Walking Point

Starred review from March 21, 2016
Countless memoirs by Vietnam veterans have appeared since the early 1970s, but few noteworthy personal Vietnam accounts have been published in the 21st century—a situation that Ulander rectifies with his first book. This is a captivating, introspective, enlightening look at the author’s nerve-racking one-year tour of duty (1969–1970) with the 173rd Airborne as a drafted Army infantryman. The narrative adheres to the standard war memoir structure: a chronological personal recounting, beginning with basic training, concentrating on what happened in the war zone, and ending with his return home. Ulander makes that format seem new and original at virtually every step—especially his evocations of the many months he spent slogging through the jungle. The main themes include Ulander’s conquest of the physical and emotional burdens of fighting in that war, his and his fellow grunts’ use of marijuana to cope, and the young draftee troops’ bitter resentment of gung-ho lifer officers who often endangered the men’s lives—callously and unnecessarily—and otherwise made their tour unnecessarily miserable. Ulander’s fine memoir should take a place among the best works in the Vietnam War autobiographical canon.

April 1, 2016
A former GI recalls his tour of duty in Vietnam, and it's not quite the story readers may expect. Ulander was drafted after dropping out of college in 1969. At 19, he was already self-aware enough to recognize and resist the indoctrination of basic training. Once in Vietnam, he found a different war from the one his training prepared him for. Marijuana was ubiquitous, though the officers and other "lifers" opposed it on principle. Most of the field soldiers he met wore peace signs on their helmets, smoked vast quantities of dope, and listened regularly to the latest rock music from "the World" back home. It became evident that the real enemies weren't the North Vietnamese soldiers but his own officers, most of whom put career advancement first and the lives of their men a distant second. Luckily, Ulander found mentors in more seasoned soldiers who took him under their wings because the better he was at staying alive, the safer everyone would be. Readers follow him on his early missions, where he learned how to turn off his thoughts and just take in what the jungle was telling him. While he did endure combat--luckily, he came through unscathed--the book is really about the camaraderie and the philosophical detachment he adopted as a survival tactic. Ulander has a knack for capturing the scenes he experienced and for expressing the draftees' dislike of the lifers. The characters are identified only by nicknames, possibly to shield them even after the passage of decades, possibly because some are composites. In the dedication, the author notes that there are parts of the story he leaves untold, and most readers will have an idea what some of those are. One thing is unambiguous: the author came out of the war with a fierce hatred of the military and the social forces that made Vietnam possible. A compulsively readable book for anyone who lived through the Vietnam era--or who wants an idea of what it was like.

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