by James Snyder
Paul is the under-sized son of an abusive father who will not allow him to read books in his own home. In a neighbourhood where low man on the totem pole gets beat down he is at the bottom of the pecking order. First day on his new paper route he finds a dead body. When an old customer rescues him from a beating and robbery in the barrio he persuades his benefactor to teach him an ancient Javanese Martial Art. The story moves on as the title suggests to see him choose the military over jail and given the period involved he ends up in Vietnam with an elite green beret unit operating in a theatre that officially does not exist. Unlike so many others he thrives on the action.
The book makes no moral judgments in describing the action. Paul is a soldier who is good at what he does. Betrayed by his inept leaders he finds his way home and ironically into the military prison system he joined to avoid. There he is tortured and subjected to psychological warfare. The injustice of training a man in black ops and then being embarrassed to have him around outraged this reader. Another writer depicts how America botched the war in Vietnam and betrayed the soldiers it sent to wage it.
The book makes no moral judgments in describing the action. Paul is a soldier who is good at what he does. Betrayed by his inept leaders he finds his way home and ironically into the military prison system he joined to avoid. There he is tortured and subjected to psychological warfare. The injustice of training a man in black ops and then being embarrassed to have him around outraged this reader. Another writer depicts how America botched the war in Vietnam and betrayed the soldiers it sent to wage it.
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