Customer Reviews

Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement

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As one of the participants in many of the demonstrations so eloquently described in Home to War, Gerry Nicosia has accurately portrayed historic events in a powerful movement that continues today. People of all ages and backgrounds will benefit from reading this book that recounts the Vietnam Veteran's "battles" at home, battles often worse than those they encountered on the field of war. Home to War describes the struggle that Vietnam Veterans went through on their own to obtain help in healing with herbicide exposure (Agent Orange)and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Gerry's description of some key players in this movement, such as Jack McCloskey, Ron Kovic and Ron Bitzer is right on target and helps the reader to better understand the struggle and the motivations behind the Vietnam Veteran's movement.

Senator Bob Kerry's recent disclosure of his participation in atrocities in Vietnam underscores the anguish and scars that Vietnam Veterans still live with more than 30 years after the end of the war.

While much has been written and portrayed in films about this unpopular war, this book is the most comprehensive in detailing the positive actions taken by returning veterans in what seemed to be an unending struggle to heal, in what can be called the greatest "self-help" movement of all time.

As a Vietnam Veteran (U.S. ARMY)I suffered the neglect, indifference and prejudice that all Veteran's did. I heard of other Vets who were making noise about it, and was curious enough to go see for myself what was going on at the Westwood VA, but I didn't participate. I was sprayed with Agent Orange when I was in Phan Thiet in 1969, and I got the wrong answers from the VA when (in 1979) I complained about symptoms of Agent Orange. I also had been told that my Medical Records were lost. Many of my experiences, I must confess I didn't understand, this book explains what was happening and Why! If you want to find the truth about your experiences, or are the family of a Vet who wants to understand, you need!!! to read this book. It's long and hard reading, but it will give you the truth, it will make you angry, nervous, and disgusted, but it will make you cry too for the Veterans who died after the War, At Home, Fighting the VA, Government and Chemical Companies.

For those of us who came of age during the Vietnam era, this book vividly recalls the heady temper of the times, as well as the manifest ways in which the gruesome everyday reality of the war in Vietnam affected everyone in the society. It is difficult today to try to explain to younger readers how deeply the issue of the war divided the country internally, or how it acted to continually tighten the vise of political differences around the neck of the majority of our citizens. In this sense, it is hard to overestimate the impact the war had on everyone living in the United States during the sixties and early seventies, and the narrative in this book emphasizes just how profound the action of a number of Vietnam veterans was in framing that impact.

Unlike those of us ex-servicemen who were already involved in the anti-war movement in our new identity as college undergraduate students, the organized Vietnam veteran movement against the war didn't really gain impetus until the very late sixties, and then only as a result of the frustration the vets experienced regarding the senseless continuation of obvious failed policies even after anyone with an intact brain could see it was leading us nowhere. The veterans only became involved as it became obvious something new had to be injected into the ongoing national debate regarding the progress of the war. Of course, once they did become seriously involved, the whole tenor of the debate changed profoundly. No one could counter the reality they alone had experienced, and the degree of authenticity they brought to the national forefront was undeniable.

Still, it took a number of years and ceaseless efforts and endless head-bashes at the hands of police, national guardsmen, and reactionary hardhats to accomplish the final result of ending the war, and even then the war it was executed by the Nixon administration left agonizing doubts regarding the fate of hundreds of POWS and MIAs rumored to have been left behind. Moreover, the national government has never fully addressed the bevy of important related issues raised with such urgency by the Vietnam veterans groups. It took more than a decade to get any concessions regarding the consequences of Agent Orange and the government's responsibility for them, or to get any action at all to improve care even minimally in the warren of rat-holes otherwise referred to as the Veteran's Administration (VA) hospitals. Even today, some thirty years later, the medical care proffered in the VA hospitals is often substandard and inadequate, and in no ways meets the demonstrated needs of the vets. In this sense, it continues, in my opinion, to be a national disgrace.

This book represents a brilliant attempt to re-acquaint the reader with the events and personalities of the times, and does a wonderful job in detailing the specifics of the ways ion which the issues rose, of how the strategies and techniques of effectively demonstrating the evidence of what was happening in Vietnam as well as what the social, economic, and political consequences of our involvement were. The author has opened up a virtual can of worms that illustrate how vulnerable and insubstantial the neo-conservative interpretations of the Vietnam war and the events of the sixties are, by offering a plethora of proof that flatly contradicts all these neat, tidy, and sanitized versions depicting our wretched involvement in Vietnam as some trumped-up moral crusade for democracy, with some authors like Michael Lind going so far as to refer to as it being the "necessary war". Unlike that sad solipsistic effort, this is a terrific book, and one I can highly recommend. Enjoy!

Just finished all 626 pages of Gerald Nicosia's scrupulously-researched tome, Home to War. While I at first thought that it might be dense and difficult to read, I found that I couldn't put it down. And while I was reasonably certain that I was already familiar with the Big Picture, I discovered in Home to War a wealth of illuminating detail about how our government operates to suppress unpleasant and uncomfortable truths, as well as the people who put their very lives on the line to try to tell those truths...

I certainly can't swear that every statement on every page of Nicosia's book is true down to the minutest detail. Given human fallability, I would be extremely surprised if it was. At the same time, one does not need a PhD in American History, but only a modicum of life experience, to know how often and how predictably the American government and its "free-market" culture exploits its citizens' youth and strength in its service - sucking the very marrow from their bones in the process - and then hangs them out to dry, casting them on the scrapheap of discarded humanity when they become an inconvenience, a "burden" on society. We are not, of course, the only country in the world to do this, but the hypocrisy of it in light of our professed national ideals makes it doubly shameful.

My own experience in this regard arose not as a Viet Nam or "Operation Desert Storm" vet but as a disabled firefighter, yet it's exactly the same phenomenon. The importance of Nicosia's book is to make us aware of the recurring patterns of official government denial, mendacity, hypocrisy, and abandonment of its own citizens, not to "prove" whether or not certain dikes were bombed in a specified location in Viet Nam. Sure, Nicosia has a point of view - in this case an empathy with the disabled veterans - but what author doesn't? And would the book be a fraction as good if it had been written without passion?

In his essential purpose of writing Home to War as a chronicle of the Viet Nam vets' struggle with the very government to which they gave their unstinting service and their very lives, Nicosia succeeds exquisitely. My recommendation: Read Home to War, hug a veteran (even the ones who didn't like Nicosia's book), and inform yourself in as many ways as possible about the true nature of the society in which you live.

Nicosia provides a history of the Vietnam war veterans movements, particularly those concerned with ending the War. The reviewer who was surprised by the "leftward" tilt either didn't read the book cover, any of the published reviews or the book, itself.

The book has several significant flaws, which I'll get out of the way first. Like seemingly most contemporary nonfiction, it could have used assertive editing. The chronology of events in the book gets confusing particularly during the last third of the book, where one lurches back and forth in time and it's easy to lose track of where various people fit and how their actions are linked across time. A better organized text probably could have been a bit shorter. Another significant problem is that Nicosia's funding by the Vietnam Veterans of America is buried in the acknowledgments, although he appears to freely criticize the actions of that organization and its past leadership. Finally, Nicosia relies on secondary sources for his data on medical, social and psychiatric problems among Vietnam era veterans and it is unclear whether his interviews with relevant people like psychiatrist Arthur Blank would have helped in interpreting these data. As it is, correlation seems to get confused with causation and some of the data simply seem inconsistent or include studies which were well known to be "outliers". It's been said that journalists don't like numbers, unfortunately, concepts simple enough to teach in an introductory social science course seem to get by them.

Although I was too young to serve in Vietnam, I knew many who did, including some who died there. Some of them (including the dead) opposed the war but went into the military, anyway, for a variety of reasons. In my later life, I knew people who had been active in the antiwar movement. I also briefly worked in the VA system and with Vietnam vets in the Department of Defense, and later went to Vietnam as a tourist and as a consultant (under the supervision of a US Army veteran of the Vietnam War). As it happens, I've also crossed paths with a couple minor figures in the book, who played significant roles in the veterans peace movement (although I hadn't known about that part of their lives). So, despite my age and lack of service, the book deals with a world that is very real to me. I can recall the skepticism of claims about PTSD by VA clinicans (ditto the skepticism about Gulf War syndrome) and can easily identify with many of the controversies here. Despite my own work, my visits to Vietnam and my extensive past reading on the subject, I was moved anew by the stories of returning vets, what they had seen in Vietnam, and what they experienced in the US.

On a less personal and more journalistic/historical level, the book vividly describes the political schisms in the antiwar movement: veteran-related and otherwise. Despite Nicosia's obvious passsions, he recognizes shortcomings and destructive actions of many in the movement. For those of us who recall the stereotype of the "crazed" Vietnam Vet, he vividly describes how this evolved from slow emergence of PTSD and the various public faces of stressed and strung out veterans, as well as the grassroots efforts to address Veterans' needs. Nicosia also describes the courage and tenacity of veterans who worked tirelssly as advocates and as service providers to their peers. He points out the legislative contributions of Vietnam Vets such as Tom Daschle and John Kerry as well as the showboating of supposed friends of veterans such as Alan Cranston and Sonny Montgomery. There are poignant parallels to our own time as Nixon cut veteran's benefits to help pay for the war. Nicosia chronicles the tensions with traditional veterans' organizations and the ways in which organizations dominated by WWII and Korean War veterans fought against efforts to address Vietnam War veterans' needs, in part to protect their own entitlements. He also describes how veterans of the different wars began to come together over time and how one-time protesters like Kerry built bridges to more conservative politicans for the benefit of Vietnam vets. The book, thankfully, does not get bogged down in subjects that have been extensively treated elsewhere like Watergate's Vietnam-related events (e.g., the Ellsberg burglary) and the drama surrounding the Vietnam War memorial. OTOH, people unfamiliar with SDS, Another Mother for Peace (an organization where tv mom and ex-Republican Donna Reed, played a role) the Weathermen, etc. would benefit from a little more description of these organizations. One activist who plays an interesting role here is Jane Fonda, who seemed to take a genuine interest in the veterans concerns. Perhaps it was a penance for her reign as "Hanoi Jane" or maybe something else. I hadn't been aware of that side of her and the book contains enough little surprises like this to interest even the well read reader and overcome the shortcomings of the book.

I have recently finished reading Home to War and found it very compelling and disturbing! I personaly know many of the people mentioned in the book. I was a founding memeber of the SF VVAW Chapter along with Michael Oliver, Lee Thorn, the late Jack Mc Closky and other Viet Nam Veterans who opposed the war and were willing to put thier bodies on the line again to try to stop it. The only fault I can find with this book is that it didn't say more. No indictment of the war or the Nixon administration's policies toward us can be damning enough, slander is impossable. Gerry has done his very best to tell it like it was.

This book is a must for folks who want to understand why the USA lost and deserved to lose the Indochina War. Contrary to the myth of widespread civilian disrespect shown Vietnam-era veterans, it mainly came from supporters of the war when we said the war should be stopped, and did our part to try to stop it.

One of the best parts of Home To War is the story of the sneak attack by which Congressman Ray Roberts of Texas insured that Vietnam-era veterans were denied educational benefits equivalent to those provided World War II veterans.

I'm a Vietnam-era draftee/veteran, but I was lucky enough in 1964 to be shipped to Germany, because LBJ wasn't shipping us to Vietnam until after the election.

A few years after my discharge, I hooked up with Bay Area Veterans For Peace, led by Lee Thorn and the late Jack McCloskey. Their full-time devotion, persistence, and creativity were wonderful.

Home To War understandably focuses on Vietnam Veterans Against the War, its Winter Soldier Investigation, internal conflicts, and Beltway-based events, and readers should be aware that anti-war veterans' activities also took place in many local arenas. Nicosia should do a book -- or at least an additional chapter for the paperback edition -- on them.

For example, on Sunday November 11, 1971, several dozen anti-war vets -- including Thorn and McCloskey -- were driven with clubs and mace from the Veterans' Day Parade by the San Francisco Police Department Tactical Squad right in front of the City Hall reviewing stand. Did the Tac Squad go after us because we unfurled a black banner saying "Stop the Killing" in white letters?

Then-Mayor Joseph Alioto and then-Supervisor (now US Senator) Dianne Feinstein uttered no objection. Maybe they knew why the Tac Squad so flagrantly denied us our civil liberties. (We brought suit, but settled for medical expenses before our case went to trial.) Aren't civil liberties -- including the liberties of those prepared to do the fighting -- one of the reasons this society provides itself a military defense capability?

Worse incidents than this probably happened elsewhere. I hope that Nicosia will do a follow-up book that tells the story of grassroots anti-war veteran opposition.

Professor Nicosia has written a major work in contemporary history that will prove useful to all who wish to explore the struggle of veterans. Not many books can transform impeccable, thorough research on an important subject into an "engaging read"--an attribute as rare as it is well appreciated, given the current popularity of enshrining war, heroics, and those in leadership positions. Indeed, when even the business world can avidly savor metaphors of the "battle field", it is sobering to examine the aftermath of the genuine article, shorn of rhetoric and romanticism.

The "Greatest Generation", it seems, has been too consumed with its own image to pay close attention to what our government has been quietly doing to their sons, daughters, and grandchildren in recent military history. Namely, extracting years of their lives in uniform, and then ignoring them, at best, or stigmatizing them, at worst, upon their return to civilian life.

The social fate of those called to bear arms in recent times is shown to be closer to an absurd farse than anything approaching social justice, replete with flag waving cheerleaders and citizens more concerned with the price of oil--and profoundly innocent of nationalist struggles to throw off the yoke of colonialism (in the case of Vietnam).

That the Veterans Administration is largely an inept bureaucracy (on a downhill track since WWII)can probably be explained by its new social function: of being a middle-class employer-of-last-resort for those unwilling, unable, or incompetent to "practice" their professions in alternative settings. Perhaps one level above the prison, it provides work for many who would otherwise be without. That our veterans must endure this such folly is something that I hadn't thought seriously about until reading HOME TO WAR. The American flag will never be the same, for me. I will now think of its red stripes as the "red tape" that veterans must face: in trying to get a fair shake regarding the health care they deserve; in getting a shot at a useful education that had to be postponed for the greater good; in landing a decent job. Nicosia has also surfaced the hidden issue of veterans' ignored children who carry the scars of war as a result of dad's exposure to toxic substances that our scientists were apparently too distracted to study seriously; their officers too keen on making important career moves to pay attention to; the VA physicians too incompetent to diagnose; the traditional veterans groups too sotted in their beer halls to notice, and our politicians too cowardly to own up to.

In the 1960s I recall a bumper sticker with the slogan "What if they gave a war and nobody came"? Today, it might simply say "War: Just do it." With a mercenary army, military service becomes just another job. True, we've got a token, black hero, and the latest techno-arsenal to deploy against the third world when our beloved market systems turns against us, but it's not likely to be our children, however, who will take that job, and it's not going to be our families that will be ignored by their own government after a loved one provides faithful service. Nicosia's work should be applauded and deeply studied by all who are concerned with democracy.

Ironically, Nicosia has inadvertantly shown that both the left wing and the right wing are currently correct regarding the military. The former can now justifiably avoid the uniform as a matter of rational principle--as a "free market" does not, and can never, reward honor, patriotism and sacrafice. The latter can take pride, indeed, in pointing (without entering our bedrooms, looking to Hollywoord, or excoriating the "unchurched") to strong, irrefutable evidence of the moral collapse of society--as occurs when such a society ignores the needs of its former soldiers.

Nicosia has provided his colleagues in history with a new, high standard for crafting meaningful scholarship--and the rest of us get to understand a complex, terrible tale that is now being comprehensively told for the first time.

Nicosia's book is an excellent piece of research, and provides insight into an historically importatnt time.

Maybe in his next edition, he will include some of the findings from the extensive files the FBI kept on VVAW, and lay to rest some of the urban legends being spread even by at least one reviewer here.

For instance, the VVAW "meeting" in Kansas City was actually a series of meetings over a four day period. Neither the participants nor the FBI files show Kerry present at any meeting where "assassinations" were discussed in any form. In fact, the FBI informants do not mention any such discussion at all, much less a vote. By all accounts of those there, one individual stood up and started riffing, and once people realized he wasn't joking, he was shouted down. As Nicosia points out time and again, nonviolence was an underlying principle of VVAW.

Even the FBI concluded that Kerry was in no way associated with any sort of violent activity or discussion, ever.

Nicosia is a myth-buster. He has his hands full in this election year.

This long historical legacy,(VVofA) involving anti-war sentiments is well recieved. April 24- belated 'confession' by ex-Senator Kerrey's killing of Vietnam civilians, a case point, a senseless war.