Scan barcode
paul_cornelius's review
5.0
Because I know a few of the people Jonathan Stevenson describes in Hard Men Humble, initially I was inclined to say he got them wrong. But after a second or two, I realized that that would have been missing the point. The people I know from the book do not match the people he writes about--today. That is because they have changed. People do not remain static in their opinions or attitudes--even when they have hit their late seventies and eighties. When you read this excellent series of biographical sketches, you understand that. The men Stevenson came to know towards the turn of the millennium, after all, were greatly changed from the men who had fought during the war, or the men they were before the war--at least that goes for most of them.
And this is a special group, veterans of the wars in Vietnam and Laos who simply discovered that America in the late twentieth century was not a place they were comfortable in. And this occurred for a variety of reasons, some being the way Americans chose to live their lives after the war but a lot having to do with a familiarity and comfort with Southeast Asia. I know that even in 2019, the suburbs of Bangkok are much more like the America I grew up in during the 1950s than is most of America itself. Of course, the surveillance state, especially as imagined in China, has enthralled a number of governments in the region who see it as the future--but that is another story. For now, Thailand and even Laos and Vietnam are not America, and that is a point in their favor.
Of all the people Stevenson describes, I must admit that Mark Smith, the "Major," sticks out and haunts me. (I hasten to add that Smith is not among the expats from the war I have ever known.) But his story is stupefying, astonishing, even among the stories of a group of people who mostly encountered danger and defied death on a daily basis. Twenty years on from Stevenson's interviews with these men, I would like to know what became of Smith and some of the others I don't know. A sequel to this story would be appropriate.
And this is a special group, veterans of the wars in Vietnam and Laos who simply discovered that America in the late twentieth century was not a place they were comfortable in. And this occurred for a variety of reasons, some being the way Americans chose to live their lives after the war but a lot having to do with a familiarity and comfort with Southeast Asia. I know that even in 2019, the suburbs of Bangkok are much more like the America I grew up in during the 1950s than is most of America itself. Of course, the surveillance state, especially as imagined in China, has enthralled a number of governments in the region who see it as the future--but that is another story. For now, Thailand and even Laos and Vietnam are not America, and that is a point in their favor.
Of all the people Stevenson describes, I must admit that Mark Smith, the "Major," sticks out and haunts me. (I hasten to add that Smith is not among the expats from the war I have ever known.) But his story is stupefying, astonishing, even among the stories of a group of people who mostly encountered danger and defied death on a daily basis. Twenty years on from Stevenson's interviews with these men, I would like to know what became of Smith and some of the others I don't know. A sequel to this story would be appropriate.
More...