Review date:
03/01/2008
"A book I will never forget!" Cheryl Unruh
Cheryl Unruh, publisher of the web site, Flyover People Kansas, www.flyoverpeople.net writes,
Have you ever wanted to know what it's like to trudge through the jungles of Vietnam, a knife in one hand, rifle in the other, death looming around you?
Well me neither.
But nevertheless, now I have a better understanding of what the Vietnam War was like. I read a first-hand account of the rain and the heat, the jungle darkness, rats, homesickness, bamboo rash, sounds in the night, and coming face-to-face with the enemy.
Last night I finished Karen Ross Epp's With Love Stan: A Soldier's Letters From Vietnam To The World.
Karen Ross Epp (who taught school for 30 years in Newton, Kansas) and her three siblings grew up on a farm in southeast Iowa, near the small town of Mt. Pleasant. In 1968, her brother Stan, 19, enlisted in the Army.
Stan Ross fought on the front lines and wrote home nearly every day, often scribbling lines on paper from rain-soaked foxholes.
From July 10: " I guess I'm telling you too much aren't I Mom? The way your last letter sounded, you're going to end up making yourself sick, worring too much." Stan wrote.
"But in the infantry, nothing happens that isn't bad new, either someone gets killed or hurt. That's all a person sees. Believe me, it's hard to write a letter of good news."
The letters are not necessarily grim or gory, but you do hear what it's like to go for weeks without taking your boots off, to never be out of the rain, to long for a bed with sheets.
I wanted to go back in time and change things. I wanted to save Stan from the misery, from the loneliness, from the bullet. I got to know Stan Ross through these letters he wrote to his family. The letters reflect a sweet and thoughtful young man at 19, 20. Stan was well-liked and respected by his fellow soldiers, many of whom Karen has located and interviewed in recent years.
In the book, in between Stan's letters, Karen adds some personal and family background information, comments from Stan's army buddies, and also details about the war that she found in other books written by soldiers. But much of the book is in Stan's voice.
I recommend this book. Highly.
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