The Best of Medic in the Green Time: Writings from the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath

The author, as a writer of memoir and collector of memoirs of others, has masterfully transformed what could have been one veteran's story into a chorus of voices on different topics relating to war and its aftermath.Here are chilling, first person accounts of a base overrun. Elsewhere, an MP describes the astonishing attempted escape of a handcuffed Viet Cong. A grunt relates in vivid detail his months long recovery from grievous wounds. After the war, a man is interrogated by the same U.S. army he fought with in Vietnam. In fast-paced postwar traveler's tales the war nips at the narrator's heels at every step. Veterans say what they feel about "Thank you for your service." About using drugs on patrols. A sampling of grunts' grisly humor pulls no punches. Fake vets are unmasked. The author has breakfast with Muhammad Ali. He interviews the Vietnamese writer Bao Ninh. As does another man nearly twenty years later. A half dozen war poems round out this solid collection on war and its aftermath by those who were there.
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From the Introduction

"In this book Marc Levy, who...takes us so far beyond rituals and salutes and "thank you for your service," far beyond any "baby killer" confessional, to the everyday sounds and smells of that war, starting with the "dim rustling of one hundred packs, helmets, weapons, reluctantly lifted, slung, shifted to place" ("The Quiet Time"). Marc has been writing reminiscences, poetry, fiction, and analysis for decades...----partly for himself to externalize and process what happened while working on his (considerable) craft, but also with the archivist's sense of social purpose. He has made his memories available to all on his website, and elicits personal accounts and essays from fellow veterans. Marc's essays and poetry tell us of the intimate costs of war, how it creeps into the soul, and the complexity and contradictions of an Army medic's experience within the massive structure of the military machine."

Janet McIntosh, Chair Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University