Description
Written in the first person and with a strong annotated historical and political background, "Hale and Farewell: A Vietnam Era Memoir" is a deeply personal and emotional journey of a patriotic soldier who served through the social maelstrom and political upheaval that accompanied the Vietnam Era. His ideals, ambitions, perseverance, traumatic heartbreaks, and abandonment carry the reader back in time in his deeply personal reflection of American history.
Commencing at the dawn of the Digital Age, Sexual Revolution, and the Assassination of JFK, this captivating memoir describes the impact of the American Indochina War on the lives of the author, his friends, and American Society in general. A coming of age story of engineering students, it covers their academic challenges, and ROTC training under the menacing cloud of the war in Southeast Asia. After graduation, Cadet Jodaitis prepared for assignment to Vietnam at Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, Pennsylvania, the US Army Engineer Officers Basic Course at Fort Belvoir, VA and troop assignments in the 83rd Engineer Construction Battalion at Fort Riley, KS.
In August 1969 at the outset of the US withdrawal from Vietnam, LT Jodaitis was assigned to HQ Da Nang Support Command. Where he was identified as being highly imaginative and judicious, but he lacked tact, a tragic flaw in the Vietnam Era soldier-diplomat – zero defects U.S. Army. With each KEYSTONE retrograde phase he was moved to a new job closer to the DMZ and increasing enemy activity. Some of his superior officers considered him a renegade, others a valuable asset. His first move was to the 26th General Support Group staff near Hue and later the perimeter. Shortly before the Cambodian Incursion while the FSB Ripcord Battle raged in the A Shau Valley, he was moved to the 555th Maintenance Company at Camp Evans that was notorious for fragging. After the deactivation of the 555th he moved to the respected Nam Nomads, 57th Transportation Company, at Quang Tri. The Nomads serviced heavy artillery firebases and others along the DMZ and QL-1. Discharged in late August 1970, he returned to liberal anti-war Greater Boston.
His difficult adjustment to civilian life was aided by compulsory service in the U.S. Army Reserve and his request for transfer to a combat engineer battalion in the Massachusetts Army National Guard. That helped him realize the scope of the politicized war that the Global Elites had predestined the United States to lose. The memoir ends as President Richard M. Nixon was forced to resign.