A Very Personal War: The Story of Cornelius Hawkridge,

by James Hamilton-Paterson

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0340149914
• ISBN13: 9780340149911
• Release Date: January 1971
• Publisher: Not Avail
• Length: 284 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The Vietnam Scam

The title, A VERY PERSONAL WAR, resonated to me, being a 1967 Vietnam War draftee. Finding this book 40 years after it's initial publication, I flinched at the prospect of stirring up long settled anger but was driven by the promise of cool truth surfacing over an ocean of warm (and on-going) government lies. I do not recommend this book for any who need to avoid anger or rocky leaking boats. Before I read this book, I perceived the United States' long involvement in Vietnam as an ironic mystery: How could a superpower with huge military, personnel, and economic advantages, lose? Wasn't winning the point? (blushing at my naivete). In A VERY PERSONAL WAR I was to learn of blatant unstoppable corruption on a staggering scale and schemes at play then (and now) that redefine war (for the connected) as for-profit enterprise. A VERY PERSONAL WAR is the non-fiction account of the experiences of investigator and security specialist Cornelius Hawkridge. Author James Hamilton Paterson begins with riveting details of Hawkridge's early life in Hungary during the Russian occupation, where young Hawkridge engaged in ruthless close guerilla-style combat, two and a half years of solitary confinement and Stalin's labor camps. I was so full of respect and awe of Hawkridge at this point in my reading that whatever this man did with his life afterward had my engaged interest. His personal grudge against communism would eventually lead him to Vietnam, but to the awakening there that communists were as rare as officials who cared and corruption common as the air he breathed. He knew in 1966 that the "war" was lost and that the real question was how long the scams could continue. What did Hawkridge do about it? He dug for, at great personal risk, and found the facts -where the military, medical, building and humanitarian supplies were going (to both sides and parties selling to both sides), and where most of the currency exchange profits were ending up (44 Wall Street -Hannover Trust at the time, now JP Morgan Chase). Hawkridge wrote letters to anybody he thought had effective corrective power. Westmoreland ignored him. The Department of Defense ignored him. The State Department gave him the classic Snow Job. The book has supporting photographs and letters and replies in appendices. Hawkridge's best whistle-blowing success was through contact with Senator Ribicoff, a Democrat who later turned against the war. Closed door hearings were held. Transcripts were labeled classified material for reasons of "national security." The book contains though, recalled from memory, the straight to the heart-of-the-matter questions that Hawkridge, in angry frustration, fired back at the committee. It was somewhat of a miracle that Hawkridge's testimony even took place, because of the very nearly successful assassination attempt he survived that killed his wife -in an uninvestigated highway "accident" -in Washington State - USA -shortly after people