By John Davis
Special to THE DAILY

Vietnam. The very name conjures up the dead.

The Vietnam Syndrome is a sort of national dread of military quagmires with endless bleeding for vague ends. This is exactly the topic Tom Bissell seeks to learn about in his study of “A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam.”

But there is much more to this remarkable book.

To learn about Vietnam and what it meant, he must first learn about someone even closer. He must discover his father, who fought and was wounded in that war.

An acclaimed travel and short-story writer, he focuses his excellent writing skills upon a vacation to modern Vietnam he took with his father.

Bissell wants to know what made his father, a Vietnam Marine officer, the person he was. Once he’s learned that, the implication is he will learn of himself as well, the son of a man who went to war as a young man.

Bissell is a recognized teller of the odd, the curious and the wondrous; a young man who can fathom deep truths from what he experiences and observes.

His book is memoir, exceptional travelogue and certainly a helpful summary of history.

It is poignant because the writer seeks to learn how the war affected his dad, and possibly answer many of the questions Bissell had growing up.

It is sometimes comical, having all the typical back-and-forth of son and father.
Above all, it is painfully insightful.

We learn that Bissell sees in his father not only a person who suffered physical injury, but an emotional pain that kept him from understanding himself.

Bissell uses well-explained anecdotes that jump from family history, to the Vietnam War, to the present vacation to reveal why his father feels ambivalent and at the same time convinced about aspects of the time when he fought in a war.

Of interest for this reader was not only the concise, balanced views expressed about the conduct of the war, but also the vast reading Bissell employed to reach such conclusions.

He asks what the North Vietnamese motives were and who had decision authority in the war on both sides, and explores the character of the leaders and the villains of the tale.

He includes asides regarding the role of the Soviet Union, China, and the panoply of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administration personnel involved.

We learn once again the heart of darkness flows through us. He shows there is no one side of virtue, the other of evil.

Perhaps more notable is how Bissell was able to capture the spirit of his father, as he slowly came to grips with how he felt about the Vietnamese, the land, the causes of his wounds and the sorrows he could never articulate.

Writing in a convincing, readable, varied manner, Bissell brings us along on what is truly a journey of discovery.

Such a device as this pilgrimage to a land where danger once lurked everywhere is best used by a master writer to convey how peace has its price, too.

There is much to be learned here for the reader, and clearly there was much learned
by the author, as well as his father.

It was a pleasure to be invited along.

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