami Herald to basic training at Fort Lewis, Washington. Six weeks into basic training, Todd begins to contemplate flight northward as the dehumanization of the military experience and a growing antiwar conviction convince him to reluctantly leave his country. The decision is not made without Todd's painful acknowledgement of loss ("family, country, career, the woman I love") and moral agonizing over leaving his homeland of 23 years ("It's not that I live in America or that I am American. We are indistinguishable. You grow up the way I did, you don't know where your country leaves off and you start."). Ambivalence haunts him ("One instant I'm leaning one way, the next moment I've swung in the opposite direction. It's like watching a compass needle waver back and froth, back and forth, until it settles on true north.") until the morning early in 1970 when a friend escorts him over the Canadian border to freedom, and there is no turning back. The memoir concentrates primarily on Todd's life as an exile in a country "that is so much like home that every morning when you get up you have to remind yourself that this is not home, that home is now a place where you can no longer go." Starting in Vancouver he drifts from city to city, on the verge of homelessness much of the time, never staying in any one place long enough to make lasting relationships or discover the security of stability. "The only constant seems to be this endless flight, running on and on and getting no place at all," he writes.Even as Todd attempts to create a new life in this strange territory, he struggles to write about the exile experience in prose that is both poetic and poignant. "I worry at the theme of exile," he writes, "the meaning of existence on what is, for me in this endless winter, the wrong side of a three thousand-mile border." By the time the war ends in 1975 Todd feels as if he has been "fighting it one way or another" for the past eight years since becoming a "late convert to the antiwar movement in 1967." Although draft dodgers and deserters are granted amnesty after the war, "it is too late for me," writes a deeply regretful Todd, who earlier made the "absurd decision" to renounce his American citizenship during a period of deep disillusionment. "I have given up my country, my citizenship, my profession, my famil

Remember the war

Anyone who wants to know what the Vietnam War did to those who reached draft age during its duration -- and anyone who has forgotten -- should read this memoir. Sad, angry, sometimes funny, finally forgiving. Very well written too.

A wok that is sad and uplifting at the same time

This autobiography concentrates on the aftermath of fleeing the United States for Canada by the author during the Viet Nam debacle. Todd provides quite a different perspective when he deserts the Army and his country. That decision which worked out well for Todd as he is a highly regarded journalist still effects him deeply with regrets and sorrow when he chose the exile path at a critical crossroad in his life. Well written, though at times quite maudlin, DESERTION IN THE TIME OF VIET NAM brings home an era when everyone seem to know someone fleeing the draft or the war. However, the uniqueness of his personal story is what happened to him and others after they left home.Harriet Klausner

Conflicting Emotions: The Pain Left Behind by Viet Nam

Jack Todd has hit the nail on the head with Desertion: In the Time of Viet Nam. Anyone who was between the ages of 15 and 90 at that time had mixed emotions about Viet Nam. We thought we knew why we were there, but were not entirely certain. Nothing was black and white any more. Todd has a way of depicting the landscape of Western Nebraska so that one can literally smell the yucca plants of the Great Plains and see the buffalo running wild. Yet, behind the glorious picture is an emotional upheaval going on and Jack, a brilliant young writer in his prime is suddenly drafted to the Army. His parents are elderly, his father a gruff, tough retired featherweight boxer who was in the Balloon Corps in WWI. His mother, a strong-minded woman trying to hold down a house with a wild man as the head. They are dirt poor yet somehow each child in the family learns to read, write, and play the piano, and go on to college. Jack gets a job on the Miami Herald....his first big job as a journalist and is forced into an environment as foreign to his soul as his body. His descriptions of the emotions he felt as well as those of his family and friends are so gripping, one must read on, even though the reading is so sad one thinks it must have been a nightmare. Viet Nam caused every family in America to rethink where their moral fiber. Todd's memoir is riveting. Whether you were close to someone in Viet Nam, knew someone who died there, or knew someone who chose the desertion or far easier, the dodger route, you will want to read this book and pass it onto your children as a history not to be repeated.