Fellow Soldiers Research Articles

When Troops Shun MH Care, It’s More Than Just Stigma

When Troops Shun MH Care, It’s More Than Just Stigma

Mental Health of Asian American and Pacific Islander Military Veterans: Brief Review of an Understudied Group

The mental health of American military soldiers and veterans is of widespread concern; yet, there has been no prior review of studies on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) veterans. This article provides a brief, but comprehensive review of the mental health of AAPI veterans. An exhaustive literature search was conducted using the major medical and mental health literature databases. Of 13 identified articles, nine were empirical studies on either post-traumatic stress disorder among AAPI Vietnam veterans or health functioning of AAPI veterans based on national veteran surveys. Findings from these studies showed that some AAPI veterans who served during the Vietnam War encountered racism from fellow soldiers and race-related stressors were associated with more severe post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. As a group, AAPI veterans were found to be physically healthier than other veterans, but reported poorer mental health and were less likely to use mental health services. However, these findings were limited by the paucity of studies on AAPI veterans and suggest a need for more research on this subpopulation.

Donor performance of combat readiness skills of special forces soldiers are maintained immediately after whole blood donation

Bleeding is a major cause of death in combat settings, and combat casualties in shock may benefit from fresh whole blood (FWB) transfusion. "Buddy transfusion" is a well-known lifesaving intervention, but little is known about donor combat safety aspects immediately after blood donation. The objectives of this study were to explore the effects of donation of 1 unit of blood on physical and combat-related performance among active duty soldiers. We also investigated the feasibility of a short training program to teach nonmedics buddy transfusion. Twenty-five fit male soldiers from a special forces unit were divided into three groups and tested on 1) a Bruce protocol treadmill stress test, push-ups, and pull-ups; 2) a 50-round rapid pistol shooting test; and 3) an uphill hiking exercise carrying a 20-kg backpack. After baseline testing, the soldiers performed the tests again (2-6 min) after donating 450 mL of blood. The training program included blood collection and reinfusion procedures and we measured success rate of venipuncture, time for blood collection, and success in placing sternal intraosseous needle and reinfusing 1 unit of autologous blood. We did not find any significant decrease in performance either in physical or in shooting performance after donating blood. Nonmedic soldiers had a 100% success rate in blood collection and also infusion on fellow soldiers after a short introduction to the procedures. This study supports the fact that buddy transfusion may be feasible for healthy well-trained soldiers and does not decrease donor combat performance under ideal circumstances.

Collected Poems

Jon Raymond Rain Dragon Bloomsbury A young couple from Los Angeles seeks to reinvent their life together on an organic farm in Oregon. With quiet humor and clarity of prose, Raymond explores themes of love and betrayal, disillusionment, and fate, and the personal drama of a slowly unraveling relationship. Jason Poudrier Red Fields Mongrel Empire Press Jason Poudrier exposes the realities of war and the hardships faced by soldiers trying to return to their normal lives. Written by a soldier who served in Iraq in 2003, these haunting poems are accompanied by photographs taken by his fellow soldiers. NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2012 73 Nota Bene a peculiar arrangement, which tries to bridge (or conceal?) political differences . One can find out when and where the poems were first published in the volume’s bibliography, but it is still misleading to have a nonchronological arrangement. It is not the same whether a protest poem was published in 1991, 1996, 2006, or 2011, whether it was printed in Élet és irodalom, Mozgó világ, or Hitel, to mention just some of the politically quite different publications. For the key to the overbearing gloom and despair of most poems is how one assessed the political situation in that particular year. Also, while many pre2010 poems bemoan social conditions or political polarization, the best protest poetry was written during the past two years of Fidesz rule, during which democratic rights have been systematically eroded and the legislature became the undisguised means to manipulate power relations. That said, there are many excellent poems in this collection, starting from representatives of the older generation —Sándor Csoóri, Ottó Orbán, and the already mentioned György Petri (of the three, only Csoóri is still alive)—to younger ones, among whom this reader particularly liked the work of Balázs Szálinger and Virág Erdős. Most of the poems are informed by frequent allusions to Hungarian literary tradition, which reduces their translatability but makes them familiar and easier to connect with the experiences of contemporary native readers. Two more things bear mentioning in connection with this intriguing anthology. Some of the wittiest and politically balanced poems in Édes hazám were written by Transylvanians, by the poet-politician Béla Markó, Ferenc András Kovács, and Péter Demény. The latter’s “Haza-szvit” may not be the best poem in the collection , but it is one of the most biting pieces in its irony and mordant selfirony : “I would be a Hungarian, but I am a Hungaroruin / instead of living I am Trianonizing” (Magyar lennék de rommagyar vagyok, / élet helyett trianonkodom). The latter expression alludes to the obsession with the unjust 1920 Trianon peace treaty, which has lately become the hallmark of the extreme right in Hungary. As for poetry written about their homeland by Hungarians living in western Europe and the United States, this collection is woefully underrepresented . Out of sixty-four poets, only two westerners found favor with the editor : György Faludy and Győző Határ. In this respect, there has not been much change since 1990, the year of the first free elections in Hungary. George Gömöri London Jack Gilbert. Collected Poems. New York. Knopf. 2012. isbn 9780307269683 Jack Gilbert’s Collected Poems may be one of the most important collections to appear this decade. Gilbert has an enduring mystique for his contemporaries . Although he once hung out in San Francisco with Allen Ginsberg (he is said to have helped Ginsberg write “Howl”) and has won some of the higher poetic accolades in the American poetry world, he essentially shuns fame and publicity, is affiliated with no university, and has spent much of his life living in seclusion here or abroad. This relative isolation 74 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY reviews has been instrumental in shaping a poetic style of uncommon lucidity, a voice that speaks directly and with philosophical force. Gilbert is a juggler of contradictions , delighting in their strangeness the speaker of his poems is continually invigorated rather than daunted by the paradoxes of life; deprivation and loneliness may come but are seen as ultimately fruitful. In “How Much of That Is Left in...

The Watch

66 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY reviews Kristín Ómarsdóttir. Children in Reindeer Woods. Lytton Smith, tr. Rochester, New York. Open Letter. 2012. isbn 9781934824351 In the opening scene of Children in Reindeer Woods, Rafael and some fellow soldiers come across a farm. The soldiers murder its civilian occupants (men, women, and children) in cold blood. We learn nothing more of the newly deceased. Rafael then turns on his cohorts, dispatching them with ease and without remorse. This is the last killing he will do, he hopes. Rafael is tired of war. Having hid in the bushes, Billie escapes the atrocities. The former soldier immediately takes a liking to the young girl and assumes a guardian role. At gunpoint, Rafael forces the child (who got dirty crawling around in the dirt) to undress, bathe, and then to play with her Barbie dolls, as if this day were like any other. Billie unquestioningly obliges his every whim. The mood is disconcerting. Children in Reindeer Woods, Kristín Ómarsdóttir’s first novel to be translated from Icelandic into English, remains unsettling to the very end. The farm (a home for children called Children in Reindeer Woods) sits in the middle of a war zone. While it remains murky as to who is fighting whom and why, there are hints that a tremendous struggle for scarce resources is underway. Still, Rafael is through with it all. “I’ve gotten tired of killing, Billie,” he confesses . “Killing gives me headaches. I really don’t want to dig any more graves, or to hide any more bodies. That’s not my job as a soldier.” And so, Rafael takes up farming . Soon after his bloody arrival, he tackles the chores once handled by the murdered proprietors: feeding the chickens, milking the cow, tending to the vegetable garden, and mending the outbuildings. Billie, citing child labor laws, refuses to pitch in and help. Unfortunately for Rafael and Billie, the war they strive to escape never quite leaves them alone. These interruptions come in the form of visitors: tax collectors, a paratrooper, a nun, and a shepherd, each with their own needs. The coupling of Rafael and Billie is, on the face of it, dubious at the least, and creepy at worst; how can the two overcome such trying conditions ? The parent-child relationship of Rafael and Billie during a time of extreme circumstances is reminiscent of the father-son tandem in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Occasionally, ChildreninReindeer Woods also presents a unique reading experience. Ómarsdóttir sometimes uses a trick usually reserved for poetry : repetition. To take one memorable example: “Rafael set the garden rake against the house wall, beside the soldier’s boot, the soldier’s boot and the garden rake side by side, the soldier’s boot and the garden rake, the soldier’s boot and the garden rake up against the white-painted house porch . . .” Fantasy, too, exerts itself on the story. A good bit of the novel consists of Billie’s descriptions of her father (who is somewhere far from the farm), a puppet whose fate is determined by masters pulling his strings from another universe. The recurring tangent seems out of place, but the eventual payoff is profound and rewarding. “Perhaps you think it strange,” lectures a visiting tax collector, “that the tax authority should take the trouble to visit an isolated farm during a war—but even though the world is out of breath, everyone must stick to his role. That’s the only way we’ll make it through this horseplay in one piece.” The conclusion leaves the reader wondering if Rafael and Billie can pull through, together. Shaun Randol New York Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya. The Watch. New York. Hogarth. 2012. isbn 9780307955890 At the beginning of The Watch, Nizam, a young woman from a mountain village in Afghanistan, arrives in a clearing outside a US outpost, using her hands to push the rickety cart carrying her legless body over the rough terrain. To the troops, who recently took Stieg Larsson The Expo Files Daniel Poohl, ed. / Laurie Thompson, tr. MacLehose Press Originally published in the Swedish journal Expo, Stieg Larsson’s articles on right-wing extremism, racism...

Ares: Brother, Commander, Deity or Son? A New Interpretation of the Ares Tombstone

The so-called Ares tombstone, currently kept in the British Museum under inventory number GRA 1973.4-22.1 [Sc. 2271], is one of the most beautiful examples of Roman sepulchral art to come out of Egypt. Although the stela has been studied many times before, scholars are still intrigued by its problematical relief scene, depicting two full-length standing male figures with similar facial features. The Greek epitaph, inscribed underneath the relief, informs us that the stela was set up to commemorate the veteran Ares. Another Ares is mentioned, but his identity and relationship to the deceased are uncertain. Various theories have been proposed, identifying this Ares successively as a brother, commander or fellow soldier of the deceased, as Ares, the god of war, or as the deceased himself, but all of them have been refuted. The author proposes a new interpretation of the epitaph and relief.

Strengthening Network Ties through Mentoring of Alienated Personnel

This study examines the social network aspects of mentoring in order to suggest ways to manage alienated public employees. It also explores the impact of mentoring that requires closer relationships between mentors and mentees to develop network ties. Networks of trust, respect, and friendship among soldiers in four barracks of the Republic of Korea Army (two experimental groups and two control groups) were measured using a social network survey. Alienated soldiers in the experimental groups were mentored by fellow soldiers with stronger ties, while no such mentoring was conducted in the control groups. After three months of mentoring, changes in network strengths were found among alienated soldiers in the experimental groups, while no significant changes were found among alienated soldiers in the control groups. This study is expected to contribute to human resource management by suggesting ways to strengthen the network ties of alienated personnel through mentoring.

Mentoring Billy No-Mates: Strengthening Network Ties through Mentoring

This study examines the social network aspects of mentoring in order to suggest ways to manage alienated public employees. It also explores the impact of mentoring that requires closer relationships between mentors and mentees to develop network ties. Networks of trust, respect, and friendship among soldiers in four barracks of the Republic of Korea Army (two experimental groups and two control groups) were measured using a social network survey. Alienated soldiers in the experimental groups were mentored by fellow soldiers with stronger ties, while no such mentoring was conducted in the control groups. After three months of mentoring, changes in network strengths were found among alienated soldiers in the experimental groups, while no significant changes were found among alienated soldiers in the control groups. This study is expected to contribute to human resource management by suggesting ways to strengthen the network ties of alienated personnel through mentoring.

A Soldier’s Suicide: Understanding its Effect on Fellow Soldiers

A Soldier’s Suicide: Understanding its Effect on Fellow Soldiers

The impact of killing on mental health symptoms in Gulf War veterans.

This study examined the impact of killing on posttraumatic stress symptomatology (PTSS), depression,and alcohol use among 317 U.S. Gulf War veterans. Participants were obtained via a national registry ofGulf War veterans and were mailed a survey assessing deployment experiences and postdeploymentmental health. Overall, 11% of veterans reported killing during their deployment. Those who reportedkilling were more likely to be younger and male than those who did not kill. After controlling forperceived danger, exposure to death and dying, and witnessing killing of fellow soldiers, killing was asignificant predictor of PTSS, frequency and quantity of alcohol use, and problem alcohol use. Militarypersonnel returning from modern deployments are at risk of adverse mental health symptoms related tokillinginwar.Postdeploymentmentalhealthassessmentandtreatmentshouldaddressreactionstokillingin order to optimize readjustment.Keywords: killing, veterans, gulf war, PTSD, alcohol

“I am the hero of a fairy tale”: The US-Mexico War and American Manhood in E. D. E. N. Southworth's <em>The Hidden Hand</em>

Few things are in worse taste than for man needlessly to busy himself in women's work; and yet man never appears in more interesting attitude than when, by skill in such matters, he can save mother or wife from care and suffering. Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman's Home A few short chapters after Capitola Black defends her honor in duel with Craven Le Noir and captures the local bandit Black Donald in E. D. E. N. Southworth's The Hidden Hand, another young and young adventurer, Traverse Rocke, fights valiantly in the US-Mexico War (449, 432). When his fellow soldier falls in siege, Traverse takes the American flag from him and march[es] into the very mouths of the cannon that were vomiting fire upon [him]. Facing brutal Mexican army, he does not turn away; instead, springing upon one of the guns which continued to belch forth fire, he thrice wave[s] the flag over his head, and then plant[s] it upon the battery! (425). The moment is one of heroic triumph for man who had earlier, on a weary day when hope and faith beneath the weight gave way, abandoned his dreams of becoming doctor and joined the army, but who has also quickly realized that as soldier he is entirely out of his vocation (344, 400). In Mexico, Traverse endures the rough life of soldier__the poor quality of the uniforms, the drilling, close quarters, coarse food__and, hounded by Colonel Le Noir and his cronies, nearly dies at the hands of military tribunal (343). As he explains to his friend and fellow soldier Herbert Greyson, he is not even sure why American men are fighting in Mexico: If foreign foe invaded her shores, yes; but what had I to do with invading another's country?__enlisting for war of the rights and wrongs of which I know no more than anybody else does! (345). A moment of crisis in Traverse's life, the US-Mexico War is also one of redemption: He eventually returns to his hometown decorated war hero and becomes successful doctor, rescuing Capitola's mother from asylum and marrying his sweetheart. In novel where geographical location and setting are significant__the gothic plantation in Virginia, for example, is far from Edenic paradise and is instead associated with images of darkness, evil, and turmoil (Jones, This Dainty Woman's 7o)__these moments in Mexico have not been adequately studied. Christopher Looby indicates that the scenes were likely Southworth's nostalgic nod to the romanticized Mexican War stories that frequented Robert Bonner's New York Ledger during the initial serialization of The Hidden Hand in 1859 (206).(1) Looby notes, though, that [w]hatever the intrinsic interest of these scenes in Mexico, they are strictly unnecessary to the central plot, and he suggests that Southworth's decision to include them was ploy to [stall] for time until fresh inspiration came (204, 2o4n34). But such analysis overlooks the fact that The Hidden Hand opens on the eve of the Mexican conflict and the same year as Texas's annexation__a cold, dark, and stormy Halloween night in 1845__and closes three years later, shortly after the signing of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Peace, too, appears on the domestic front, as the novel closes with happy series of reunions and double set of marriage vows. The United States' declaration of war on Mexico fed women writers' growing and widespread concern for the failures of American manhood. As the atmosphere of war and unrest worsened during the 184os, many Americans began to fear that there might be no peaceful solution to the Mexican conflict and that their nation could well be speeding toward civil war. Men were held responsible for this degeneration, and, in literature, increasing number of female characters, like Cap, learn to rely on themselves and God for spiritual, physical, and financial support. Women, Robin Miskolcze explains, presented an alternative vision of nation untainted by men's selfishness, greed, or desire to move west (133). …

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Persistent Diagnostic Challenge

trauma. Some mental health professionals and the media attempted to connect his killing of fellow soldiers to “pre-PTSD”1 syndrome because the alleged shooter was about to deploy to the Middle East. Therefore, careful consideration of an individual’s reaction to trauma and adversity continues to be affected by the media, sensationalism, and lack of critical thinking. This article supports Treisman and McHugh, who suggest that further critical thinking is needed about this category.2 The article concludes with a review of a study, which used a before-and-after comparison of subjects’ reactions to a traumatic experience, highlighting premorbid vulnerabilities to trauma.

Josef Kavalier's <I>Odyssey</I>: Epic Echoes in Chabon's <I>The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay</I>

Josef Kavalier’s Odyssey: Epic Echoes in Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay This paper shows that the numerous parallels between Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Chabon 2000) and the Odyssey reveal the novelist’s attempt to portray his hero as a Jewish Odysseus. Although thus far unexplored by scholars, I illustrate how Chabon’s work contains episodes, structures and characters that correspond to many Odyssean exemplars, including the Telemachia (Od. 1-4), Cyclopeia (Od. 9), Nekuia (Od. 11), Anagnorismos (Od. 16), and Toxou Thesis / Mnesetrophonia (Od. 21-22), as well as themes such as the “Wrath of Poseidon,” and the “Tempted but Faithful and Talented Wife.” Chabon himself invites a study of this sort, having written recently that the Odyssey and its hero form the original paradigm of the “Adventure Story” – especially for his Jewish characters (Chabon 2007, 201-203). With World War II as its centerpiece, Chabon tells the story of young Josef Kavalier’s escape from Nazi-occupied Prague, his friendship and comic book collaboration with his cousin Sam Klayman, his enlistment and service in the War, subsequent disappearance, and dramatic return. Like Odysseus, Joe Kavalier is a man of many talents and a master of escape; he leaves his woman and son for a distant war, leaving behind a mentor who cares for his son. Like Odysseus in the Cyclopeia, Kavalier loses fellow soldiers to death in a cave, from which he himself escapes while clinging to a shaggy animal. In a scene parallel to the Nekuia, he visits the dead, where he reaches out to his unburied family, and encounters the spirit of a wise old man, who directs him homeward. Disaster at sea deprives him of a loved one. The plots of his pro-Nazi nemesis Carl Ebling recall Poseidon’s wrath at Odysseus (particularly when Ebling attacks Kavalier with a homemade bomb hidden in a decorative trident at a Neptune-themed bar mitzvah party). Both absent heroes lose their mothers to death. Each longs to return to his woman, who shares many of his own talents. Their families assume that they have been lost at sea. Both men mourn the death of a beloved and loyal dog. They return home having lost all of their companions, and having created an artistic account of their own stories (cf. Apologoi [Od. 9-12]). So too, both Joe and Odysseus return in disguise, alone, but in possession of great hidden wealth. Both stories contain a Telemachia, in which the sons seeking their fathers discover a new “shiny” world. Both men identify themselves to their sons in the workplace of an old man and plan their final homecomings in league with their sons – with whom each has secret meetings and communications. Their wives suffer the pressures of remaining chaste, and undergo unaccustomed cosmetic treatments to increase their attractiveness to other men – while simultaneously remaining faithful to their own. Each woman hesitates to accept fully her returning husband at first, but eventually does so heartily. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a robust continuation of the classical tradition: a polytropic man’s epic nostos, built upon the quintessential Homeric adventure story. It is part of what Chabon elsewhere calls the “five-thousand-year Odyssey” of the Jewish people (Chabon 2007, 203).Chabon, Michael. 2000. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. New York.Chabon, Michael. 2007. Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure. New York.

Secret Handshakes and Decoder Rings: The Queer Space of Don't Ask/Don't Tell

Don't Ask/Don't Tell (DADT) prohibits gays and lesbians from openly serving in the US military on the basis that out gays and lesbians will decrease the military's ability to function by harming the military's strong levels of camaraderie and cohesion within its ranks. Based on interviews with gay and lesbian military veterans, I find that DADT is a site of multiple paradoxes around both gay identity and the military as a whole. Rather than protect or strengthen the camaraderie and cohesion in the military, these bonds that connect members of the military are weakened by requiring gay and lesbian personnel to hide part of themselves from fellow soldiers. Further, in prohibiting gay identities from being openly expressed, DADT actually creates a queer space in which military gays and lesbians interact with one another and create their own form of military gay identity.

Our Version of Normal

Our Version of Normal

“Self-enlightenment” in the Context of Radical Social Change: A Neo-Confucian Critique of John Dewey's Conception of Intelligence

Introduction A man is or blind or unintelligent--lacking in mind--just in the degree in which in any activity he not know what he is about, namely, the probable consequence of his acts. (1) This sentence from John Dewey's Democracy and Education (1916/1966) highlights his effort in building a theory of intelligence which he saw as critical to a democratic society. In his later work, A Common Faith (1934), Dewey claimed that there is but one sure road of access to truth-the road of patient, cooperative inquiry operating by means of observation, experiment, record and controlled reflection. (2) These claims, almost two decades apart, are illustrative of Dewey's lifelong faith in cooperative social intelligence to solve the problems that emerge in human experience. Dewey emphasizes the degree to which human activities cannot be adequately understood as an individual's isolated efforts: Conduct is always shared ... It is social, whether bad or good. (3) This conception of intelligence appears to require a purpose to guide action and thus make it intelligent: intelligence is the effective connection between the individual and his environment, between the present circumstance and future goals. But what happens when the gap between previous experience and current experience is so wide that the principle of continuity implicit in purposefulness is stretched beyond the breaking point? Such a condition might be experienced as a void in intelligibility since the inability to frame viable purposes in a context of rapid and profound change short circuits the connection between present circumstance and future purpose which constitutes intelligence. Such conditions would seem to define a paralysis of intelligence, in a Deweyan sense, at the very moment when intelligence is most needed. What then? This predicament is dramatized in a recent popular Chinese TV series, Storm Troops (2007), which explores the rupture of continuity in a rapidly changing contemporary Chinese society. (4) The lead character, Xu Sanduo, was born into an extremely poor family in a remote village and recruited into the Army when he is 19 years old. Xu is honored by his opportunity to join the Army and makes his greatest effort to perform well in training. However, the gap between his rural experience and his current induction into the social organization of a rapidly modernizing Chinese military is so wide that he does not know what he is about. His answer to any question is a timid I don't know. In Dewey's words, he seems to be lacking in mind. His superiors and fellow soldiers deem him too to be a qualified soldier. After training, he is assigned to guard a site so remote and so valueless that it seems to be the most pointless position in the whole army. Because no one comes to supervise them--to define purpose for them--his fellow soldiers kill time by playing cards, also playing with this seemingly hopeless situation and forgotten land they guard. Though Xu not know what he should do, he refuses to kill time like his comrades. The only thing he is sure of is that he should do meaningful things. So, he builds a road. But in this setting, the road itself is purposeless; it goes nowhere since no one will come to use the road. However, even though the road may be meaningless at this point, building the road as an activity is meaningful for Xu. creates meaning in his life through the action of building a road, even though it is not clear to him why he builds it, other than the vague feeling that he is supposed to be doing something meaningful. He not know what he is about; he is just busy being about it. appears to be, then, by Dewey's measure, stupid or blind or unintelligent, and as a consequence suffers his peers' scorn, discrimination and isolation. (5) In the end, his deed is recognized by the head of the Army and he is promoted to a more important position, becoming not only a qualified but a distinguished soldier. …

Steel and Blood: South Vietnamese Armor and the War for Southeast Asia (review)

Reviewed by: Steel and Blood: South Vietnamese Armor and the War for Southeast Asia Jay Veith Steel and Blood: South Vietnamese Armor and the War for Southeast Asia. By Ha Mai Viet. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2008. ISBN 978-1-59114-919-4. Maps. Photographs. Appendixes. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. Pp. xi, 458. $40.00. Of the several thousand tomes published about the Vietnam War, only a few English-language viewpoints written by our Vietnamese allies grace the bookshelves. The South Vietnamese perspective, constrained by cultural and linguistic [End Page 1020] barriers, is unfortunately marginalized in the war's literature for Americans. Due to these barriers, U.S. historians, even if interested in South Vietnamese motivations and actions, are left with little except military adviser reports, obscure embassy cables, or shallow news articles. Thus reduced to bit players, the South Vietnamese have become caricatures; either cowardly incompetents or corrupt warlords, with an occasional brave soul or hard-fighting unit briefly mentioned. A more balanced and deeper picture of America's wartime partner has long been needed. Former armor Colonel Ha Mai Viet has offered precisely that, a penetrating insight into the battlefield contributions of the South Vietnamese tank officers who fought alongside their American friends. His book details the contributions of a small but influential element of the ARVN, its armor/cavalry forces. Unknown to most, by war's end the armor branch had grown considerably from its French roots. In 1975, Brigadier General Tran Quang Khoi's 3rd Armored Cavalry Brigade, the III Corps organic tank unit, was undoubtedly the most powerful brigade-size element in the ARVN. Reflecting a rare combined arms outlook, Khoi built a formidable combat out-fit from previously independent armor, artillery, engineer, and ranger units. His merged brigade was still defending outside of Saigon when the final surrender came. Viet spent ten years traveling the globe, tracking down and interviewing many of his former comrades-in-arms. He portrays the heroic deeds of his fellow soldiers while unflinchingly condemning South Vietnamese leadership errors. Covering two main topics, Combat and Military History, Viet outlines twenty-three separate battles from the ARVN side. The bulk of the Combat section covers the Tet Offensive, Lam Son 719, the Easter Offensive, and the bloody retreat in 1975 from the Central Highlands. He also provides rich details on unknown battles such as the terrible clash at Dambe in Cambodia in 1971. The Military History part provides unique facts on the formation and growth of the ARVN armor/cavalry branch from 1954 to 1975, including unit commanders, weapons, and organizational structure. Brilliantly translated, no future work on Vietnam battles will be complete without reviewing this publication. Colonel Viet has provided a tremendous amount of fresh information, almost all of it oral history. That is the strength and weakness of the book. Like all interviews, the ones in this book only provide the participant's side. For example, the account by Colonel Nguyen Van Dong concerning the Central Highlands retreat, while new and highly informative, perpetuates the myth that Brigadier General Pham Duy Tat, the II Corps Ranger Commander, was responsible for the convoy on Route 7B. Tat, when presented with Dong's remarks, categorically denied the accusations, a point of view absent from Viet's book. This is not to cast fault, as Viet was only interested in the stories of his armor colleagues. Yet without access to That's perspective, the unsuspecting historian would perpetuate the story. Unfortunately, as General Cao Van Vien once told the reviewer, the war remains much like the movie "Rashomon": the truth is subjective to the individual. Colonel Viet nevertheless deserves enormous credit for his industrious research and fine account. His is a major and much needed addition to the history of the Vietnam War. [End Page 1021] Jay Veith Bear, Delaware Copyright © 2009 Society for Military History

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Being a Reserve Soldier

Drawing on social identity theory, the present article examines the extent to which soldier identification with the small unit is related to outcomes having increased importance to reserve military service. Measures of social identity have stronger associations with unit membership, whereas measures of personal identity do not. Soldiers’ reports of positive experiences when first entering the unit are more strongly and positively related to measures of social identity than to measures of personal identity. Measures of social identity show positive relationships with group-relevant outcomes, such as commitment to the unit and perceived readiness of the unit and fellow soldiers. Measures of personal identity show positive relationships with individually relevant outcomes, such as reporting for duty for contractual reasons and letting their families down and perceived personal readiness for combat. Results imply improving specific small-unit relations and developing abstract beliefs to increase reservists’ perceived readiness and commitment to their part-time military service.

The Coping Paradox: Work, Stress, and Coping in the U.S. Army

The military environment has unique stressors. This study investigates the types of stressors, appraisals, and coping responses of U.S. soldiers and their leaders. A qualitative analysis of interviews indicates that the traditional coping buffers of social drinking and seeking social support from fellow soldiers, family, and leaders can potentially serve as sources of stress. While this paradox may be a result of the unique types of stressors in the military work environment, these results should direct researchers to better understand individuals' perceptions and appraisals of stress, with a focus on the meaning of stress, given contextual factors inherent in the workplace. The findings are discussed in relation to the literature on the impact of stress on physical and psychological health.