Fortunate Son: The Healing of a Vietnam Vet had been on my reading list for several years before I found the courage to read it. I knew it would be a difficult read: a father-son relationship that misfires, war, the dashed hopes of a childhood dream ending with horrific injuries, alcoholism, depression, a failed suicide attempt. CSI may have desensitized me to a degree, but this isn't fiction, it's an autobiography.
The son of a retired marine myself, I could relate to parts of Lewis B. Puller, Jr.'s story. My dad had retired from the Corps before he met and married my mother, so I never knew him as a marine. Although proud of his service in the South Pacific, he never urged me to follow in his footsteps.
Lew, Jr. was the son of the legendary Lewis "Chesty" Puller, one of the more decorated marines in the history of the Corps. He didn't have to urge his son to follow him into the marines. He just came home from the Korean conflict to a parade and much hero worship. So is it any wonder that five-year-old Lew, Jr. wanted, when he grew up, to seek his own glory in war?
In Fortunate Son, Lewis B. Puller chronicles his youth, his adoration of his father, and his father's love for him. Despite being far less athletic than his twin sister, Lew always made out his father's cheers at little league games, even when he played poorly.
When the day came, General Puller smiled proudly when his son volunteered for officer's training in the Marine Corps.
Eventually the young Puller, as a Second Lieutenant, finds himself in the bush in charge of a platoon of young marines. Before long he realizes he doesn't belong in Vietnam, America doesn't belong in Vietnam, that the Nixon administration is wrong to send her boys to Vietnam, and he comes to the conclusion--having watched several marines under his command killed--that a career in the military is no longer what he wishes. Unfortunately, two weeks later he steps on a booby trap and loses both legs while severely damaging both hands.
All of this takes place in the first one-hundred pages or so of Fortunate Son. The remaining 280 pages chronicle Lew's recovery from his wounds as well as his efforts to come to terms with his service to his country--what he calls reconciliation: was his sacrifice worth it? Sadly he keeps coming up with the wrong answer: No.
He recounts his father's first visit after he returned stateside, wounded; how the elder Puller broke down and sobbed, unashamedly. It was the second time Lew had seen his father weep. He also recounts, in vivid detail, the long, slow death of his father after a series of strokes took more and more of the tough marine, at first leaving him weakened, eventually incontinent and affecting his memory--at times he had no recollection that Lew, Jr. had been wounded in Vietnam. And so once again Lew, Jr. is robbed of the chance at reconciliation, at least with the man he loved the most and who, in youth, he'd most wanted to emulate. Yet even in life "Chesty" is at a loss for the right words: He can't understand why the marines are fighting a losing battle in Southeast Asia.
He can't understand why, for doing their duty, marines came home to be spat upon by their fellow Americans. It wasn't a war they started; yet they were blamed for it, were seen as long-haired, marijuana smoking hippies who killed women and children. Lew saw none of the latter, but understood it happened. He never understood the media's fascination with reporting only the bad, never the acts of heroism. Nor did they ever hold accountable those in office. The buck stopped with the marines who were only following orders.
Lew fathered two children--the first, a son, before leaving for Vietnam. After months spent recovering from his injuries and after multiple surgeries (mostly on his hands), Lew returned to school to become a lawyer. A few years later, angered by the political environment in Virginia, he ran for congress against Paul S. Trible, Jr., who'd managed to avoid serving in Vietnam for medical reasons.
Lew, with absolutely no campaign experience, ran a clean campaign; but in the end he was beaten soundly, learning that in politics it's not important for a candidate to believe what they say; they only have to say what the voters want to hear.
After the election, Lew's drinking escalated. The beer, which had been a crutch for him since officer's school, had turned to scotch--to the tune of a bottle every night. He was depressed, angry, and he hadn't yet healed, emotionally, from Vietnam. He watched the civilian prisoners return from Iran, heroes, to appear on TV as celebrities, and he shook his head in wonder over why no one ever affirmed the Vietnam veteran's sacrifice.
All the while the drinking continues. Lew regularly got up in the middle of the night to fix himself a wine cocktail, arrived at work in the Pentagon drunk and spent his day thinking about getting home so he could have another drink. Eventually he took to keeping a pint of vodka in his desk and marveled that no one ever suspected.
One night, while watching a special about the Vietnam War on public television, Lew became so enraged by something said that he destroyed the TV. When his wife, Toddy, ran upstairs to check on him, he'd already forgotten what was said that angered him. Toddy immediately took him to rehab where he was diagnosed in the last stages of alcoholism. He spent the next four weeks searching for answers, seeking serenity, and learning that he was not nearly as important to others as he thought. Lew dried out and the book ends shortly after the dedication of the Vietnam Memorial, with Lew, clear of the fog of alcohol, at last finding a semblance of peace.
One day three Soviet veterans of the Afghanistan War arranged to meet Lew at the memorial, and Lew was surprised at the length of his father's shadow. It seems his father is studied in Russia for his tactical brilliance. Odd, this band of brothers--only two of the four spoke English. But men who have shed blood and watched blood flow share a bond that surmounts language, even culture.
These three Soviets wished to see a memorial raised in Russia to recognize the sacrifice they and their comrades made in Afghanistan. But like the Vietnam vets, they too were eschewed in their homeland. And they wished to know how Lew found his reconciliation. He tells them.
Fortunate Son won a Pulitzer shortly after its release, and rightfully so. Puller's story is a moving one--a story no doubt that belongs to thousands of Vietnam vets. Serving their country to the best of their ability, following orders handed down to them as a result of a misguided administration with a political agenda that saw our boys as fodder. Suffering wounds, some physical, most emotional, from which they could never truly heal because, for twenty years, there was no reconciliation.
Puller had a gift for language, for writing, for telling a story, and his memoir, often poignant, at times humorous, is a moving one. His account of his alcoholism--the anger, the lost temper, the blackouts, the memory loss, and how the realization that he could never take another drink again was like losing a loved one--takes the reader into hell, only to reemerge, with Lew victorious at their side.
Fortunate Son should be required reading in our schools even if, tragically, the epitaph wasn't written for several more years, when Puller took his own life. His wife, Toddy, perhaps to pursue her own political career, had separated from him and he'd again begun drinking. Toddy said: "To the list of names of victims of the Vietnam War, add the name of Lewis Puller ... He suffered terrible wounds that never really healed." Were they the words of a grieving widow or merely words of deflection? Only she can know.
Rose Kennedy perhaps said it best when she disagreed with the adage that time heals all wounds. She claimed the wounds remained. "In time," she said, "the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it is never gone."
First Lieutenant Puller's story is precisely why no single man should be granted the power, with a flourish of his signature, to send young men off to war--not unless he, too, has been there, at the gates of hell, fighting not for glory, honor or country, but merely to stay alive.
My highest recommendation.
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