In the Shadow of Vietnam

Twenty-three powerful, moving, angry and wise essays published over a period of 15 years on subjects ranging from South Africa to Central America, the United States to the Soviet Union, all bound together by the lingering physical, psychological, political and intellectual sensibilities the author first developed as a young enlisted Marine during the Vietnam war. Four of the essays deal with Ehrhart’s second return to Vietnam in 1990.

Memoirist, poet, editor, and Marine veteran, W.D. Ehrhart taught English and history at the Haverford School in Haverford, Pennsylvania. The author of twenty books, his prose and poetry have appeared in hundreds of publications including the Los Angeles Times, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Utne Reader, Reader’s Digest, American Poetry Review and the Virginia Quarterly Review. He was a major presence in the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary The Vietnam War.

W.D. Ehrhart
Format: softcover (5.5 x 8.5)
Pages: 208
Bibliographic Info: index
Copyright Date: 2011 [1991]
pISBN: 978-0-7864-6727-3
eISBN: 978-0-7864-8774-5
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      iv
Preface      ix

On the Death of Robert Lowell      1
On Michael Herr’s Dispatches      4
Politics and Poetry in South Africa      8
The Long Road Home to Intimacy      12
An Address to Middle America      17
Places and Ways to Live      21
The United States Screw & Bolt Company      30
Learning the Hard Way      46
Waiting for the Fire      53
Preserving the American Myth      58
Going Back      61
Soldier-Poets of the Vietnam War      82
Los Norteamericanos y Centroamdrica      100
On Memorial Day      119
Stealing Hubcaps      121
On The Genre of Silence      129
A Letter to McGeorge Bundy      135
On Flag-Burning      139
Teaching the Vietnam War      143
On U.S. Policy Toward Post-War Vietnam      149
Don’t Stand on Protocol      153
Hue City Re-Visited      158
A Common Language      166
Military History of W. D. Ehrhart      189

Index      191
About the Author      196

“As a poet and editor, Bill Ehrhart is clearly one of the major figures in Vietnam War literature”—John Newman, curator of the Vietnam War Literature Collection at Colorado State University; “one of the great poets and writers of nonfiction produced by the Vietnam War”—The Nation; “a valuable addition to collections on the Vietnam war…. Recommended”—Book Report; “topics include apartheid, American intervention in Central America, and the return of the author (a veteran) to Viet Nam”—Indochina Interchange.