Semper Cool: One Marine's Fond Memories of Vietnam

by Barry Fixler

Overview

The wrenching, sometimes hilarious and always thought-provoking memoir of a mischievous teenager who enlists in the U.S. Marine Corps seeking adventure and his father's approval and finds both, plus more danger than he ever could have imagined. Barry Fixler gets molded into a Marine at Parris Island and sent to Vietnam, where he is assigned to a company that would soon etch its place in Marine Corps lore at the legendary Siege of Khe Sanh. With its vivid imagery, Semper Cool thrusts readers into a "grunt's-eye view" of the blood, guts, tears and laughter of war, as told by a Marine who returned home a proud, patriotic man. Be prepared to laugh and cry and ultimately thank God for the men and women willing to sacrifice their lives for the freedoms that so many Americans enjoy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780982518403
Publisher:	Exalt Press
Publication date:	12/01/2010
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	16 Years

About the Author

Barry Fixler, a USMC combat veteran who fought in the legendary Siege of Khe Sanh, is donating one hundred percent of his royalties to combat veterans wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Please visit sempercool.com for more info and editorial reviews.

Editorial Reviews

Many Vietnam veterans look back in anger on their wartime experiences, but Fixler, who endured one of the bloodiest battles of the war, isn't one of them. The gruesome 77 days he spent defending an isolated hilltop near the border with North Vietnam forms the core of this nostalgic memoir. Growing up in a predominately middle-class Jewish neighborhood, Fixler was dazzled by his father's stories of WWII and volunteered for Vietnam to earn his respect. As a teen, Fixler got into his fair share of trouble and that cockiness seeps into these pages. Arrival at the Marine Corps' Parris Island boot camp is compared to "being thrown into a Nazi concentration camp." He celebrates his sexual escapades and never sugarcoats the nasty business of war; he'd do "everything again in heartbeat." Yet as wistful as he is about the "discipline" and "camaraderie" of the Corps, he's unrelenting in his scorn for the soldiers who return in psychological pieces, suggesting that soldiers should just get used to killing. Nowhere near the league of We Were Soldiers Once...and Young, Fixler is nonetheless an intriguing, rare bird: a man who survived "hell in the raw" without a trace of trauma—or remorse. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

Most books about Vietnam (e.g., The Things They Carried, Born on the Fourth of July) would not be described as optimistic. Despite its upbeat title, Barry Fixler’s Semper Cool isn’t all that optimistic, either. It’s an unabashedly honest memoir without a trace of touchy-feely sentiment...

Pete Croato

Author Barry Fixler enlisted in the United States Marine Corps as a teenager; he experienced terrible violence and hand-to-hand combat at the Siege of Khe Sanh, and gives the reader a boots-on-the-ground view of war. Yet he had positive as well as negative experiences, and ultimately the hardships he endured shaped him into a patriotic American. His story is captivating, inspirational, and unflinching in its chronicle of the good, the bad, and the ugly of war...

Midwest Book Review

SEMPER COOL is an outstanding account of the author’s experiences as a Marine in Viet Nam in 1967–1968, and how those experiences have affected his post-war life. Fixler takes a refreshingly positive and matter-of-fact approach in telling his story. He doesn’t gloss over the evils and terror of the war, but addresses them in a way that makes the events real to the reader, yet easy to read...

Bob Doerr