THE HARDEST YEAR

Wagener’s memoir takes the form of collection of letters between young newlyweds, both wrestling with loneliness and uncertainty, separated by the Vietnam War.

Carole met her husband, Bill, while studying to be a physical therapist at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay; she had lived a “sheltered, naive life” and he possessed “a fierce streak of independence, a well-rounded education, and a quick wit.” In order to preempt the draft, Bill enlisted in the Army, and, only weeks before deploying to Vietnam, asked Carole to marry him. She hesitated to accept his proposal, but finally did, and the two began a precarious marriage in which they were separated by thousands of miles and an uncertain war, a predicament thoughtfully described by Wagener. Carole’s anxiety that Bill might die in Vietnam, or prove unfaithful, exacted a terrible emotional toll—she struggled to eat, study, and sleep, and she was beleaguered by headaches and nightmares. To make matters worse, Bill often criticized her in his letters home, warned her to monitor her weight, and bombarded her with an often unrealistic set of sexual expectations in epistles that sunk her already “diminishing self-esteem.” Carole reproduces her correspondence with Bill from September 1968 to August 1969. Accompanying the letters is Carole’s commentary, which cover her marriage’s trajectory beyond the war when Bill was battling PTSD. There is no new angle on the war provided, and the basic structure of the tale is a familiar one. Still, the letters are remarkably candid and heartbreaking, and reading them provides an emotionally powerful reminder of the personal wages of war. This is not a simple or sentimental love story—many of the letters, from both Carole and Bill, seemed designed to sow the seeds of self-doubt and insecurity. (“Immaturity was our playground…I was on a continual emotional roller coaster ride, ending with a distinct thud.”) The story, replete with personal photographs, is astonishingly intimate, a visceral peek into the irreducibly human element of a war as seen by those who fought it and those who were compelled to witness it from afar.

A profoundly affecting and complex look at war and marriage.