The Price They Paid: Enduring Wounds Of War - an adult bookwrap

Tenderly unwrapping today's book...

Authored by Michael Putzel

According to Amazon...

Michael Putzel is the author of "The Price They Paid: Enduring Wounds of War," the dramatic true story of America’s legendary air cavalry commander and the troops who followed him into the most intensive helicopter warfare ever–and how that brutal experience changed their lives forever. The book, published in April, 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War, provides a gripping account of the war as it was fought by the pilots and crewmen of one U.S. helicopter unit, and shows how those harrowing experiences continued to shape their lives for years after they came home.

Putzel covered the war in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos for two-and-a-half years as a war correspondent for The Associated Press. Putzel has reported many of the biggest news stories of his generation, from the Civil Rights Movement and the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon, to the White House under Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton, to the collapse of Soviet Communism from Moscow. 

Putzel was witness to the shooting of President Reagan, served as Washington bureau chief for The Boston Globe, and wrote a widely published weekly column on how technology has changed people’s lives. Mr. Putzel and his wife, biographer Ann Blackman, who was a correspondent for TIME magazine and a reporter for the Associated Press, have two grown children. They live in Washington, DC and South Bristol, Maine.

My take on the book...

This is a true story of an outstanding military leader who came out of nowhere and ended up a legendary air cavalry commander whose men held him in highest esteem and would obey his every command.  They knew no matter what, he had their back and he would come and rescue them.  Major James T. Newman led C Troop, 2/17 Air Cavalry, 101 Airborne Division through the worst helicopter battle of the Vietnam War, or of all times. For his bravery and unmatchable cunning in war he was twice nominated for the Medal of Honor.

"Short in stature and uneducated, he walked with a limp he couldn't hide and spoke with diction and profanity that instantly exposed his humble upbringing in the rural South.  He was neither profound, nor particularly curious, yet his superiors listened to him as a wise man, and his officers and men idolized him.  He was eerily calm in a crisis and brave to the point of foolhardiness."

                                     - michaelputzel.com

When he came home he was a changed man.  He had dire family problems and his family attributed those issued to his unspeakable experiences in war-tornVietnam.  

His staunch followers were also changed from that brutal war bringing home unending depression and nightmares and living constantly with that period of hell etched forever in their minds, hearts, and spirits.  Few could bring themselves to talk about the happenings there with family and friends thus isolating them from sharing their deepest feelings with those closest to them. How could they make their loved understand when they could not understand themselves?  Often they had no words to explain the horrors they saw and they could not put things in the proper perspective when they arrived home to their families and a peaceful environment.  So not only the veterans paid a terrible price but also their wives and children as they struggled to figure out what happened to their heroes. 

The story is riveting and brings you the truth about those men of war, the battles they engaged in, what happened to them on their return and to those who tried to understand and give them uncondtional love when they came back home.  

Read on and read always!

It's a wrap.

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