This oral history offers the voices of thirty-three Oklahomans. Some of them fought in the Vietnam War, and others waited—some are still waiting—for their loved ones to come home, alive or in a body bag. In the ranks of Stanley W. Beesley’s compilation are reluctant warriors, gung ho marines, skeptics, embittered former patriots, and humanists—whites, blacks, Indians, and Hispanics; men and women; officers and grunts. These men and women recount their experiences not as heroes but as ordinary people thrust by politics and fate into the uncommon circumstances of the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, they bring to life their deadened memories and remind us of what some have chosen to forget.
