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For Self and Country: For the Wounded in Vietnam the Journey Home Took More Courage Than Going into Battle

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"I step off with my right foot and look down. I spot a grenade just in front of me and off to the left, where I'm about to drop my left foot. In back of the grenade a C-ration can sits in the bushes. C. L. has tripped the wire attached to the grenade and pulled it from the can. It's live.

I know it's too late. I'm in the middle of taking a step. My left foot has yet to hit the ground. My mind say, Run, duck, evaporate, but my body won't react fast enough. It's like sliding on ice. No way to stop, and nowhere to go but in the direction gravity moves you. I feel a rush go through my body. I feel the stillness. My left foot touches earth. I start to take a running stride. The grenade explodes....."

This is the true story of a young Marine lance corporal who was severely wounded in Vietnam. His account of hope and survival carries a special message for those who fought there or were wounded there, and for those who stayed home, especially the women who love their men and have tried to understand what they endured and how it changed them.

For the author, Vietnam meant five months of combat and a year in Ward Three South at Great Lakes Naval Hospital. When he left the hospital, he was twenty - the oldest man on the ward. Vietnam was, more than any other conflict, a teenager's war, and Rick's account is one of teenage love and despair, as are those of his buddies. How these young men were joined together in a special fraternity for which the only initiation dues were pain, and how they managed to cope, makes M*A*S*H take a back seat to real life."

Especially relevant today as thousands of vets wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan make their way home.

There are few things tougher than coming back from the brink of death. "For Self and Country: For the Wounded in Vietnam the Journey Home Took More Courage Than Going into Battle" is a memoir from Rick Eilert as he reflects on spending his young adulthood first in Vietnam the in military hospitals, trying to recover from his life threatening injuries, and the relationships he found along the way. "For Self and Country" is a remarkable memoir, highly recommended.

I was too young to read this book when it was first released in the early 80's and have since become involved in veterans issues, as well as knowing Vietnam veterans and veterans of other era's my entire life.

I thought I knew so much, but in reality, knew nothing.

The bonds created while living through so much hell are profound, and I had to slow my reading down towards the end of the book so that the "friends" I had made while reading wouldn't leave me too soon.

VERY informative, very graphic in its description of healing and recovering after being blown to near bits in war, and VERY relevant for not only our Vietnam Veterans - but our current OIF/OEF veterans. A must read for anyone wishing insight into those few who have sacrificed so much.