Ordinary Lives: Platoon 1005 and the Vietnam War [Hardcover]

W.D. Ehrhart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1999

In the summer of 1966, in the middle of the Vietnam War, eighty young volunteers arrived at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot on Parris Island, South Carolina, from all over the Eastern United States. For the next eight weeks, as Platoon 1005, they endured one of the most intense basic training programs ever devised. Parris Island was not a place for idle conversation or social gatherings and these men remained from start to finish almost complete strangers. Ehrhart did get to know one Marine, his bunkmate John Harris, who quietly shared his sweetheart's letters. He was a friend who died in Vietnam only a year later. Twenty-seven years after basic training, Ehrhart began what became a five-year search for the men of his platoon. Who were these men alongside whom he trained? Why had they joined the Marines at a time when being sent to war was almost a certainty? What do they think of the war and of the country that sent them to fight it? What does the Corps mean to them? What Ehrhart learned offers an extraordinary window into the complexities of the Vietnam Generation and the United States of America then and now. Based on supporting materials from military records and family members as well as interviews some of which Ehrhart held in such active secondary roles as dairy farmhand, fishing companion, and impromptu guest at a family wedding this book records the more-than-30-year journey that each man took after his boot-camp graduation on August 12, 1966. Photos of the men, both then and now, accompany the profiles. Their stories are diverse, but as Ehrhart says, 'It was, in short, history, and each of these men was and is a part of that history ...There are, no doubt, scoundrels and liars and losers among these men, but as a group they have mostly impressed me with their decency, their loyalty, their hard work, and their perseverance in the face of hardships and hurdles, the everyday obstacles that make ordinary lives extraordinary'. W. D. Ehrhart is Research Fellow in American Studies, University of Wales, Swansea. He is the author of numerous books, including "Busted: A Vietnam Veteran in Nixon's America" and "Vietnam-Perkasie: A Combat Marine's Memoir". His collections of poetry include "Just for Laughs", "Carrying the Darkness: The Poetry of the Vietnam War", and the forthcoming "Beautiful Wreckage: New & Selected Poems". He lives in Philadelphia.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The Vietnam War continues to generate a wide variety of memoirs by the soldiers, sailors, and Marines who served as enlisted men and an equally large number of small unit histories that rely on the experiences of these men to outline one unit's service in a particular battle or period. Ehrhart (Busted: A Vietnam Veteran in Nixon's America, Univ. of Massachusetts, 1995), a Vietnam combat Marine, presents an interesting twist on this formula by following the Marines in his training unit through their wartime service and into middle age, interviewing them in the 1990s. While the work lacks the emotional impact a reader expects from personal accounts, it does provide a glimpse into the lives, motivations, and attitudes of the volunteers of 1966 while simultaneously contrasting this world view with that of the middle-aged civilians assessing their roles some 30 years later. Recommended for comprehensive Vietnam War collections.AJohn R. Vallely, Siena Coll. Lib., Loudonville, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Post-soldier reporter Bill Ehrhart in this searingly honest book will win your heart and mind as he chronicles without histrionics the lives of a group of ordinary Americans who did not think they were doing anything extraordinary when they risked, and often lost, their lives just because their country asked them to. After the war the survivors silently went back to work, often at low-paying, non-establishment jobs for an establishment that never even said thanks. Ehrhart, by giving 'just the facts,' says thanks admirably." --George C. Wilson, author of Mud Soldiers and Supercarrier and former military correspondent for The Washington Post "These profiles of the men of Platoon 1005 and the many paths their lives have taken since Parris Island and Vietnam are testimony to the resilience of individual personality and the quirky variety of human experiences. Bill Ehrhart, who was one of them, writes about his fellow Marines with eloquence, sympathy, and respect. Their stories make a moving and illuminating book." --Arnold R. Isaacs, author of Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts, and Its Legacy "While the Vietnam War provides the background, it is only incidental to the story that Ehrhart wants to tell. While the search for Platoon 1005 is fascinating...the core of the book is the eighty sharply drawn vignettes of the men who made up the platoon. Ehrhart describes his subjects with delicacy and caring." --Dr. Jack Shulimson, retired United States Marine Corps historian "...engaging and appealing. ...Ordinary Lives introduces his readers to what happened to nearly all the eighty members of Ehrhart's recruit platoon during the war." --Journal of American Culture "Ehrhart has admirably restored individual selves and in the process created a moving verbal tapestry that reiterates some of the contradictions that permeated America during and after Vietnam." --American Studies

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 334 pages
• Publisher: Temple University Press (April 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566396743
• ISBN-13: 978-1566396745
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,209,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars one of the great books about America in our time, September 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Ordinary Lives: Platoon 1005 and the Vietnam War (Hardcover)

I hated finishing Ordinary Lives because I like the book so much. I think Ehrhart has written one of the great books about America in our time, the sort of book Studs Terkel would write if he could. Talk about American Dreams in our time, Lost and Found! Ehrhart's book is also full of mystery. Why did some of the men manage to get their act together and make something of their lives, when others who seemed to have as much or more going for them, ended up suicides? I love the relentless alphabetical format. It emphasizes the arbitrariness of our lives and works well with the military subject. Ehrhart's compassion and respect for the people he interviewed is the great strength and backbone of the book, I think. I had tears in my eyes many times. I also laughed out loud several times. While reading Steven T. Summerscales' entry I thought, there but for fortune go I. How did I end up with such a sweet deal in life, when others, perhaps more deserving, are long since dead? Ehrhart's book handles this mystery in a sensitive yet relentless way. His relentlessness also comes across in his manner of search, but he does know when to let a man go. He strikes a perfect balance between sensitivity and relentlessness in this wonderful engrossing book. David A. Willson Author, REMF Diary

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a unique military read., September 7, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Philadelphia, Pa. USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ordinary Lives: Platoon 1005 and the Vietnam War (Hardcover)

This book has a different slant about the military. It follows up the lives of 80 young men who completed Marine basic training at Parris Island, S.C. Most of the men knew they were headed for Vietnam. As a veteran, I always thought about my fellow recruits and what happened to them. I was sadden by parts of the book. The chaotic nature of some after leaving the Marines, and the death of others. I read many books, rarely military types, as I flinch from violence in my older days, but this type of book had a certain measure of attraction for me. I can't get this book out of my mind, and I don't know why. An interesting concept for a book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, August 26, 2003

By 

J. Alfier (Germany) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ordinary Lives: Platoon 1005 and the Vietnam War (Hardcover)

WD Ehrhart's journey into the lives of fellow Marines who served with him in his 1966 basic training platoon during one of the most trying times of American history is exemplary. This is due to his persistence and meticulous research into the labyrinth of Veteran's Administration (VA) records, his hundreds of phone calls and letters of inquiry, and the other ways he found people whom he had no idea where they lived, or if they were still alive.

The book is arranged alphabetically by the platoon member's name. What the reader finds in these men's lives runs the gamut from the enigmatic to the ordinary to the heartbreaking, and at least a few whose circumstances evoke Kipling's 'angry and defrauded young.'

Most of the men served in Vietnam at some point in their enlistments. In the course of Ehrhart's inquiries, he found that some of these men simply could not be found, while others offered terse replies to his requests for interviews, and a few gave Ehrhart nothing more than reticence. Others declined an interview after initially agreeing to one. In another reply, a man who had a life at sea after the Marine Corps said his history was private, and Ehrhart's query was not welcomed; when I read this I thought of a line from a Richard Hugo poem, 'Man always brought\his anguish to the sea.'

Hence, for some of the bios in the book, there exists nothing more than a few facts gleamed from the VA records or brief facts derived from other Marines or the veteran's families. Yet for those he did reconnect with, Ehrhart was welcomed, sometimes with only telephone interviews but very often with personal visits that provided the crux of the book that emerged.

Although critics elsewhere note that the book lacks the emotional impact of war memoirs, Ehrhart's work is a vital contribution to studies of the often-misunderstood Vietnam generation, and to studies of the war's veterans in particular. As such,'Ordinary Lives' makes a perfect parallel study to Rick Atkinson's 'The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point's Class of 1966.'