KEEPING EACH OTHER ALIVE

In this memoir, Hile recollects the perils of his military service during the Vietnam War and the challenges of returning home the United States.

At the time of the disastrous Tet Offensive in 1968, the author was 22 years old, and as a first-year student at Columbia Law School, he was protected from the draft by an educational deferment. However, following Tet, deferment rules changed, and he was pulled into the war despite his objections to it—and his general disgust toward President Lyndon Johnson’s administration and the “U.S. government propaganda machine.” In 1970, he boarded a plane for Vietnam, which he calls a “cattle car of cannon fodder,” and was sent as an artillery forward observer to one of the “hottest areas of operation.” Later, he would be reassigned as a bright aerial observer—a so-called “Red Baron,” looking for enemy activity on the ground while flying in a plane. The author poignantly depicts his terrifying war experience, during which he was exposed to the dangers of combat without anyone in a position of leadership he could look up to, and hoping to be rescued by a “million-dollar wound.” He recalls all of this in a stream-of-consciousness style: “Almost every minute I had to make a decision of where I was going to move next, whether it was riskier than staying where I was already standing, and whether the risk of moving was worth it to alleviate the uncertainty, or sheer boredom, of standing still.” Overall, Hile’s memoir shows admirable candor and emotional lucidity. However, as an entry in a well-populated genre of memoir, it doesn’t break any new ground. He furnishes a granular “day by day, month by month account” of his service, replete with personal, black-and-white photographs, that will likely prove to be far too detailed for a general audience, outside of the author’s circle of friends of family. Nonetheless, this work does provide a moving look into his daunting experience, as well as the profound alienation he suffered after his discharge.

An often affecting remembrance of war that will be best appreciated by those who know the author.