A Lost Soldier Finds Peace Searching for Heroes

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	• Lost Soldiers James H. Webb, 2001 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 40 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Lost Soldier Finds Peace Searching for Heroes

This is really a good story which stays on track and results in a great ending. It is very descriptive of life in today's Viet Nam and tells some of how it got that way. This book also opened up to me the long search that is still going on for the remains of "Heroes" lost in wars and how important that it is for the families of these "Heroes" that it does go on as long as necessary. This is what Brandon Condley does and this story gets into the mystery of how a few came to die with a little romance and a little action mixed in.

Lost Soldiers

My husband loves to read anything military and this book was one of his favorites!

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What does George Allen's team know?

During the mid-term elections, Republican George Allen's campaign attacked Jim Webb for being "insensitive to women" and cited "Lost Soldiers" as evidence. I ordered the title the same day from Amazon. I read it cover-to-cover because it was a first rate page-turner. By 21st century standards, the sex was tame. The protagonist's code for female relations was traditional, if not old-fashioned. Perhaps the Allen wonks have not read enough books to know the difference between standard attitudes toward us women and those over-the-top. Jim Webb defeated George Allen by a comfortable margin for Virginia's junior seat in the U.S. Senate. Allen and his friends ought to use their newly found leisure to do some reading.

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Mini-Review of "Lost Soldiers"

Once I find an author whose work I really appreciate, I will often read several works by that writer in succession. I have been on a James Webb kick of late, so here is another mini-review of a Webb novel. "Lost Soldiers," written in 2001, continues Webb's life-long process of coming to grips with what happened to him and other Marines and soldiers in Viet Nam.

The protagonist, Brandon Condley, never really left Viet Nam - at least not emotionally. In this novel, Condley works on behalf of the teams that are tasked with identifying the bodies of those who were KIA and whose remains are finally being turned over by the government of Viet Nam. This is a complex tale of promises made and broken - on a personal level and on a trans-national level. The characters in this book together provide a window into the aftermath of the Viet Nam war. The tale is told with intricate and intimate writing. I often felt that I had been transported to Viet Nam as the author wove a web of intrigue and stunning details - sounds, smells, and sights of the mysterious Southeast Asian nation that has captivated the imagination of America for so many decades.

Here are some samples of Webb's superb writing:

"Brandon Condley loved Sai Gon. It was the museum of his own heart, a tortured and yet insistently happy city where along the streets his memories could once again race and dive amid the fecund ferment, the mangled but sly-eyed beggars, the crumbling old French buildings now conquered and abused, the rivers muddy and eternal, the toothless cyclo drivers suborning him from the roadsides, the motorbikes loud and reckless, begging for the future, the never-ending stares, the measuring smiles, welcoming and wary, the con games of bright minds trapped inside dumb lives, the odd, funky food cooked on the streets, the black puddles on the sidewalks, wet from rain and urine and wash water thrown out of doorways, the stench of all that mixed together. In all an instant beauty, pushing up through the muck of a fierce and dreadful past like Buddha's lotus, a beauty just as real as what his own past might have become, always pushing, insistent as a weed, fresh as the future." (Page 40)

Reading this paragraph makes me wish I could paint a picture with words as skillfully as Webb is able to do. Here is another passage that sets the scene for two warriors - one American and one Vietnamese - taking the measure of one another:

"Colonel Pham's formality was to be expected. Perhaps fifteen years older than Condley, the former Viet Cong soldier was rarely emotional in public and almost deceptively nondescript. Condley had learned tat the colonel's controlled emotions were a camouflage that hid the kind of man whom in Asia too many Americans overlooked at their peril, and usually to their later regret. The colonel's teeth were stained from years of strong tobacco and poor dental hygiene. His glasses looked as if they had been bought forty years before. Several long strands of hair grew from a mole on his chin, just to the right of his mouth. His small, paw-like hands hung slightly in front of his thighs, as if he had spent so many years carrying weight on his back - pack and weapon and rice roll - that his shoulders and fingers were permanently curved. And he clearly did not belong in a suit. He wore it loosely and messily, the collar too big, the knot on the tie too fat, the shirtsleeves too long, making him appear ungainly and even more diminutive than he actually was.

But from the first, Condley had picked up a sureness in the older man, a toughness that those who had not fought the war could never fully penetrate. Pham had made hard decisions, of the sort a mere businessman could never conceive. He had endured years in the jungle, conquering it and making it his friend. He had ordered soldiers to their death. He had killed people. And form the measuring look he and Condley had always exchanged behind their smiles, it was clear that Pham had killed Americans.

Condley knew that Pham had always read his own face just as quickly. Yes, their eyes said to each other every time they met, we both endured and we both killed. But that was then, and this is now. So where do we go from here? In a way this knowledge gladdened both of them, giving them an odd but unbreakable bond. He and Pham shared a secret kinship. They knew the truth of the battlefield, a conviction so real and permeable that neither of them would ever need to mention it to the other." (Pages 55-6)

Webb shines the light of personal experience and understanding on the arcane fraternity of those who have fought wars and strive to make peace with that reality. Add this to your list of books well worth reading.

Enjoy.

Al

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Once in a great while there comes a novel of such emotional impact and acute insight that it forever changes the way a reader sees a nation or an era. Writing with an unerring sense of suspense and of history experienced firsthand, James Webb takes us on a myth-shattering cultural odyssey deep into the heart of contemporary Vietnam, with a riveting thriller that tells a love story ? love for those who perished, for family and friends, and between a soldier and the land where he had always been ready to die.

Brandon Condley survived five years of combat as a U.S. Marine only to lose the woman he loved to an enemy assassin. Now he is back in Vietnam, working to recover the remains of unknown American soldiers. On a routine mission, Condley finds a body that doesn?t match its dog tags ? a body that propels him into a vortex of violence and intrigue where past and present become one.

As the mystery of the dead man unravels, a link is revealed to two well-known killers: ?Salt and Pepper,? a pair of treasonous Americans who led a deadly Viet Cong ambush against Condley?s own men. Galvanized by a fresh trail to these long-lost deserters, Condley has finally found a purpose: Under the auspices of his government job, he is going to hunt down the traitors. On his own, he is going to kill them.

Condley?s hunt cannot be kept secret from his former enemies, or his friends. And in the shadows that linger from Vietnam?s long season of darkness and terror, he has no way of knowing which side is more dangerous.

Surrounding him is an unforgettable cast of characters: Dzung, Condley?s closest friend, a South Vietnamese war hero who might have led his country if his side had won the war, now reduced to driving a cyclo as his family starves in Saigon?s District Four. Colonel Pham, a battle-hardened Viet Cong soldier who lost three children to American bombs. Manh, a cutthroat Interior Ministry official who blackmails Dzung into a mission of murder. The Russian soldier Anatolie Petrushinsky, who left his soul in Vietnam as his empire collapsed around him. And the beautiful Van, Colonel Pham?s daughter, who spurns the scars of war as she pursues her dreams of freedom.

As Condley stalks his elusive prey across old battlefields and throughout Eurasia, returning always to the brooding streets of Saigon, his mission ? and the odds of his surviving it ? grow more precarious with each step he takes toward the truth.

Lost Soldiers captures the Vietnam of past and present ? its beauty and squalor, its politics and people. Propelled by a page-turning mystery, shot through with adventure and intrigue, it irrevocably transforms our view of that haunted land and brings us as complete an understanding as we will ever have of what happened after the war ? and why. No writer today is more qualified to take us into that world than James Webb.

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