My detachment : a memoir / Tracy Kidder.
In an astonishingly honest, comic, and moving account of his tour of duty in Vietnam, master storyteller Tracy Kidder writes for the first time about himself. This extraordinary memoir is destined to become a classic. Kidder was an ROTC intelligence officer, just months out of college and expecting a stateside assignment, when his orders arrived for Vietnam. There, lovesick, anxious, and melancholic, he tried to assume command of his detachment, a ragtag band of eight more-or-less ungovernable men charged with reporting on enemy radio locations. He eventually learned not only to lead them but to laugh and drink with them as they shared the boredom, pointlessness, and fear of war. Together, they sought a ghostly enemy, homing in on radio transmissions and funneling intelligence gathered by others. Kidder realized that he would spend his time in Vietnam listening in on battle but never actually experiencing it. With remarkable clarity and with great detachment, Kidder looks back at himself from across three and a half decades, confessing how, as a young lieutenant, he sought to borrow from the tragedy around him and to imagine himself a romantic hero.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780375506154
- ISBN: 0375506152
- ISBN: 9780812976168
- Physical Description: 192 pages ; 25 cm
- Edition: First edition
- Publisher: New York : Random House, [2005]
- Copyright: ©2005
Content descriptions
- General Note:
- "A portion of this work appeared in the Fall 1996 edition of TriQuarterly."--verso of title page.
- Formatted Contents Note:
- Author's note -- War stories -- The tabor's sound -- Brave lieutenants -- Pancho -- Getting hit -- Secret code word -- R & R -- Operations -- Cassius -- The death of Lieutenant Dempsey -- Short -- A visitor.
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