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Review date:
09/28/2007
Karen Ross Epp's book, With Love Stan: A Soldier's Letters From Vietnam To The World, is a captivating story of war at its raw, earthy, killing and being killed level of war-the story told by a 19-year old infantryman (a grunt), a fun-loving Iowa farm boy just out of high school. On October 20, 1969, Stan Ross was killed in action. Reading With Love Stan on the heals of watching Ken Burn's documentary of World War I, "The War," I was jolted by the striking parallelism of two wars at their elemental infantryman base. This, too, is an Ernie Pyle, Bill Mauldin kind of story.
Stan's sister Karen in her editing deftly splices into the flow of Stan's letters also excepts from writings of other soldiers in the killing fields of Vietnam. Here is not only a war journal, but a sensitive portrait of an Iowa Farm family lovingly identified with their son and brother: youth longing for home, letters serving as an "lifeline to sanity," photos in the wallet acquiring iconic value, home front flashbacks that give war a startling context. One also senses the alienation of the grunts toward generals and their infalated rhetoric and military dismissed as in soft jobs in the rear. Karen Ross is to be congratulated for giving voice to Vietnam War's voiceless. I have read dozen of books on Vietnam, I rank With Love Stan among ones at the top.
Robert Kreider, PhD
Retired Historian
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