No Longer Enemies, Not Yet Friends: An American Soldier Returns to Vietnam

by Frederick Downs Jr.

Overview

Twenty years after he served in Vietnam—and lost his left arm in combat there—Downs returned to Vietnam with the Vessey mission to offer humanitarian aid to his former enemies. This is his personal odyssey from hatred to a deeper understanding of all human suffering.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393331110
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/01/1991
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Frederick Downs Jr. received four Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star with Valor, and the Silver Star for his service in the Vietnam War. He lives in Fort Washington, Maryland.

Editorial Reviews

Amid the lengthening list of return-to-Vietnam accounts, this is one of the most memorable. Downs, a former infantry officer who lost an arm in the war, the author of The Killing Zone and director of prosthetics and sensory aid services for the Veterans Administration, took several trips in the late 1980s as part of an official mission charged with exploring humanitarian issues. Along with its acute observations of postwar Vietnamese culture, this report is distinguished by Downs's admission that he returned to 'Nam for the first time in 20 years with his low opinion of ``gooks'' intact, and expecting to find widespread hatred of Americans. The story of his coming to terms with his former enemy is both moving and instructive, and includes a detailed account of the week in 1988 he spent escorting the Vietnamese director of rehabilitation around Washington, D.C. Downs discovered that ``the greatest civics lesson for any American is to have to explain our way of life to a hard-line Communist.'' Photos. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Downs continues his personal chronicles of war and peace in Vietnam with a followup to The Killing Zone ( LJ 10/1/78) and Aftermath ( LJ 1/84). In his latest work, Downs, who lost his left arm in combat in Vietnam, describes a series of trips to Vietnam as a member of the controversial Vessey Mission, which studied humanitarian needs of the Vietnamese. Between 1987 and 1989 Downs was called up on to demonstrate the use of modern prosthetics to his ex-foes. In stark and unpolished language, he presents the reader with the turmoil he felt trying to reconcile his wartime hatred, his wounding and physical rehabilitation, the POW/MIA issue, with his shock at the quality of life and condition of healthcare in Vietnam. Gradually he comes to accept the Vietnamese as people rather than as depersonalized objects or as enemies. Purchase for Vietnam War collections or where Downs's other titles have been popular.-- Stanley Planton, Ohio Univ.-Chillicothe Lib.

Library Journal

An erstwhile warrior's powerful and thought-provoking report on his unsentimental journeys to Vietnam 20 years after a wounding tour of combat duty. Between 1987 and 1989, Downs (Aftermath, 1983; The Killing Zone, 1978) made five trips to Hanoi in his capacity as the VA's director of prosthetic and sensory aids. A decorated veteran who lost his left arm during a 1967-68 stint as an infantry lieutenant, he was a member of the so-called Vessey mission, which explored opportunities to provide the Communist regime humanitarian assistance (from nongovernmental organizations) in return for franker discussions of POW/MIA issues. Once back in country, the author found to his surprise that he had embarked on a voyage of self-discovery. Initially determined to focus on ways to furnish medical help to a backward, dirt-poor nation, Downs soon found himself drawn to his sometime foes by a sense of shared pain and loss. In his chronological journal, the author offers perceptive accounts of two sets of travels—the semiofficial efforts of former antagonists to move toward rapprochement, if only at a low level, and the personal odyssey that gave him an appreciation of the need for healing. The tough-minded narrative has a full measure of acute observations on latter-day Vietnam, as well as reflections on the casual brutalities committed by American soldiers during the war. Downs also recounts the revelatory visit to the US of a battle- hardened North Vietnamese surgeon whom he guided around Washington, D.C., and welcomed into his Maryland home. While he deals summarily with home-front opposition to the Vessey mission, the author leaves little doubt that he and colleagues were puzzled, even hurt, bythe ad hominem attacks that dogged them in the States. A masterful storyteller's cleareyed tribute to the postbellum reconciliation. (Photographs—not seen.)

Kirkus Reviews