Snow Sticks; by J. M. Taylor

MWSA Review
J. M. Taylor's third novel Snow Sticks reunites the characters from his earlier exciting novels (Missing Sticks and One Stick and a Waco). Interwoven with the fabric of the Battle of the Bulge, the lovable and interesting characters once again face long odds in various combat situations climaxing in a battle that brings them all together (or nearly so) once more. But will they survive?

I specifically enjoyed how well the author highlights the camaraderie that transcends rank within the story. Bonded together by their combat experience, the characters interact as only combat veterans can, with a dry sense of humor and an ultimate selflessness necessary to survive the horrors to which they all are subject. Also interesting is the non-speaking but very important character Max the German shepherd, who occasionally lends his thoughts to the general chaos around him, and serves to emphasize that not all combatants are people.

Fans of historical fiction, those interested in the Battle of the Bulge, or those who enjoy WWII combat fiction will find this an enjoyable and memorable read!
Review by Rob Ballister, MWSA Awards Director

Author's Synopsis:
The men of the 101st Airborne Division fought their way across France and assaulted the Germans in Holland, securing the highway all the way up to "The Island." Finally, the Screaming Eagles are given a break - R&R in France, a time to slip off to see loved ones or simply get drunk and have a good time, as airborne troopers are wont to do. 

Slowly, the wounded from Normandy and Holland trickle back to duty at Mourmelon, the rest center in France. 

Meanwhile, Alex Pfister continues his operations behind the German lines as a member of the OSS, grief stricken when he thinks he has lost his love to a V-2 in London. 

Dawson and his war dog, Max, return from an unauthorized visit to his pregnant war-bride across the Channel. Even Staff Sergeant Harry Rule, the ex-smoke jumper from Montana, slips away from the hospital in England and returns to the Screaming Eagles. 

Since SNOW STICKS is a novel based on facts, both in time, place and military organization, we all know what happens next. The Germans attack, the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge. Among others, soldiers of the 110th Regimental Combat Team, 28th Division, scattered Engineer units, men who think they are on R&R for the weekend, all find themselves in the midst of battle as the Germans surge into Belgium in their thrust toward Antwerp. The Nazi's have at least two goals: stop the Allied flow of supplies and capturing what they could to restock their depleted logistics, and delay the Allied advance long enough to bring the Nazi Vengeance Weapons, the rockets, the jet and rocket planes, all the super weapons envisioned by Hitler, to bear.

The Screaming Eagles and their fellow soldiers have two objectives: stop the German advance...and survive.

ISBN/ASIN: B071146QTW
Book Format(s): Soft cover, Kindle
Genre(s): Historical Fiction
Review Genre: Fiction—Historical Fiction
Number of Pages: 271
 

QL 4; by James Garrison

MWSA Review
This is the fictionalized story of the author’s year as a drafted MP in Vietnam during the war.  The story moves forward in a vaguely chronological pace, but the chapters focus on one individual at a time whose name is in the chapter title.  Everything that went wrong on bases throughout Vietnam is described as all happening at this small base, and the young MP observes hints of problems while being unsure who can be trusted among his superiors. He comes to realize that the illegal activities involve people in town and in the ranks of their counterparts in the South Vietnamese Army, and he questions the deaths of those who may have become aware of the problems.  His duties range from mind-numbing gate guard duties to patrols in town that can be dangerous to crowd-control during a riot.  Underlying the story of relationships during the Vietnam war are the cultural tensions between some Americans and the native Vietnamese as well as between black and white American soldiers and between the more and less educated soldiers.

While the extreme foul language is off-putting at first, the reader is drawn into the story as it develops.  The main character, SPF4 Bell, has completed one year of law school before being drafted.  Not only is he unhappy to be in Vietnam because he does not support the war, but the regular army members (referred to as lifers by Bell) are not impressed with college boys who do not know how to fight or police.  Bell and his fellow “new guys” have had only 8 weeks of training and arrive to find that they will learn their new duties “on the job” while patrolling with experienced army regulars who may or may not be trustworthy.  Some of these senior soldiers are biased against the native people, blacks, Jews, and the more educated.  Some are trigger happy – especially when drunk, which is frequently.  Bell becomes more and more curious and, of course, gets into more and more trouble while sometimes being surprised about the support he receives.
Reviewed by Nancy Kauffman, MWSA Reviewer 

Author's Synopsis:
PFC Justin Bell, a newly-minted U.S. Army MP, quickly discovers that there’s more than a war going on along QL 4, the main road from Saigon into the Mekong Delta. It’s old-fashioned crime and corruption. He doesn’t want to get involved, just serve out his time and go home, but life for an American MP in Vietnam in 1970 doesn’t work that way. QL 4 leads Bell deep into a swamp of deception, mayhem, and death that insinuates its way both into towns the MPs patrol each day and into the old French villa where they live.

ISBN/ASIN: ASIN: B07116M6GV
Book Format(s): Soft cover, Kindle
Genre(s): Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
Review Genre: Fiction—Literary Fiction
Number of Pages: 337
 

Viet Man; by D. S. Lliteras

MWSA Review
Small irritations make wonderful essay topics. Almost anyone can describe the annoyance of a faucet dripping somewhere in the wee hours of the morning—or the incessant buzzing of a solitary mosquito seeking dinner at midnight—or the soreness of a nagging hangnail when no manicure scissors are available. Words and images flow. When it comes to agonizing pain that keeps going on day after day, paralyzing fear, or unimaginable loss, however, the story is quite different.  Words fail, memories shatter, eloquence dies on the tongue. Somehow there develops a distinct inverse relationship between the depth of our feelings and our ability to remember them and talk about them. 

Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the great number of recent novels and memoirs about the Vietnam War. Veterans have finally received approval and encouragement to talk about their experiences, only to find that they cannot easily communicate their feelings to those who were not there with them. When an author succeeds in carrying his readers directly into the jungles, the rice paddies, the strangely impersonal hootches and dusty base camps, the world of drugs and blank-eyed mama-sans, the impact of his words makes us gasp for breath and struggle for understanding.

D. S. Lliteras has managed to do exactly that in his tersely-worded literary novel, Viet Man. His narrator has no name other than “Doc.” He is a navy  corpsman; who he was back home doesn’t matter. He is young--just out of high school but equipped with perceptive powers of memory and observation. He arrives in Vietnam with no idea of what the war holds in store for him, but he is determined to take charge of this experience and meet it head on. As readers, we follow him through his first patrols, his first kill, his first visit to the local red light district, the growing recognition of his own mortality. When he describes a scene, his details are specific and honest. We don’t just learn what’s going on; we see it and smell it, feel it and hear it. In peaceful moments he speaks to us in sentences and paragraphs. When danger threatens or fear overwhelms, his mental state retreats into disjointed phrases or single words. We learn about his broken romance back home only when something triggers his own memories. And in the end, we accompany him when he returns stateside, only to find that those at home cannot begin to understand that he now lives in a different world than the one they know.

This is a powerful novel, eloquent while using the simplest of vocabulary and poetic in its clear-eyed imagery. Read it. Your understanding of this tumultuous period of our history will be forever enriched.
Review by Carolyn Schriber, MWSA Reviewer
 

Author's Synopsis:
Viet Man is about the transformation of a young man who enlisted in the Navy during the Vietnam War, was trained as a hospital corpsman, was transferred into the Marine Corps, then sent to Vietnam where he joined the elite First Recon. It is a first person narrative of alternating episodes experienced in the rear and in the bush. In the rear, Doc encounters a straw-haired mid-western farm boy who shows him how to prepare a meal of long-rats, and Loopie, a Puerto Rican from the Bronx who shares a guilt-torn confession that borders on confabulation. In the bush, Doc experiences the terror of accidentally releasing a live grenade among his men, of rushing to rescue a wounded marine, and of sharing a quiet conversation in a bunker with Trang, a South Vietnamese soldier. After being assigned to the Recon Dive Team and attending the Navy diving school in the Philip-pines, he returns to Vietnam were he engages in numerous combat dives and river operations. At the end of his tour, he is processed out of the military. And upon his return to his hometown as a veteran, he faces a jarring reception of insolence, indifference, and fragmented flashbacks. In Viet Man, D.S. Lliteras unlocks the inner mystery of a man’s combat experience. It is poetic and haunting, authentic and amusing. It is a story told by a man who ultimately survives the war and returns to his homeland, but another country will forever dwell in his soul.

Viet Man (Introspection): The bones of war strip a combatant down to the essentials: neutral mind, disjointed memories, unclear emotions.

The truth about remembering war is the inability to be factually accurate or objective. No combat veteran is able to convey to a civilian what it is all about—it’s impossible. We remember glimpses of war, punctuated by actual truth. The memory of an incident is usually fragmentary. Sometimes these fragments are long, but they are never whole. In fact, a war story that is too whole is usually suspect. A story that reveals too much either comes from a man who wasn’t there or from a man who has been beguiled by the myth surrounding his post war.

Remembering is one thing, collective remembering is another— it’s not you, it’s what others want you to be; it’s not about truth, it’s about glory. And that’s never the true story. Nobody should want to be more than the truth. 

Nobody should want the glory of war.

ISBN: 978-1-937907-32-7
Historical Fiction/ Literary Fiction
Format: Soft Cover (and Kindle)
Page count: 193

Papa's War. From the London Blitz to the Liberation of Holland; by Therese van Houten

MWSA Review
Papa’s War is the story of Dutch Captain Jan van Houten and his family told primarily through correspondence between he and his wife Marie during their years of exile in England following Germany’s conquest of Holland in 1940. Captain van Houten served in the Dutch press censorship office based in London and Marie and their daughter Treesje who were sent to live in the countryside. Therese van Houten has done an excellent job combining a personal story based on the exchange of correspondence between her father and mother during World War II with additional family anecdotes and larger facts about the war. The latter help put into perspective the mundane events described in the letters. Translating text from one language to another, particularly when the source material is so personal, presents its own challenges and I was impressed with her ability in making the translation. There’s nothing more I can add in praise except to say that Papa’s War is now a part of my reference library.
Review by Dwight Zimmerman, MWSA President and Reviewer     

Author's Synopsis:
It's September 1939 and England has declared war on Germany. Jan van Houten, a Dutch journalist working in London, bids farewell to his wife and infant daughter who are evacuated to the countryside. The young couple's almost daily correspondence, during this and subsequent separations, offers an eyewitness account of the devastation of war and its impact on families. When Jan is recruited to the press office of the Dutch government exiled in London, his letters offer a vivid description of daily life during the Blitz. In September 1944, the Dutch military authority sends him, as press censor, to a Dutch town recently liberated by allied forces. Jan arrives within days of the allies failed attempt to cross a crucial bridge across the Rhine--a failure that delays the liberation of Holland until the following May. His letters present the deprivations and horrors experienced by the Dutch during the long winter months prior to the German capitulation, as well as the ongoing deprivations in the immediate aftermath of the war

Papa's War, written by Jan' eldest daughter, places Jan's letters within well-researched historical context.

ISBN/ASIN: 9780692371138
Book Format(s): Soft cover
Genre(s): Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Biography
Review Genre: Nonfiction—History
Number of Pages: 222