Reconciliation Road: A Family Odyssey of War and Honor

The author's grandfather, his beloved ``Poppy,'' formally disowned him after he became a Vietnam-era conscientious objector. His grandfather, Brig. Gen. S.L.A. Marshall, was one of America's foremost military historians and a staunch defender of U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Following his death in 1977, the General's personal integrity and his professional integrity and scholarship were called into question in an American Heritage article and in a scurrilous chapter of David Hackworth's About Face. In this intriguing memoir, James Marshall settles accounts with Hackworth, clears up inaccuracies and misleading statements in the article, and presents a compassionate, three-dimensional portrait of ``Slam'' Marshall. The general did stretch the truth about his wartime service, it turns out, and was sloppy on occasion in his research but, as his grandson demonstrates, his reputation among major historians remains high. The author acknowledges that the general was a flawed and ornery cuss at times (in his final years he fought a losing battle against senility) but now regards Poppy's edict of excommunication as ``the desperate act of an embittered old man striking out against someone he loved . . . '' The author is a journalist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer . Photos. (Oct.)