Customer Reviews

Fortunate Son: The Autobiography Of Lewis B.Puller,Jr.

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This gut-wrenching book is five stories. Each is fascinating... The first is that of a young man growing up in the shadow of his famous father, Marine Corps General "Chesty" Puller, "the most decorated man in Marine Corps history." The second is that of a young marine corps lieutenant leading a 40-man platoon in combat, trying (sometimes unsuccessfully) to keep everyone alive. He was doing what he thought was right. His tour ends in disaster; he is med-evaced out with horrific injuries. The third story is his hospitalization -- missing legs, missing fingers, he fights through a pain-ridden recovery. The fourth tale is his humiliating 1978 defeat in a Congressional race against Republican Paul Trible. The final story is Lewis Puller's battle against alcoholism. "Fortunate Son" was published in 1991, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1992. But in the alcohol war, this book just marked the eye of the storm. Shortly after it was honored with the prize, Lewis Puller relapsed into alcoholism; he and his wife separated. And on May 11, 1994, Lewis B. Puller, Jr., picked up a gun and killed himself. ---- Sometimes (to boomers) the Vietnam era and its aftermath now seem dreamlike; Puller's book is an icy hook, pulling us into the river of times past. It was VERY real! Throughout this book, the thought keeps recurring, this was a man who trusted too much, too many, too often, and was destroyed. He was indeed a tragic figure. There are many lessons to be learned from his life... but I suspect every reader will take different ones from this work...

The only time I ever met Puller was on October 3, 1991, at the Pentagon where he had been working as a staff attorney. I was shocked when I first saw him. He appeared dimunitive in his wheelchair as compared to the book jacket photo. We ate lunch at the cafeteria and he autographed his book for me. It is one of my most-treasured signed copies.

I had picked up "Fortunate Son" in the summer of 1991 after I returned from the Gulf War. I remember lying on the hot sand in Laguna Beach, California, and being blown away by the brutally honest and wrenching narrative. Puller took me back to Camp Pendleton where he grew up as the only son of the most decorated Marine ever--Chesty Puller. From there, I learned of his tumultuous, alcohol-soaked college years at William & Mary during the 1960s, culminating in his entry into Marine OCS where he received no special treatment. Sadly, just after three months-in-country, Puller stepped on a land mine while retreating with his platoon from a VC ambush.

He returned home, raised a family, carried on a marriage, became a lawyer but was still burdened with alcohol. He unsuccessfully ran for Congress as a Democrat, losing to a man who dodged Vietnam but he temporarily beat the booze.

After his book came out and became a major sucess, Puller and I occasionally spoke via phone. Sadly, his marriage faltered and he succumbed to the bottle again. I last spoke to him via phone in 1994, just a week before he committed suicide.

Puller and Robert Olen Butler remain to be the only Vietnam veterans to win the Pulitzer Prize, the latter for fiction. He will always be on my mind when I think of the American veterans who fought and died for my freedom. Moreover, he was the first person to encourage me to write my story which was finally published in 2005. I wanted to write about meeting Puller but never received a reply from his ex wife who is an elected official in Virginia. Semper fi Marine!

I just read this book for the second time. The spread between the first and second reading is nearly a decade. The first time I read this book I became emotional. Now that I have read it again, with added maturity...I fully appreciate its greatness.

Lewis B. Puller, Jr. is the patriotic son of a beloved Marine Corps legend. "Fortunate Son," is the story of how the author follows his father's footsteps...joining the Marines and going to war. What follows is a chilling portrait of the Vietnam war. It is also a fabulous window of understanding of how many Vienam veterans turned against the war.

The author's narrative of his childhood and his relationship with his famous military father is outstanding. Moreover, the tale of his combat wound and his subsequent survival along with other American casualties of the war while in military hospitals in the States is comprehensive and objective.

Puller does an enormous service for the nation. He honestly delivers one of the most powerful...as well as painful first hand testimonies of the longest war in the history of the United States of America. This book will endure the test of time.

From the time Lewis was born there was only one option open for him. Son of the famous "Chesty" Puller, the Marine's Marine, Lewis Jr. was destined to become a Marine. In Fortunate Son, Lewis Jr. tells his story, about a different Marine in a different war--Viet Nam. But, the book is not just about Viet Nam. It is about a much greater conflict. The conflict between the light side of the soul and the dark side that is in everyone of us.

Lewis Jr. determined to follow in his father's footsteps bravely goes to Viet Nam where an enemy mine destroys his future along with his body. He details the personal struggle it is to cope with such a devastating event. He talks candidly about the lowest points in his life, his depression, his alcoholism, his thoughts of suicide (which will ultimately claim his life).

The narrative that Lewis Puller Jr. weaves is gripping. No writer of fiction could match the story of the son of a war hero finding a much different homecoming from war, from a struggle on the battlefield to one of a war against oneself, tragically utlimately lost.

Good night, Chesty and Lewis Jr., wherever you are....
Semper Fi.

I will keep this short and sweet. I got out of the Corps last year, the entire time you are a Marine, from the 1st day, you idolize "Chesty" Puller Sr., this book gave me insight into his life, not just his battle conquests, as well as insight into the life of his family. I had never even heard of his son before let alone the amazing struggle that he went through. A wonderfully written book that kept me captivated from start to finish. I couldn't put it down until I was done. When I should have been studying (Im a student now haha), I wasn't! I was reading this book. It gave me a new found appreciation for Autobiographies and I highly recommend it.

It is hard to describe with clarity the range of emotions this book can provoke. All successful books, of which this Pulitzer Prize winner undoubtedly is, are capable of stimulating the readers imagination to levels that develop and cultivate a keen understanding and relation to the story. That is truly where this book succeeeds.

Lewis B. Puller graduated from OCS and, somewhat reluctantly, followed in the footsteps of his very famous Marine Corps father. A slight and unaggressive man, Puller never really felt secure with carrying the famous family name throughout his training, always struggling to remain near the top of his class and always feeling like he was not quite suited for his chosen profession. He describes his courtship of his future wife and his relation with his conservative, Virgina based family, of which he is very close to his mother but somewhat distant from his rough and tumble father 'Chesty'.

After graduating from Basic training and OCS, of which his failures and struggles are dutifully explored, he then describes his time in a Marine Corps Recon platoon with such stark descriptions that it is easy to feel exactly as frustrated, scared and uncertain as Lewis Puller did when first leading patrols through the jungle. He quickly matures to being a capable junior officer, and expertly describes the trials his platoon is put through.

Then it hits him, the boobytrap that forever changes his life. He will describe the agony of his realization upon learning to live all over again in a VA hospital, and will describe his fellow patients as well, some of which are famous for their toughness and later become important political figures who still are today. And then the blackness of alcholism and despair take over, exacerbating the condition of this ex-Marine in a way that threatens to ruin both his marriage and his struggle for survival. But Puller rebounds, working hard to get over his addictions, vividly describing every step of the way as he recovers enough to try his hand at politics.

When reading the final chapters I felt a sense of dread, knowing the ultimate outcome of this autobiography was not contained in its pages. A sad and tragic ending to one of the most superbly written books I have ever read. I take some comfort that he left this for the sake of others to understand his trials, triumphs and failures along the way. A Pulitzer Prize winner indeed.

Lew Puller was the son of Chesty Puller, the most decorated soldier in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps. His legendary father fought in five wars and rose from private to three star general before health problems cut short his career. With him as a role model, it was perhaps inevitable that when the time came, Lew would enthusiastically head to Vietnam. This Pulitzer Prize winning autobiography tells the story of Lew Puller's relationship with his father, his own service in Vietnam and of his heroic attempt to rebuild his body and spirit after being dismembered by a booby-trapped howitzer round. He lost his legs and his hands were badly mangled, but he managed to hold together his marriage, help raise a son, earn a law degree and run for Congress.

Then, in the wake of losing the election, his always problematic drinking escalated to the point of genuine alcoholism and he attempted suicide. He went through rehab and became involved in things like the Vietnam War Memorial project, which helped him deal with his ambivalence about the war; ambivalence which he expresses best in discussing why he did not join other vets in throwing his medals over the White House fence:

As I sat silently in the dimly lit closet feeling the weight of the bronze and silver in my hand and studying the red, white and blue stripes of my Silver Star and the majestic cameo of George Washington on my Purple Hearts, I knew that I could never part with them. They had cost me too dearly, and though I now saw clearly that the war in which they had been earned was a wasted cause, the medals still represented the dignity and the caliber of my service and of those with whom I had served. I could no more discard them than I could repudiate my country, my Marine Corps or my fellow veterans. As I put them away, I was very sad and very tired but grateful nonetheless that my children were asleep in their beds in America rather than anywhere else in the world.

This thoughtfulness and undiminished patriotism inform the book and his heroic battle against injury, alcohol and depression provide for a genuinely moving human drama.

But the book has a really tragic coda, because in 1994, Lew Puller killed himself. There is a sort of a cottage industry in Vietnam War myth making. We've all heard about, or seen in movies, the alarming number of Vets who went nuts (remember when Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was still just called Vietnam Vet Syndrome). Anecdotal evidence suggests that they had vastly elevated suicide rates. And then there is all the bilge about how the troops were disproportionately poor and minority, about the effects they suffered from Agent Orange, and so on. All of these are either complete canards or wild exaggerations, but they live on because both Veterans groups and opponents of the War have a vested political interest in perpetuating them.

It seems to me that it would be a real shame to remember Lew Puller as simply another casualty of the War. The devastating wounds, physical and psychic, that he received in Vietnam may well have been the proximate cause of his death, but as I think this excellent memoir amply demonstrates, his feelings of inadequacy were as much a function of measuring himself against a mythic father as they were a result of a horrible injury. His testimony of his own life and service to his country is too important a contribution to our understanding of the cultural and familial forces that send young men to war for us to reduce that life to a simple equation: Gung Ho soldier + War - legs and hands = suicidal drunk. We should instead take seriously his choice of titles; Fortunate Son reflects his understanding that--while war and handicap and alcohol all play their part in the tale--his story is fundamentally about a son trying to prove himself to a father and on some level reflects his belief that he had done so.

GRADE: B+

What separates a good book from a great book is its ability to change the way the reader perceives the world and himself. Lewis Puller, Jr. has accomplished this difficult feat with his autobiography. Fabulously written and lavishly detailed, it takes the reader on a journey from Puller's hometown to the rice paddies of Vietnam and back. Lewis Puller, Jr's pain can be felt when the booby-trapped howitzer round erupts beneath his feet and when he struggles to learn how to use prosthetics in a military hospital. His emotional suffering is also felt when he loses the Virginia congressional election, and when he deals with both alcoholism and his growing bitterness for the war he gave so much to. Then, after all he fought through, after everything he accomplished, Lewis Puller, Jr. committed suicide three years after publishing his book. The book was powerful, but the knowledge that he could not, in the end, survive the horrors of a war that ended nearly twenty years earlier is truly moving. This book provides insight into what war really is, and into the lives of the everyday men and women that comprise our armed services. It is a lasting memorial to the sacrifice of those soldiers that offered their lives to protect our country, and to the shame all Americans should feel because of the way those veterans were treated when they returned to the States. I am convinced that Mr. Puller would still be with us today, sharing his incredible gift and influencing the world if the American people had been more supportive of his sacrafice in the years following Vietnam. He and those like him did not, after all, direct the war and the make the mistakes that lost it. Their country called and they answered, for better or for worse, and because of that we should have a great deal of respect for all veterens.

In his book, like a voice crying out in the desert, Lewis Puller echoed the pain that remains deep within the combat vet that served in Vietnam. It remains on the nightstand of this 5th Special Forces Medic, who remembers the incredible sacrifices made for an uncaring public. Our only solace was in each other, because even though we have tried, none of us can ever forget what happened in our youth, half a world away. When we returned, some of us were spat upon and ridiculed. Lewis Puller sought to make sense out of our dilemma and pain. His book ultimately triumphs the dignity of man, brings meaning and depth to the terms honor, love and devotion. He quietly, eloquently, directly, speaks for us.

This beautiful, honest biography is one of the most revealing explorations of recent history ever written. All the accolades are more than deserved. Heartbreakingly American depiction of idealism, courage, loyalty, consequences. Unforgettable.