Brave Men, Gentle Heroes: American Fathers and Sons in World War II and Vietnam

""World War II and Vietnam...have more in common with one another, and are more connected to one another, than we ordinarily realize,"" Takiff argues in the prologue to his lengthy oral history of the two wars. In order to tease out the similarities and differences between the two conflicts, and to understand just how the first influenced the second, Takiff interviewed 20 pairs of American war veterans: fathers who fought in World War II and their sons who saw combat in Vietnam. The concept is a unique one; of the dozens of veterans' oral histories, none has focused exclusively on WWII dads and their Vietnam War sons. Much of what Takiff includes, however, has been said before in previous oral histories and memoirs. The Vietnam veterans speak of the misguided emphasis on body counts, commanding General William Westmoreland's cluelessness and the unfortunate existence of fragging,""the killing of officers by enlisted men."" The WWII veterans provide details of the Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima and liberating German concentration camps. Nonetheless, Takiff does succeed in backing up his central argument--""war marks individuals for life, war marks families for generations""--and there are some surprises, including the thoughtful remembrances of a gay Vietnam veteran and an off-the-wall story about a squad of GIs who took two days off from the war to fraternize and smoke marijuana with three North Vietnamese soldiers.""War is a terrible crucible to go through,"" Vietnam vet Sandy Walmsley declares near the book's finish. In the end, that may be the greatest similarity between the two wars. B&w photos throughout.