Father, Soldier, Son

by Nathaniel Tripp

Book Overview

A former platoon leader reflects on his troubled father, the meaning of leadership, and living life on the front lines in "one of the finest soldier memoirs of the Vietnam War" (The Boston Globe)... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1883642140
• ISBN13: 9781883642143
• Release Date: December 1996
• Publisher: Steerforth Press
• Length: 261 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Stellar Memoir

I'm just finishing up a second reading of this book, after having read it five years ago. I also was in the Big Red One, in B/2-16, the year after Tripp was there. Tripp writes with great insight and the humility of a man who experienced and understood the reality (the reality for one American infantryman, it must be granted) of the Vietnam War. This book also tells you how many of us were changed by this war.

A great, artistic read

I can't make any claims to the validity or non-validity of the book's subject matter, but I found the whole book engrossing from beginning to end. The man's private motivations and trials may not belong to everyone, but I think they are deep and true enough so that anyone can understand them. They are mixed in with commentary about the war from the author's viewpoint then as a young man and at the time of writing, and is also filled with the nerve wracking, often spooky action of that period in that place, which creates its own atmosphere along the lines of Dispatches by Herr. This book is not to be missed.

Much more than just gripping battle descriptions.

Like true-crime literature, this book proved to be a disturbingly-satisfying and valuable learning experience. However, this opinion may not be shared by many if they forget that this is a memoir, not a novel. Don't be misled by the title and the blurbs, expecting just a neatly chronological action account of a soldier's year of survival in Vietnam and his relationship with his father before and after his tour of duty. It's far more than that.Soon after starting, you will realize that there are many more dimensions to this work than anticipated. The allusions to "father" and "son" prove to be metaphors not only for the author's personal relationships (within and outside the Army), but also that of War, The Military Establishment in general, and Government:"Vietnam was, more than anything else, a place of betrayal. Vietnam was where fathers betrayed sons, and sons betrayed fathers."And rarely in the past have we been treated so incisively and credibly to the real attitudes pervading our fighting forces in Vietnam:"I hated Saigon, the bile rising inside of me. It was noisy and filthy, overflowing with REMFS and hucksters of all sorts. The population had increased tenfold because of the war, and the very foundations of the city were exploitation of one sort or another, East meeting West at its very worst. The air was heavy with exhaust fumes and the constant hustle of survival, the great open market of Mammon beside heartbreaking slums. Everything was for sale: drugs, weapons, people, principles, the past, the future. We brought Walmart to Saigon, with blow jobs and televisions offered side by side, while beggars with their legs blown off, with puffy napalm scars and white, unseeing eyes, fought for scraps."The book is replete with poignant enlightening anecdotes such as the following documentation of the Vietnamese poplulation's attitude towards Our War:"We soon came abreast of the cause of the delay. A young man on a motorcycle had been struck and killed. He lay there in the road in the kind of impossible position that only the dead can assume, and what was causing the delay was not so much his death as the subsequent pillaging. A crowd had gathered and was stripping his corpse of everything, watch, ballpoint pens, shirt, while others stripped his mashed motorcycle. Tu was silent for a long time after we passed, and continued on down the long, straight, open highway into the delta. Then at last he said, 'So now you see what your war has done to my country.' "The relationship between the Americans and the French in Vietnam may be a revelation to many of us. This is the way history should be taught:"We had, after all, grown up amid the glorifying mythology of the Second World War, and had naively expected the French to welcome us again, showering us with champagne and kisses from beautiful girls as we marched toward Loc Ninh, driving the evil communists before us. It had been disillusioning

A memoir in the class of Caputo's 'A Rumor of War'

Tripp's work belongs among the 'classic' memoirs of Americans serving in combat. Without bloodthirsty bravado or bitter resentment, Tripp provides us with another in a short list of honest, reflective, applicable reflections on being a field officer under fire generally, and in Vietnam specifically. The power of the work is not based solely on Tripp's unique ability to share with us much of what he saw, smelled, felt, feared, shared, gained and lost. Rather, it is the openness with which he frames his perspective and outlines his evolutions as a man, a leader, a parent, a son. The child who learns the meaning of the word 'sunset' by hearing the word and then seeing its definition presented in open air at twilight learns the meaning of the word differently compared to the child who has both the term and its definition spoken. That first child learns in a richer, more personal, more powerful way. Tripp provides us with the richer lesson by taking us very close to that westward view, providing us with the basic language, and enabling us to describe our own sunsets. This is an important book for those of us with similar experiences overseas and at home.

A MUST READ for anyone who has been there (I have).

Tripp really captures the essence of the ground soldier's role in the overall scheme of things. He is on the money from the first to last page and his engaging style of writing makes it difficult to put the book down.