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365 Days: 50th Anniversary Edition
Assigned to Zama, an Army hospital in Japan in September 1968, Glasserarrived as a pediatrician in the U.S. Army Medical Corps to care for thechildren of officers and high-ranking government officials. Thehospital's main mission, however, was to support the war and care forthe wounded. “They all came through the hospitals of Japan … the chopperpilots and the RTO's, the forward observers, the cooks, the medics andthe sergeants... the heroes and the ones under military arrest, the drugaddicts and the killers.” At Zama, an average of six to eight thousandpatients were attended to per month, and the death and suffering werestaggering. The soldiers counted their days by the length of theirtour—one year, or 365 days—and they knew, down to the day, how much timethey had left. Glasser tells their stories—of lives shockinglyinterrupted by the tragedies of war—with moving, humane eloquence.
310 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
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995 people want to read
About the author
Ronald J. Glasser
18 books12 followersRonald J. Glasser, MD, is the author of the bestselling 365 Days, an account of his experiences as an army doctor during the Vietnam War. Dr. Glasser has written several investigations of trauma in modern warfare, including Broken Bodies, Shattered Minds and Wounded: Vietnam/Iraq, as well as the general medical studies The Light in the Skull and The Body Is the Hero. He is also the author of the novels Another War, Another Peace and Ward 402.
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May 5, 2022
In his book, Ronald J. Glasser, an American pediatrician assigned to an Army hospital in Japan, tells stories of what it was really like to be an American soldier fighting in Vietnam. His is the most realistic, no-holds-barred military memoir I have ever read.
What distinguishes Glasser's account is that he tells it from the perspective of the sick and the wounded. Personal stories of combat service in Vietnam tend to glorify fighting, especially if they are written by commanders. Stories like the ones Glasser has included in his book, though, disabuse the reader of the false idea that there is something glorious and heroic about it. The author provides graphic, stomach-churning descriptions of the patients' condition. When surgeons had to save young Americans, hardly eighteen, from bleeding to death, they often stood wondering whether first to take out the battered and bleeding spleen, go after the lacerated liver, and clamp the torn vena cava, or start with the hole in the renal artery.
Yet the fact that healthy young men returned home as physical cripples by the thousands was not the greatest tragedy. Far more damaging was the widespread, nearly universal, combat fatigue the soldiers struggled with. Unlike in earlier conflicts such as the Second World War, when one combat psychiatrist had the impossible responsibility of 15,000 soldiers, in Vietnam the existence of combat fatigue was acknowledged. However, the enormous damage it did was ignored. According to Glasser, many of the men he treated suffered from severe combat fatigue that caused them to hallucinate and behave violently. As the authors insists, it was mainly soldiers that were forced to fight in this abnormal state of mind that were usually responsible for the brutalities of the American Army. After their brief stay at the hospital ended, they were sent back to Vietnam, where their condition aggravated, and their behavior was not monitored. No one cared whether their combat fatigue drove them to killing civilians or committing other atrocities, or damaged their minds for life.
Glasser's narrative also underscores the general ineffectiveness of the warfare strategy that the MACV had embraced. The American effort in Vietnam was made to depend on helicopter warfare, but as troopers lying in the Japanese hospital where the author worked told, the helicopters, while powerful in open terrain, in the Vietnamese jungle were shooting at leaves and branches instead of at the enemy. Furthermore, commanders were exceptionally fond of dispatching ranger squads to look for the Viet Cong – a fruitless effort that resulted in little more than an addition to the number of American casualties. The so called rangers, unfamiliar with the jungle, fell victim to enemy ambushes.
There seems to have existed an erroneous notion among American strategists that to ambush a group you have to be in immediate proximity to it. No matter how primitively equipped the Viet Cong men were, though, they were not shooting with bows and arrows. Their AK-47s had an impressive range – 1500 meters with 600 meters accuracy. This is why the notorious defoliation program that was meant to leave the enemy with nowhere to hide in a radius of 300 meters did not produce any positive results, but killed yet more American boys.
So did the malaria that they were not immune to. I was left speechless by the inhumane malaria policy that commanders had adopted. Because those who caught the disease were evacuated, the battalion surgeons were allowed to make the diagnosis of malaria only after a soldier had had a fever of 102 or above for three days. This way the men were kept straight and fighting for 72 more hours. Spending the first three days of their sickness in the 110-degree jungle heat took its toll on their health. By the time they were evacuated and given access to medical care, they collapsed on their way through the hospital's door.
Glasser pays tribute to the medical personnel in the makeshift hospitals of Vietnam. He recounts stories of doctors treating Viet Cong men alongside American soldiers. As one doctor explained to a bewildered nurse, the hospital was inside the village, and the Viet Cong had surrounded the village. The Viet Cong guerrillas could take it, but they chose not to. It was a silent agreement – a small but significant act of kindness and mutual understanding amid death, terror, and destruction. It is inspiring stories like this that help one continue to believe in people.
The author also effectively takes all the heroism out of the American soldiers' fighting and sacrifice in Vietnam. His book is titled 365 days for a reason – this was the number of days a draftee had to serve before he could return home. Each soldier knew this, and all his actions centered around the ultimate objective of making it through this one year. According to the observations of commanders, these soldiers did not want to fight. They had no illusions about the Vietnam conflict. They smoked grass and made few friends. As I think about it, they were no different from many Viet Cong men, who had been forcefully recruited into the ranks of the National Liberation Front by Party agents that infiltrated their villages. Maybe the only difference that mattered is that the Vietnamese were fighting for their country's independence, while the Americans – what were they killing and dying for? They did not know. Propaganda did not work on them, commanders noted.
The Vietnam conflict had an ugly face. It was ugly everywhere – in the jungles and villages of South Vietnam, in the hospitals, and on the home front. There could be nothing glorious about a foreign superpower intervening into an already tragic civil war and making it immensely more bloody, costly, and tragic. There could be nothing heroic about soldiers dying, mentally or physically, in the jungles of a faraway foreign country for a cause that was clear neither to them nor to their superiors, nor to the superiors of their superiors. Any attempt to justify or gloss over the atrocities committed by both sides tarnishes the memory of those who lost their lives on the battlefield, who succumbed to malaria in the jungle, and who died of wounds on the hospital bed.
365 DAYS left a lasting impression on me with both its gripping style and horrifying content. Glasser has poured his heart into his work, which touched me deeply. This book should be required reading for all those in charge of declaring wars. It serves to remind us why war us one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, why it is so devastating. I highly recommend it.
What distinguishes Glasser's account is that he tells it from the perspective of the sick and the wounded. Personal stories of combat service in Vietnam tend to glorify fighting, especially if they are written by commanders. Stories like the ones Glasser has included in his book, though, disabuse the reader of the false idea that there is something glorious and heroic about it. The author provides graphic, stomach-churning descriptions of the patients' condition. When surgeons had to save young Americans, hardly eighteen, from bleeding to death, they often stood wondering whether first to take out the battered and bleeding spleen, go after the lacerated liver, and clamp the torn vena cava, or start with the hole in the renal artery.
Yet the fact that healthy young men returned home as physical cripples by the thousands was not the greatest tragedy. Far more damaging was the widespread, nearly universal, combat fatigue the soldiers struggled with. Unlike in earlier conflicts such as the Second World War, when one combat psychiatrist had the impossible responsibility of 15,000 soldiers, in Vietnam the existence of combat fatigue was acknowledged. However, the enormous damage it did was ignored. According to Glasser, many of the men he treated suffered from severe combat fatigue that caused them to hallucinate and behave violently. As the authors insists, it was mainly soldiers that were forced to fight in this abnormal state of mind that were usually responsible for the brutalities of the American Army. After their brief stay at the hospital ended, they were sent back to Vietnam, where their condition aggravated, and their behavior was not monitored. No one cared whether their combat fatigue drove them to killing civilians or committing other atrocities, or damaged their minds for life.
Glasser's narrative also underscores the general ineffectiveness of the warfare strategy that the MACV had embraced. The American effort in Vietnam was made to depend on helicopter warfare, but as troopers lying in the Japanese hospital where the author worked told, the helicopters, while powerful in open terrain, in the Vietnamese jungle were shooting at leaves and branches instead of at the enemy. Furthermore, commanders were exceptionally fond of dispatching ranger squads to look for the Viet Cong – a fruitless effort that resulted in little more than an addition to the number of American casualties. The so called rangers, unfamiliar with the jungle, fell victim to enemy ambushes.
There seems to have existed an erroneous notion among American strategists that to ambush a group you have to be in immediate proximity to it. No matter how primitively equipped the Viet Cong men were, though, they were not shooting with bows and arrows. Their AK-47s had an impressive range – 1500 meters with 600 meters accuracy. This is why the notorious defoliation program that was meant to leave the enemy with nowhere to hide in a radius of 300 meters did not produce any positive results, but killed yet more American boys.
So did the malaria that they were not immune to. I was left speechless by the inhumane malaria policy that commanders had adopted. Because those who caught the disease were evacuated, the battalion surgeons were allowed to make the diagnosis of malaria only after a soldier had had a fever of 102 or above for three days. This way the men were kept straight and fighting for 72 more hours. Spending the first three days of their sickness in the 110-degree jungle heat took its toll on their health. By the time they were evacuated and given access to medical care, they collapsed on their way through the hospital's door.
Glasser pays tribute to the medical personnel in the makeshift hospitals of Vietnam. He recounts stories of doctors treating Viet Cong men alongside American soldiers. As one doctor explained to a bewildered nurse, the hospital was inside the village, and the Viet Cong had surrounded the village. The Viet Cong guerrillas could take it, but they chose not to. It was a silent agreement – a small but significant act of kindness and mutual understanding amid death, terror, and destruction. It is inspiring stories like this that help one continue to believe in people.
The author also effectively takes all the heroism out of the American soldiers' fighting and sacrifice in Vietnam. His book is titled 365 days for a reason – this was the number of days a draftee had to serve before he could return home. Each soldier knew this, and all his actions centered around the ultimate objective of making it through this one year. According to the observations of commanders, these soldiers did not want to fight. They had no illusions about the Vietnam conflict. They smoked grass and made few friends. As I think about it, they were no different from many Viet Cong men, who had been forcefully recruited into the ranks of the National Liberation Front by Party agents that infiltrated their villages. Maybe the only difference that mattered is that the Vietnamese were fighting for their country's independence, while the Americans – what were they killing and dying for? They did not know. Propaganda did not work on them, commanders noted.
The Vietnam conflict had an ugly face. It was ugly everywhere – in the jungles and villages of South Vietnam, in the hospitals, and on the home front. There could be nothing glorious about a foreign superpower intervening into an already tragic civil war and making it immensely more bloody, costly, and tragic. There could be nothing heroic about soldiers dying, mentally or physically, in the jungles of a faraway foreign country for a cause that was clear neither to them nor to their superiors, nor to the superiors of their superiors. Any attempt to justify or gloss over the atrocities committed by both sides tarnishes the memory of those who lost their lives on the battlefield, who succumbed to malaria in the jungle, and who died of wounds on the hospital bed.
365 DAYS left a lasting impression on me with both its gripping style and horrifying content. Glasser has poured his heart into his work, which touched me deeply. This book should be required reading for all those in charge of declaring wars. It serves to remind us why war us one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, why it is so devastating. I highly recommend it.
December 1, 2021
4.5 stars. This is a searing and riveting account of the Vietnam war through the lens of the wounded. Dr. Glasser, an Army pediatrician, assigned to a hospital in Japan finds himself at Camp Zama assisting with the care of the wounded evacuated there for treatment instead of working with children of the military. It is told through vignettes of either his firsthand experiences or stories told to him by the patients. It is brutal, gruesome, unbelievably sad, sometimes disgustingly inhumane; all the things that evoke the ugliness and tragedy of war. There is some commentary of the military medical system of the day and the overarching philosophy of the conduct of the war.
I would have liked some stories about the staff and their heroic efforts to save the wounded and how they were able to face the critically wounded and dying day after day. They spent long exhausting days without respite at times especially during the Tet offensive. It took a physical, psychological and emotional toll on those doctors, nurses and medics who dealt with the ravages of war on mostly young men who had barely started their adult lives.
I would have liked some stories about the staff and their heroic efforts to save the wounded and how they were able to face the critically wounded and dying day after day. They spent long exhausting days without respite at times especially during the Tet offensive. It took a physical, psychological and emotional toll on those doctors, nurses and medics who dealt with the ravages of war on mostly young men who had barely started their adult lives.
March 10, 2011
Like most Vietnam memoirs or depictions, the graphic nature of the subject content can often become overwhelming, even numbing. Exploded or bullet ridden bodies soon become tiresome, or, worse, cliché. Few Vietnam books try to turn from the violence and center the narrative upon the psychological and spiritual aspect of the young men fighting in a war that most of them didn't understand or agree with in the first place. But what if a combat medic tells his account of what it was like for 365 days? At first, I thought this was going to be the same formula: battle + carnage + aftermath = memory...repeat ad infinitum. But Glasser's 365 DAYS is more than just a list of horrific events; it is an insight into what transformations he underwent as a combat medic in a war that was very unpopular with both the soldiers and the citizenry of that foreign land along with the folks back home represented in the Stars and Stripes on his sleeve. Yes, there are many gruesome accounts (he was a combat medic, afterall), but there are also accounts of what he saw, experienced, and thought about outside his black hole world of war.
This is a riveting account of one man's journey in a land that he was held voluntarily captive in for 365 days, or until he, too, would be sent home maimed or in a black bag in a nondescript coffin.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
This is a riveting account of one man's journey in a land that he was held voluntarily captive in for 365 days, or until he, too, would be sent home maimed or in a black bag in a nondescript coffin.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
December 20, 2022
Powerful stuff, effectively delivered. Not light reading, but worthwhile historical perspective and insight and, of course, food for thought. I strongly recommend it.
A (very, very) good book, well worth reading, and brilliantly organized, such that the final vignette (or punch), even though you know it's coming, lands like a sledge hammer.
I'm surprised how long it took for the book to find its way onto my reading list, and I'm somewhat disappointed that I didn't get around to reading it earlier. (Alas, so many books, so little time.)
So much military history is painted with a broad brush (or, as they say, described at a macro level). This is very much "micro," a chronicle of the individual, the highly personal, human cost of war, not not so much "in the trenches" or out in the field, but in the hallways and wards of the military hospitals, far from the public's eye (and, far too often, not just out of sight, but out of mind).
It's particularly (not necessarily morbidly) curious reading this book so many years after Vietnam and, now, enough time after the initial literature describing the Iraq and Afghanistan engagements have become plentiful. It's a time capsule of sorts. Modern medicine is very much in play, but nothing like what is available today, but ... as the author describes in the preface, still very much a different time and place (in terms of who did and who didn't survive and what survivorship looked like and what was expected). Without drifting too far afield, for example, there's much less discussion in this book, originally published in 1971, of tbi (traumatic brain injury), ptsd (post traumatic stress disorder), and, quite frankly, suicide (and, even as the post-millennial rate continues (blessedly, belatedly) to decrease, the scope of the loss remains overwhelming, literally mind-numbing).
Yet the loss ... the scope of the loss ... the method and the means ... is (are all) heart-rending.
A (very, very) good book, well worth reading, and brilliantly organized, such that the final vignette (or punch), even though you know it's coming, lands like a sledge hammer.
I'm surprised how long it took for the book to find its way onto my reading list, and I'm somewhat disappointed that I didn't get around to reading it earlier. (Alas, so many books, so little time.)
So much military history is painted with a broad brush (or, as they say, described at a macro level). This is very much "micro," a chronicle of the individual, the highly personal, human cost of war, not not so much "in the trenches" or out in the field, but in the hallways and wards of the military hospitals, far from the public's eye (and, far too often, not just out of sight, but out of mind).
It's particularly (not necessarily morbidly) curious reading this book so many years after Vietnam and, now, enough time after the initial literature describing the Iraq and Afghanistan engagements have become plentiful. It's a time capsule of sorts. Modern medicine is very much in play, but nothing like what is available today, but ... as the author describes in the preface, still very much a different time and place (in terms of who did and who didn't survive and what survivorship looked like and what was expected). Without drifting too far afield, for example, there's much less discussion in this book, originally published in 1971, of tbi (traumatic brain injury), ptsd (post traumatic stress disorder), and, quite frankly, suicide (and, even as the post-millennial rate continues (blessedly, belatedly) to decrease, the scope of the loss remains overwhelming, literally mind-numbing).
Yet the loss ... the scope of the loss ... the method and the means ... is (are all) heart-rending.
May 19, 2020
"365 ημέρες", εκδόσεις Άγκυρα.
Βαθμολογία: 9/10
Ήθελα να διαβάσω κάτι σχετικά με τον πόλεμο του Βιετνάμ, και κατά προτίμηση κάτι σε non-fiction, οπότε έπιασα τούτο το βιβλίο στα χέρια μου, που γράφτηκε πολύ πριν την επίσημη λήξη του πολέμου, από έναν πρώην ταγματάρχη του Υγειονομικού Σώματος του Αμερικάνικου Στρατού. Τον Αύγουστο του 2016 διάβασα το εξαιρετικό "Κουρέλια" του Μάικλ Χερ, και μπορώ να πω ότι το "365 ημέρες" μου φάνηκε το ίδιο δυνατό και συγκλονιστικό, έστω και αν από άποψη γραφής και στιλ τα δυο αυτά βιβλία διαφέρουν πάρα, μα πάρα πολύ.
Εδώ έχουμε να κάνουμε με κάποιες ιστορίες που αφηγείται ο Ρόναλντ Τζ. Γκλάσερ, τις οποίες είτε άκουσε από άλλους αξιωματικούς και απλούς φαντάρους, είτε τις έζησε ο ίδιος. Μέσω των ιστοριών αυτών γινόμαστε μάρτυρες του τρομακτικού και αιματηρού πολέμου του Βιετνάμ, παρακολουθούμε διάφορους νέους στρατιώτες και αξιωματικούς σε διαφορετικά τμήματα και σώματα του στρατού, παίρνουμε μια ιδέα από όλα αυτά που αντιμετώπισαν στις φοβερές ζούγκλες του Βιετνάμ. Οδηγοί σε τεθωρακισμένα, πιλότοι σε ελικόπτερα, ακροβολιστές, νοσοκομειακοί, γιατροί, απλοί πεζικάριοι, όλοι εμφανίζονται σε τούτο το χρονικό βίας και αίματος. Η γραφή του Γκλάσερ είναι γλαφυρή και ολοζώντανη, καταφέρνει να αρπάξει τον αναγνώστη από τον σβέρκο και να τον σύρει μέσα στις λάσπες του Βιετνάμ, στα αιματοβαμμένα πεδία μάχης και στα νοσοκομεία που κατακλύζονται από τραυματίες, οι περισσότεροι εκ των οποίων θα πρέπει να ζήσουν με ένα κάρο κουσούρια για το υπόλοιπο της ζωής τους.
Δεν είναι ένα βιβλίο που υποστηρίζει ή κατακρίνει τον πόλεμο στο Βιετνάμ, αλλά ένα βιβλίο που αναδεικνύει το χάος του πολέμου, καθώς επίσης τ��ν πόνο που προξένησε σε εκατομμύρια ανθρώπους. Αναμφισβήτητα, είναι ένα από τα πιο γλαφυρά και δυνατά βιβλία που έχω διαβάσει σχετικά με τον πόλεμο, και μπορώ να πω ότι πραγματικά το απόλαυσα, αν και με βάση τη θεματολογία του μάλλον δεν θα έπρεπε.
Υ.Γ. Η μετάφραση μου φάνηκε πολύ καλή και γλαφυρή για τα χρόνια της, αλλά θα προτιμούσα αντί για "απαυτωμένος", "αποτετειωμένος, "αποτέτοιο" κλπ, να ήταν οι κανονικές βρισιές, με τις περισσότερες πιθανότατα να ξεκινάνε από το γράμμα "Γάμα". Βέβαια, κυκλοφόρησε στα ελληνικά το 1973, οπότε θα έλεγα ότι υπάρχει μια δικαιολογία.
Βαθμολογία: 9/10
Ήθελα να διαβάσω κάτι σχετικά με τον πόλεμο του Βιετνάμ, και κατά προτίμηση κάτι σε non-fiction, οπότε έπιασα τούτο το βιβλίο στα χέρια μου, που γράφτηκε πολύ πριν την επίσημη λήξη του πολέμου, από έναν πρώην ταγματάρχη του Υγειονομικού Σώματος του Αμερικάνικου Στρατού. Τον Αύγουστο του 2016 διάβασα το εξαιρετικό "Κουρέλια" του Μάικλ Χερ, και μπορώ να πω ότι το "365 ημέρες" μου φάνηκε το ίδιο δυνατό και συγκλονιστικό, έστω και αν από άποψη γραφής και στιλ τα δυο αυτά βιβλία διαφέρουν πάρα, μα πάρα πολύ.
Εδώ έχουμε να κάνουμε με κάποιες ιστορίες που αφηγείται ο Ρόναλντ Τζ. Γκλάσερ, τις οποίες είτε άκουσε από άλλους αξιωματικούς και απλούς φαντάρους, είτε τις έζησε ο ίδιος. Μέσω των ιστοριών αυτών γινόμαστε μάρτυρες του τρομακτικού και αιματηρού πολέμου του Βιετνάμ, παρακολουθούμε διάφορους νέους στρατιώτες και αξιωματικούς σε διαφορετικά τμήματα και σώματα του στρατού, παίρνουμε μια ιδέα από όλα αυτά που αντιμετώπισαν στις φοβερές ζούγκλες του Βιετνάμ. Οδηγοί σε τεθωρακισμένα, πιλότοι σε ελικόπτερα, ακροβολιστές, νοσοκομειακοί, γιατροί, απλοί πεζικάριοι, όλοι εμφανίζονται σε τούτο το χρονικό βίας και αίματος. Η γραφή του Γκλάσερ είναι γλαφυρή και ολοζώντανη, καταφέρνει να αρπάξει τον αναγνώστη από τον σβέρκο και να τον σύρει μέσα στις λάσπες του Βιετνάμ, στα αιματοβαμμένα πεδία μάχης και στα νοσοκομεία που κατακλύζονται από τραυματίες, οι περισσότεροι εκ των οποίων θα πρέπει να ζήσουν με ένα κάρο κουσούρια για το υπόλοιπο της ζωής τους.
Δεν είναι ένα βιβλίο που υποστηρίζει ή κατακρίνει τον πόλεμο στο Βιετνάμ, αλλά ένα βιβλίο που αναδεικνύει το χάος του πολέμου, καθώς επίσης τ��ν πόνο που προξένησε σε εκατομμύρια ανθρώπους. Αναμφισβήτητα, είναι ένα από τα πιο γλαφυρά και δυνατά βιβλία που έχω διαβάσει σχετικά με τον πόλεμο, και μπορώ να πω ότι πραγματικά το απόλαυσα, αν και με βάση τη θεματολογία του μάλλον δεν θα έπρεπε.
Υ.Γ. Η μετάφραση μου φάνηκε πολύ καλή και γλαφυρή για τα χρόνια της, αλλά θα προτιμούσα αντί για "απαυτωμένος", "αποτετειωμένος, "αποτέτοιο" κλπ, να ήταν οι κανονικές βρισιές, με τις περισσότερες πιθανότατα να ξεκινάνε από το γράμμα "Γάμα". Βέβαια, κυκλοφόρησε στα ελληνικά το 1973, οπότε θα έλεγα ότι υπάρχει μια δικαιολογία.
December 24, 2023
Absolutely the best book about Viet Nam I have ever read. I was in Sweden at a train station, waiting for a train into Stockholm, in the morning when I started 365 Days. The book was so riveting that I read it straight through at the train station and never got on the train. I finished it as the sun went down and just returned to my campsite to catch a train the following morning. The book is a series of short stories or vignettes of real stories of Vietnam. You can't begin to know what it was like in Vietnam without reading 365 days. I particularly remember the story which ended with blood in the corn flakes. It is, to this day (and it has been 50 years since I read it), on my list of top ten books I've ever read. Do yourself of favor and read 365 days.
May 11, 2010
The "mission of the Army Medical Corps is to support the fighting strength not deplete it." This was the stark reality face by doctors and surgeons who performed heroically to save lives and who, naturally, were reluctant to see all their efforts destroyed, especially in cases where the soldier might only have days or a couple of weeks before his time in Nam was up. Vietnam was a war of limits, some areas were off limits to bombing, soldiers were limited to a year "in country."
Glasner was a pediatrician sent to Japan to care for the children of officers stationed there. Because of the enormous demands placed on the medical service and the huge number of casualties, he was ordered to work in the hospitals where the wounded were sent. This book recounts episodes in the combat lives of those soldiers.
It was a war of numbers. 365. The magic number. Body counts, the only thing that mattered. Some units would count and then bury their enemy dead on the way in so they could dig them up and count them again on the way back out. Commanders would assign quotas and if a squad didn't meet its quota, they'd have to go out again until they met it.
The book consists of a mind-numbing series of stories -- sketches, he calls them - from the battlefield and hospital interspersed with medical reports of excruciating injuries, their treatment, successes and failures. All the stories are true, either witnessed first hand by the author or retold from incidents related to him by soldiers at the hospital.
An excerpt: "The next morning the two platoons were flown back to the rest of their company. That first night back, they were hit again --two mortar rounds. The next day on patrol near the village, the slack stepped on a buried 50-caliber bullet, driving it down on a nail and blowing off the front part of his foot. When the medic rushed to help, he tripped a pull-release bouncing betty, blowing the explosive charge up into the air. It went off behind him, the explosion and shrapnel pitching him forward on to his face. Some of the white hot metal, blowing backwards, caught the trooper coming up behind him." This kind of incessant trauma finally caught up with the men and one finally snapped. He charged the village, which most assumed was harboring VC, shooting a retreating two men and a girl. Both were shot by the furious troopers. "They stripped the girl, cut off her nose and ears, and left her there with the other two for the villagers."
With this kind of pressure, it's no wonder, many men just broke and became catatonic or paralyzed. They were shipped to the hospital and Glasser describes with some awe the "new psychiatry," a process by which the army snapped them out of it and made sure they were returned to duty as soon as possible. In WW II 25% of those evacuated from a combat area was done so for neuropsychiatric reasons. In WW I it was called shell shock and the assumption was that soldiers had been too close to a shell when it went off causing some kind of brain trauma. The army could not tolerate the loses from psychiatric problems. They discovered if you change the expectations, no longer consider someone mentally ill, but expect him to return to his unit, to walk, to perform his normal duties, to not forget he is in the army. Evacuation from the front was not helping, it was making things worse; they discovered "that it was best to treat these boys as far forward as possible; that their unit identification should be maintained and, above all else, the treatment should always include the unwavering expectation, no matter how disabling the symptoms, that these boys would be returned to duty as soon as possible."
The army had to learn how to deal with racial issues as well. In one case a black soldier, a medic, had been rotated back to base where he went nuts, attacking several superior officers. He was sent to the hospital in a strait jacket. When the CID folks came to investigate, the psychiatrist told him, "the Army made a bad mistake with him. They made him a medic, gave him respect and an important job, and then rotated him back to base camp where he was harassed, abused, given menial jobs, treated like a stupid nigger, and told to mind his own business."
The new psychiatry worked, but it did nothing about the war in which 11,000 wounded were sent for repair each month, with hundreds killed. And, of course, there was no follow-up to see what happened to those who returned to duty down the road.
Extraordinary read.
Glasner was a pediatrician sent to Japan to care for the children of officers stationed there. Because of the enormous demands placed on the medical service and the huge number of casualties, he was ordered to work in the hospitals where the wounded were sent. This book recounts episodes in the combat lives of those soldiers.
It was a war of numbers. 365. The magic number. Body counts, the only thing that mattered. Some units would count and then bury their enemy dead on the way in so they could dig them up and count them again on the way back out. Commanders would assign quotas and if a squad didn't meet its quota, they'd have to go out again until they met it.
The book consists of a mind-numbing series of stories -- sketches, he calls them - from the battlefield and hospital interspersed with medical reports of excruciating injuries, their treatment, successes and failures. All the stories are true, either witnessed first hand by the author or retold from incidents related to him by soldiers at the hospital.
An excerpt: "The next morning the two platoons were flown back to the rest of their company. That first night back, they were hit again --two mortar rounds. The next day on patrol near the village, the slack stepped on a buried 50-caliber bullet, driving it down on a nail and blowing off the front part of his foot. When the medic rushed to help, he tripped a pull-release bouncing betty, blowing the explosive charge up into the air. It went off behind him, the explosion and shrapnel pitching him forward on to his face. Some of the white hot metal, blowing backwards, caught the trooper coming up behind him." This kind of incessant trauma finally caught up with the men and one finally snapped. He charged the village, which most assumed was harboring VC, shooting a retreating two men and a girl. Both were shot by the furious troopers. "They stripped the girl, cut off her nose and ears, and left her there with the other two for the villagers."
With this kind of pressure, it's no wonder, many men just broke and became catatonic or paralyzed. They were shipped to the hospital and Glasser describes with some awe the "new psychiatry," a process by which the army snapped them out of it and made sure they were returned to duty as soon as possible. In WW II 25% of those evacuated from a combat area was done so for neuropsychiatric reasons. In WW I it was called shell shock and the assumption was that soldiers had been too close to a shell when it went off causing some kind of brain trauma. The army could not tolerate the loses from psychiatric problems. They discovered if you change the expectations, no longer consider someone mentally ill, but expect him to return to his unit, to walk, to perform his normal duties, to not forget he is in the army. Evacuation from the front was not helping, it was making things worse; they discovered "that it was best to treat these boys as far forward as possible; that their unit identification should be maintained and, above all else, the treatment should always include the unwavering expectation, no matter how disabling the symptoms, that these boys would be returned to duty as soon as possible."
The army had to learn how to deal with racial issues as well. In one case a black soldier, a medic, had been rotated back to base where he went nuts, attacking several superior officers. He was sent to the hospital in a strait jacket. When the CID folks came to investigate, the psychiatrist told him, "the Army made a bad mistake with him. They made him a medic, gave him respect and an important job, and then rotated him back to base camp where he was harassed, abused, given menial jobs, treated like a stupid nigger, and told to mind his own business."
The new psychiatry worked, but it did nothing about the war in which 11,000 wounded were sent for repair each month, with hundreds killed. And, of course, there was no follow-up to see what happened to those who returned to duty down the road.
Extraordinary read.
March 10, 2020
A battlefield hospital is like the sucking drain of a war. Sooner or later, everything come through there. Glasser was a doctor at Zama, a hospital in Japan that treated those injured in Vietnam too badly to be patched up in country, and not injured enough to die. The hospitals saw something like 8000 patients a month, closer to 11000 during the Tet Offensive.
But this isn't really Glasser's story, it's the stories of the men he treated, and how they wound up in his hospital. The overall feel is a lot like Michael Herr's Dispatches, though this book came out sooner, in 1971 while the war was still a going concern. Glasser has a fair amount of literary talent, but part of me wishes this had been more focused on his own world of the wards. Perhaps the second greatest illusion of war (after the idea that they can be really be won), is that death, if it comes, and it's not coming for you, is going to be clean, honorable, even cool. Except that by the odds, you're more likely to be shattered, blasted, burned, to suffer in agony for hours or days or years, before wounds finally do you in. The book only reaches that authenticity in the last story, about a severely burned soldier and the doctor who cares for him.
But this isn't really Glasser's story, it's the stories of the men he treated, and how they wound up in his hospital. The overall feel is a lot like Michael Herr's Dispatches, though this book came out sooner, in 1971 while the war was still a going concern. Glasser has a fair amount of literary talent, but part of me wishes this had been more focused on his own world of the wards. Perhaps the second greatest illusion of war (after the idea that they can be really be won), is that death, if it comes, and it's not coming for you, is going to be clean, honorable, even cool. Except that by the odds, you're more likely to be shattered, blasted, burned, to suffer in agony for hours or days or years, before wounds finally do you in. The book only reaches that authenticity in the last story, about a severely burned soldier and the doctor who cares for him.
November 29, 2015
Heartbreaking, like a lot of the best military memoirs. Dr. Glasser worked as a doctor in an evacuation hospital in Japan during the Vietnam war, treating a constant stream of wounded troops - many went on to the States for more long-term treatment, many were returned to combat in Vietnam, many died.
The book is a series of stories of patients and their doctors, along with reflections on the function of the military medical system, to conserve the resource that is made up of human beings and send as many of them back to 'useful' roles in combat as possible, as quickly as possible.
He documents the finding that when traumatized soldiers and Marines are treated as close to combat as possible, with the preservation of their unit identity and the expectation that they will go back to fight with their units, many more of them do seem to shrug off the symptoms of PTSD and go back to serve. The problem with this, as he notes in his later book "Broken Bodies, Shattered Minds: A Medical Odyssey From Vietnam to Afghanistan", the people who made that determination stopped there and didn't research long-term effects, either in later combat service or after war. As we've learned since, for many the damage lasts a lifetime and affects the lives of the veterans' families for generations.
This book made my chest ache, literally.
The book is a series of stories of patients and their doctors, along with reflections on the function of the military medical system, to conserve the resource that is made up of human beings and send as many of them back to 'useful' roles in combat as possible, as quickly as possible.
He documents the finding that when traumatized soldiers and Marines are treated as close to combat as possible, with the preservation of their unit identity and the expectation that they will go back to fight with their units, many more of them do seem to shrug off the symptoms of PTSD and go back to serve. The problem with this, as he notes in his later book "Broken Bodies, Shattered Minds: A Medical Odyssey From Vietnam to Afghanistan", the people who made that determination stopped there and didn't research long-term effects, either in later combat service or after war. As we've learned since, for many the damage lasts a lifetime and affects the lives of the veterans' families for generations.
This book made my chest ache, literally.
January 25, 2016
Overall I enjoyed this book. I learned a lot of facts and terms about Vietnam that I never knew. I have a special interest in Vietnam since my father and father-in-law both served in that war. I also found interest in the medical shade of the book. I did not enjoy the cursing in the book, but I know some would say that "comes with the territory" of war. I am happy that I read this book in less then 10 days!
January 24, 2016
An interesting book that I almost set aside. I thought it would be the memoir of a doctor that served at a hospital in Japan during the Viet Nam War. It is actually a collection of stories that the doctor gathered during his time overseas. The stories came from nearly the full range of participants: infantry, armor, helicopters, medics, nurses, special ops and other doctors. The stories are typically related in a narrative style, which is why I considered setting it aside. I checked the reviews on Amazon and saw that they were nearly all positive; the negative reviews are mostly from those who quibble with some errors in military terminology. I stayed with the book and was glad I did. The stories are compelling and do convey the tragedy of the war. It is important to remember that this book was first published in 1971 so the stories are written without the perspective of decades of reflection. My only complaint is that there is no real follow up; in many of the stories you just do not know what ultimately happened to the people. Overall, however, this book is a worthwhile read.
June 8, 2007
just when i was coming out of the no-good-shit punk stage that some 15 year olds go through, and as i was discovering that books could actually make you smarter, i asked my dad one day to pick one of his favorite books off the shelf for me to read. he stood there for five minutes or so, undoubtedly skimming through his catalogue of knowledge while thinking of something he wanted me to learn. he pulled this vietnam book off the shelf. the book was a hardcover, apparently some archaic form of literature, and smelled like any 30 year old piece of cardboard or record sleeve would. the smell only added to the experience. the story itself is real, it's vietnam. the prose makes no excuses and does not waste time on silly adjectives or any other gaudy literary detail; the story demands this stern delivery. anyone wanting to read a good novel set among american soldiers in vietnam should read it. war books. yeah.
September 16, 2014
Vietnam stories from a doctor who served at an army hospital in Japan. Some are his first-person account; stories from the field are evidently re-created from accounts he was given by patients. None of it is very pleasant. War tears people up.
April 25, 2012
"Doc," David gasped. "Take me home, too...please, Doc...I don't want to go home alone."
(page 288)
(page 288)
March 11, 2018
Powerful stories about the men who fought and were injured in the Vietnam War recorded by a doctor who patched them up and listened.
April 7, 2020
I last read this book 27 years ago as required reading in my college History of the 1960's class. Even better the second time around when I've read so many profound books on life in war I can now appreciate more the rawness and clarity of his experience. As a mother of a teen, I can feel his anguish for these young warriors so filled with expectation, crushed by the harsh reality of war.
January 11, 2020
Just an okay read
July 7, 2023
This is a very compelling book. Parts are painful to read-- especially the last story about the burn unit. It's an excellent history in the sense that it talks about normal soldiers rather than focus at all on the machinations of generals or the sometimes tedious accounting of battles and offensives. It's pretty fascinating to get looks inside field hospitals and Glasser's wards in Japan. Important read.
September 13, 2019
365 Days is a very good compilation of short stories involving injured soldiers treated at military hospitals during the Vietnam War. Glasser writes well in conveying the tragedy of these casualties. I’ve read quite a few Vietnam War personal narratives and this book measured up well in comparison.
December 22, 2017
365 Days is a book about the Vietnam War written by one of its doctors. Dr. Ronald J. Glasser was assigned to Zama, an Army hospital in Japan, he arrived there in September 1968 as a paediatrician in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, primarily to care for the children of officers and high-ranking government officials. But with an average of six to eight thousand wounded per month, Glasser, along with all other available physicians, was called on to treat the soldiers. In the preface of 365 Days he writes,“The stories I have tried to tell here are true. Those that happened in Japan I was part of; the rest are from the boys I met. I would have liked to have disbelieved some of them, and at first I did, but I was there long enough to hear the same stories again and again, and then to see part of it myself.” This short book is full of harrowing and gripping stories from the moments the soldiers are horrendously injured in combat to their medevac to landing in Japan. Dr. Glasser treats hundreds of boys (18-19) and listens to their tales of woe.
The fact that the death that surrounded him was so young and until wounded so healthy he writes about accepting death...“In the solitude of death, the young child or the mature adult can turn to another for comfort without feeling childish or dependent. The newly emancipated, self-sufficient young adult may have too much personal pride to allow himself to accept the support and the understanding he so desperately needs as he moves toward death."
Dealing with the psychology of the Vietnam War is frightening and interesting...
“Label a soldier as mentally ill, support that illness, show him that it is what interests you about him, and he will be ill and stay ill. Expectation, gentlemen, expectation.”
“In Nam the psychiatric patients go back to duty. One hundred percent of the combat exhaustion, 90 percent of the character-behavior disorders, 98 percent of the alcoholic and drug problems, 56 percent of the psychosis, 85 percent of the psychoneurosis, 90 percent of the acute situation reaction—they all go back with an operation diagnosis on their record of acute situation reaction. No ominous-sounding names to disturb the patients or their units. It works. The men are not lost to the fight, and the terrifying stupidity of war is not allowed to go on crippling forever. At least, that’s the official belief. But there is no medical or psychiatric follow-up on the boys after they’ve returned to duty. No one knows if they are the ones who die in the very next fire fight, who miss the wire stretched out across the tract, or gun down unarmed civilians. Apparently, the Army doesn’t seem to want to find out.”
And then there is the soldier David in the burns unit...
An excellent Vietnam War book of personal testament and documentation of the young men wounded in combat.
The fact that the death that surrounded him was so young and until wounded so healthy he writes about accepting death...“In the solitude of death, the young child or the mature adult can turn to another for comfort without feeling childish or dependent. The newly emancipated, self-sufficient young adult may have too much personal pride to allow himself to accept the support and the understanding he so desperately needs as he moves toward death."
Dealing with the psychology of the Vietnam War is frightening and interesting...
“Label a soldier as mentally ill, support that illness, show him that it is what interests you about him, and he will be ill and stay ill. Expectation, gentlemen, expectation.”
“In Nam the psychiatric patients go back to duty. One hundred percent of the combat exhaustion, 90 percent of the character-behavior disorders, 98 percent of the alcoholic and drug problems, 56 percent of the psychosis, 85 percent of the psychoneurosis, 90 percent of the acute situation reaction—they all go back with an operation diagnosis on their record of acute situation reaction. No ominous-sounding names to disturb the patients or their units. It works. The men are not lost to the fight, and the terrifying stupidity of war is not allowed to go on crippling forever. At least, that’s the official belief. But there is no medical or psychiatric follow-up on the boys after they’ve returned to duty. No one knows if they are the ones who die in the very next fire fight, who miss the wire stretched out across the tract, or gun down unarmed civilians. Apparently, the Army doesn’t seem to want to find out.”
And then there is the soldier David in the burns unit...
An excellent Vietnam War book of personal testament and documentation of the young men wounded in combat.
May 2, 2016
This graphic account of the Vietnam War is told by a physician, a doctor who spent a year assigned to Zoma, an Army hospital in Japan. Author Ronald J. Glasser, M.D. arrived in Japan as a pediatrician, primarily to care for the children of officers and high-ranking government officials. However, because the monthly total of wounded averaged six to eight thousand per month, he was called on to treat the soldiers.
The title of the book, 365 Days, reflects the amount of time a tour of duty was: a year, 365 days. At first Doctor Glasser thought the stories, the war accounts he heard from his patients, were exaggerated, but he began to hear the same stories again and again. They were true, and the horrific accounts repeated themselves over and over.
Each chapter is told from a different viewpoint, vignettes about men who served in different capacities. We learn about the war from young infantry soldiers. We read about the men who operate “tracks,” described as any vehicle that runs on treads rather than wheels. We learn about war through the eyes of the of helicopter pilots who take incredible risks to rescue the injured or drop troops into hot areas, or deliver supplies. We learn from special forces personnel scattered throughout the country what it means to be highly trained, but then find that life in a Vietnam jungle is even worse than the most rigorous training.
We learn from explosive experts the danger they live with at every turn. We learn from young men eighteen or nineteen years old what it’s like to confront civilian villagers who have been trapped in war for years, people for whom survival is chancy at best, yet people who set traps that kill. We see medics who risk terrible danger to save their comrades, to do what they can to patch them up good enough to hold them until they can be flown to Japan, or who at least try to make dying less painful. And finally, we see from a physician’s side of things, the damage wreaked as a result of the terrifying stupidity of war, of trying to put back together young bodies that have been so destroyed, life will never be the same.
365 Days is not a book for the faint of heart; it is written in eloquently horrifying detail. But I still recommend it. It is a haunting tribute to those who served, a book about raw courage. It made me want to do whatever possible to avoid war. The human sacrifice is too great and has too many lasting consequences. There has to be a better way. The book doesn’t offer suggestions for avoidance, but rather the aftereffects when choosing war.
The title of the book, 365 Days, reflects the amount of time a tour of duty was: a year, 365 days. At first Doctor Glasser thought the stories, the war accounts he heard from his patients, were exaggerated, but he began to hear the same stories again and again. They were true, and the horrific accounts repeated themselves over and over.
Each chapter is told from a different viewpoint, vignettes about men who served in different capacities. We learn about the war from young infantry soldiers. We read about the men who operate “tracks,” described as any vehicle that runs on treads rather than wheels. We learn about war through the eyes of the of helicopter pilots who take incredible risks to rescue the injured or drop troops into hot areas, or deliver supplies. We learn from special forces personnel scattered throughout the country what it means to be highly trained, but then find that life in a Vietnam jungle is even worse than the most rigorous training.
We learn from explosive experts the danger they live with at every turn. We learn from young men eighteen or nineteen years old what it’s like to confront civilian villagers who have been trapped in war for years, people for whom survival is chancy at best, yet people who set traps that kill. We see medics who risk terrible danger to save their comrades, to do what they can to patch them up good enough to hold them until they can be flown to Japan, or who at least try to make dying less painful. And finally, we see from a physician’s side of things, the damage wreaked as a result of the terrifying stupidity of war, of trying to put back together young bodies that have been so destroyed, life will never be the same.
365 Days is not a book for the faint of heart; it is written in eloquently horrifying detail. But I still recommend it. It is a haunting tribute to those who served, a book about raw courage. It made me want to do whatever possible to avoid war. The human sacrifice is too great and has too many lasting consequences. There has to be a better way. The book doesn’t offer suggestions for avoidance, but rather the aftereffects when choosing war.
October 3, 2014
The blurb on the back of the book suggests that it is about the experiences of a US field medic in the Vietnam War. However, it's actually a quote from within the book about someone else that the author met, and I think this is a bit misleading. The author WAS a medic treating US military personnel during the war, but he was stationed in Japan. While I have admiration for what he did, I don't view this as being the same thing and don't think that he can truly write about what it was like for the guys in the jungles and paddy fields putting their lives at risk.
The book consists of a large number of small chapters, mostly giving an insight into what happened to one individual person during the war. Often this is the story of how the unfortunate person ended up in the hospital where the doctor worked. Each story is told as if the author was there, and it's this that I object to. Aside from this gripe, the stories are actually very well written and really gave me a feeling of some of things that those involved had to do, and what it was like. The chapters are based on what the author was told by his patients, so can be taken as basically true (other than a few deliberately changed names etc) but it's not the same as the patient themselves telling the stories.
I should point out though, that this is a great book if you want an idea of the sort of things that happened in Vietnam, told from a variety of viewpoints. It will probably make some of your own problems seem a bit trivial.
The book consists of a large number of small chapters, mostly giving an insight into what happened to one individual person during the war. Often this is the story of how the unfortunate person ended up in the hospital where the doctor worked. Each story is told as if the author was there, and it's this that I object to. Aside from this gripe, the stories are actually very well written and really gave me a feeling of some of things that those involved had to do, and what it was like. The chapters are based on what the author was told by his patients, so can be taken as basically true (other than a few deliberately changed names etc) but it's not the same as the patient themselves telling the stories.
I should point out though, that this is a great book if you want an idea of the sort of things that happened in Vietnam, told from a variety of viewpoints. It will probably make some of your own problems seem a bit trivial.
May 29, 2018
The author brings the Vietnam War to life in the most intense and horrific way.
In this book we find not only graphic descriptions of the injuries and psychological impact that combat had on the soldiers involved. Ronald J. Glasser gives insight into how injuries differ in conflicts over time and how their treatment has evolved. The book also touches on racial prejudice and how self worth affects the the capacity of soldiers to perform on the battlefield.
These soldiers were fighting the first of the modern wars. A conflict in which they were fighting an enemy they often could not see and entering villages where they had no idea whether the inhabitants were friend or foe.
The more I read 1st hand accounts of the Vietnam War the more I am in awe of the bravery and heroism manifest in these young soldiers and medics.
The content of the final chapter will remain with me for a long time.
An excellent book about the Vietnam Conflict, right up there with Dispatches.
In this book we find not only graphic descriptions of the injuries and psychological impact that combat had on the soldiers involved. Ronald J. Glasser gives insight into how injuries differ in conflicts over time and how their treatment has evolved. The book also touches on racial prejudice and how self worth affects the the capacity of soldiers to perform on the battlefield.
These soldiers were fighting the first of the modern wars. A conflict in which they were fighting an enemy they often could not see and entering villages where they had no idea whether the inhabitants were friend or foe.
The more I read 1st hand accounts of the Vietnam War the more I am in awe of the bravery and heroism manifest in these young soldiers and medics.
The content of the final chapter will remain with me for a long time.
An excellent book about the Vietnam Conflict, right up there with Dispatches.
January 5, 2019
The author was sent to Japan as a pediatrician to serve the children of dependent military personnel stationed there. The book was written from accounts of the patients, he encountered, who were sent to the hospital he was assigned to from Viet Nam to recover from war wounds before being sent back to the states. The author in his spare time would talk with these men, some barely out of their teens about their experiences and their wounds. Many shared their innermost thoughts and fears. He speaks of the war in a way that the news outlets never wrote about. The story of the men themselves. The camaraderie and sometimes their conflicts with each other. It describes the war and the soldiers as human beings and the sons of a generation that many never got to live past their early 20's. It is poignant and endearing. It speaks of the victims of a senseless war. Their fate determined by politics a half a world away.
March 22, 2009
Those who believe that soldiers revel in the glory of war need only read this to understand there is no glory to be had. War is as dirty, nasty, profane and dehumanizing an experience as any human can endure, and it's only in the telling of the unvarnished truth by those who have been there that some of that ugliness can be imparted to those who haven't.
This book, and other oral histories like it, should be mandatory reading for every national politician who has never served a day in the military yet could cast a vote deciding how our service members are funded and treated. It should also be mandatory for those liberals who look upon their fellow citizens in the military with condescension and barely disguised contempt, or with patronizing pity, for those liberals are the ones most in need of the education the stories in this book provides.
This book, and other oral histories like it, should be mandatory reading for every national politician who has never served a day in the military yet could cast a vote deciding how our service members are funded and treated. It should also be mandatory for those liberals who look upon their fellow citizens in the military with condescension and barely disguised contempt, or with patronizing pity, for those liberals are the ones most in need of the education the stories in this book provides.
January 17, 2018
This book about the Vietnam War is not about politics or generals or strategy. It's a deeply personal account of the role and challenges of the medical personnel. The trauma and injuries of thousands of young people is often pushed away by the politics and history of the war.
The stories are often brutal and hard to read. The reality and the effects on individuals is told in an unflinching account. The details of medical intervention and, often, personal intervention are stark, often emotional. It reminds us of the effects on individuals - usually young men of 19 or 20 years of age. We are reminded of the 58,000 young people killed and the many thousands injured - some with life-long effect. In the face of overwhelming demands, the medical personnel remain humane and compassionate.
Highly recommended, but be ready for brutal, detailed descriptions.
The stories are often brutal and hard to read. The reality and the effects on individuals is told in an unflinching account. The details of medical intervention and, often, personal intervention are stark, often emotional. It reminds us of the effects on individuals - usually young men of 19 or 20 years of age. We are reminded of the 58,000 young people killed and the many thousands injured - some with life-long effect. In the face of overwhelming demands, the medical personnel remain humane and compassionate.
Highly recommended, but be ready for brutal, detailed descriptions.
July 11, 2013
I recieved this novel from Netalley.
This book is an outstanding novel of courage, hope and loss, it touches the readers heart and expresses the cold, hard truths of what the Medics had to go through, what they experienced and what hey did to help those in need and those who were drawing their last breaths.
The last chapter is powerful, so powerful it brought me to tears and that is the sign of a tale well told, it is moving and written in such a way that young David's innocence is captured and his vulnerability also.
This is a fantastic book, one that any war or history buff needs to read, it is written with tact, with honour and with grace, allowing the tales to be told yet remain holding onto their dignity. A wonderful book.
This book is an outstanding novel of courage, hope and loss, it touches the readers heart and expresses the cold, hard truths of what the Medics had to go through, what they experienced and what hey did to help those in need and those who were drawing their last breaths.
The last chapter is powerful, so powerful it brought me to tears and that is the sign of a tale well told, it is moving and written in such a way that young David's innocence is captured and his vulnerability also.
This is a fantastic book, one that any war or history buff needs to read, it is written with tact, with honour and with grace, allowing the tales to be told yet remain holding onto their dignity. A wonderful book.
September 11, 2013
Told by a Dr. at an Army Hospital in Japan during one year of the Vietnam war, 365 Days offers a unique perspective of the suffering and death the war provided. The book is comprised of several short stories or accounts that Glasser either witnessed in Japan or was told by the soldiers that passed through. Some stories were emotional, others were gruesome, but all were interesting in their own way. Each one of the 17 stories takes place in a different arena of the war. Whether it was a front line soldier, a field nurse, a pilot or a burn Doctor, the stories are different but tied together with the overall theme of suffering. A different perspective and worth the read.
July 21, 2016
This is a book written in 1970, by a surgeon about the war in Vietnam. Parts of it are very graphic, so not for the faint of heart. I have had it on my shelf for a number of years and have avoided reading it because it brought back too many vivid memories of what many of us lived through while serving there. It is well written and accurately describes what was happening to those fighting the battles, without getting overly emotional about the damage that is always inflicted to young men's bodies and minds.
July 24, 2014
I will say this book isn't for the faint hearted. I read it because I wanted to hear about Vietnam from someone who was there and not the talking heads. It is interesting reading from an Army doctor view of what he heard and saw.
I could only read two chapters a day because I just had to put it down, cry and pray.
Once again, I was reminded of our men and women in uniform and the huge sacrifices they make for us.
Thank you and welcome home don't seem do say or do enough.
I could only read two chapters a day because I just had to put it down, cry and pray.
Once again, I was reminded of our men and women in uniform and the huge sacrifices they make for us.
Thank you and welcome home don't seem do say or do enough.
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