A Perspective Worth Looking At …
I remember seeing this book as a teenager over 30 years ago in a local mall’s Walden Bookstore. I’m sure I passed on the book in favor of a World War II book. All these years later, I immediately recognized the cover of this book (a Soldier/Marine throwing a grenade) in a list of suggested Vietnam books and felt compelled to finally read it … I’m glad I did.
The first book I ever bought about the Vietnam War was Al Santoli’s “Everything We Have”. I loved the format of that book because it let 33 veterans tell their stories … in their own words. BLOODS follows the same format. Wallace Terry provides the (very) personal stories of 20 Black American servicemen who served in Vietnam. Like Santoli’s book, BLOODS offers a wide perspective of experiences … different service branches and ranks, draftees, career-military, varying degrees of combat experience and as prisoners of war. As diverse as the individual stories are, they all share a common denominator: being black and fighting for a country that was still predominantly segregated as they served and sacrificed.
Wallace Terry provides a perspective of the American serviceman during the Vietnam War that has been touched-on, but never presented in such a personal manner. Rather than summarizing the accounts of these men, he lets them tell their stories in their own words, literally. Chock full of colloquialisms/jargon/slang representing the era, the stories read like each of the 20 men are actually speaking directly to the reader. Most all the men account for experiencing the horrors of combat (some of the stories are quite graphic and disturbing), but also recount a degree of racism that puts todays rampant use of the word to shame. It is hard not to read the book and wonder why these men felt compelled to fight for America at all … it certainly didn’t seem to be a worthy cause. What I liked about BLOODS was that it wasn’t all combat, but of lives interrupted by war, surviving that war only to come home and surviving a different type of war. The pathetic homecoming experienced by Vietnam veterans has been thoroughly documented; it was clearly worse for black veterans. There were several instances in the book where these men returned home only to be shunned by the black community for serving a country that treated their race so poorly. To a degree, the details of these veterans’ post war lives are more interesting than the wartime experiences and on some occasions, worse than the war itself. While there are accounts of postwar successes, many of these men succumbed to hardship and all of them struggled at some level (emotionally or physically). One of these stories become the basis for the film “Dead Presidents” (about a black Vietnam who seeks to better his life by robbing a bank). Unfortunately, Wallace Terry did not live to deliver a follow-up edition to show how these men fared in their later years (however, I’m sure an internet search can probably reveal details on some).
If you are truly interested in the Vietnam War and/or American History, I believe BLOODS is a vital ingredient in better understanding the complexity and controversial nature of the American experience in Vietnam. The integrated US military had significant problems within and this book sheds light on that issue. The stories are raw and painful to read, but reading about the experiences of these men shows how far America has come over the years. It’s shameful how the country treated Vietnam veterans in general, but after reading BLOODS, there are some veterans who had a worse “homecoming”. Wallace Terry’s vision of exposing the experience of black servicemen in Vietnam is a hard punch to the reader’s stomach.