James Webb, Fields of Fire

Look at his resume and see if you'd expect great things from this man: Highly decorated combat marine during the Vietnam War, journalist, Secretary of the Navy, Assistant Secretary of Defense--and now: Senator from Virginia! Let me add one more accolade: novelist. Although Fields of Fire will never be a great novel-chronicle as The Red and the Black or War and Peace, it is an important American work of fiction because it brings to our consciousness the absurdity of our Country's misadventures; in particular the enormous misadventure in Vietnam. The narrative is lively and it portrays a variety of well drawn characters. When Bob Hodges, Snake, or Goodrich walk point in the Godforsaken jungles of Vietnam, James Webb makes one tremble, shake, and suffer in our civilian shoes, as we commiserate with the grunts. And one can only imagine the stark, lonely and dark nights streaked by the slowly hanging flares with which you could see the face of the Vietcong, the North Vietnamese soldiers, or even the Chinese troopers. That we only lost 50,000 American troops in Vietnam is a miracle given the impossibility of fighting such a guerrilla war where your enemy was your waiter during the day. Live and learn: Vietnamization then. Or so we thought until the new misadventure now called Iraq. We should be on the lookout for great things from James Webb. Here in our midst we have a quiet, humble American hero who wore his son's combat boots to make a point, but never once did he wave his medals to belittle his now forgotten racist opponent. Webb never run away from service--or hid in the National Guard, or sought deferments--when his country needed him during war-time. Having served with distinction he deserves to be not only a U. S. Senator but perhaps even president of the United States! To think that there are virile men like James Webb fills me with great pride, just as shame rushes to my heart and angers me when I think of cowards who advocate war not having fired a single shot in defense of their country. Warmongers, and their relatives, should be allowed the opportunity to be in the first wave of attack. Only then should war proceed. Those who advocate and press for war should not be allowed to push other people's children to death. We have to be thankful to James Webb and his son for what they are: American heroes. The writing techniques I employ in this article are all explained in Mary Duffy's writing manual: www.writerivetingprose.com Augustine, City of God Austen J, Pride and Prejudice Austen J, "Marriage Proposals and Me" Austen J, Emma Borges, The Aleph C. Bronte, Jane Eyre Burroughs E,Tarzan Cervantes, Don Quijote Chaucer, Wife of Bath Coelho P,The Alchemist Coyle H, They Are Soldiers Dante, New Life Dickens C, David Copperfield Dostoevsky, Crime&Punishment ConanDoyle,Hound of Baskervilles Dubner S, Superfreakonomics DuMaurier D, Rebecca Ellis B. E. American Psycho Fitzgerald S, Great Gatsby Flaubert G, Madame Bovary Fleming I,Doctor No Freud S, Leonardo Da Vinci Friedan B, Feminine Mystique GarciaMarquez, Of Love & OtherDemons GarciaMarquez,OneHundredYrs Guerrero M,ThePoison Pill Grass G, The Tin Drum Harris T, Hannibal Rising Heidegger M,House of Being Ishiguro K, Remains of The Day Johnson S,Rasselas Kafka,Metamorphosis Kosinski J, The Painted Bird Lee H,To Kill a Mockingbird McBain Ed,Gutter and Grave Murakami H,Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Nabokov V, Lolita Meyer, S, Twilight Ortega,Dehumanization of Art Poe E A, Gordon Pym Prose F, Reading Like a Writer Rushdie S,Midnight Children Sabatini R, Scaramouche Spark M, Prime of Miss Brodie Stendhal, Red and Black Sterne L,Tristram Shandy Stevenson R, Dr.Jekyll & Mr.Hyde Stoker B, Dracula Thackeray W,History of Pendennis Tolstoy L, Anna Karenina Trollope A, Autobiography Unamuno M, Tragic Sense of Life Voltaire, Candide Webb J, Fields of Fire Wharton E, The House of Mirth Woolf V, To The Lighhouse The secrets of 'no-doze' prose: Mary Duffy's Sentence Openers Image via Wikipedia Lindsey Vonn Back to main page

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