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    Fragments: The long coming home from Vietnam
    Fragments: The long coming home from Vietnam
    Fragments: The long coming home from Vietnam
    Ebook101 pages30 minutes

    Fragments: The long coming home from Vietnam

    By Bruce Berger

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    About this ebook

    Bruce Berger, the author, finally came home 50 years after the Vietnam war when his memories crystallized into the 34 poems in this chapbook. He shipped to Vietnam as an Infantryman in 1970 but was assigned most of the year to the Casualty Branch of the 101st Airborne Division at Camp Eagle, near Phu Bai. As “next-of-kin” editor, he wrote hundreds of sympathy letters to grieving families back home for loss of their soldier, and sometimes helped gather fallen brothers on battle grounds to begin their long journeys home.

    Through this lens, his poems evoke an overwhelming sense of loss on many fronts: the brave American soldiers who gave their lives in the long war; a village of South Vietnamese widows; the thousands of bui doi, innocent but reviled half-breed (Amerasian) children; the empty afterness of battle grounds and burials; the long, deadly reach of Agent Orange and PTSD into veterans’ lives still today; and the thunderous silence of missing parades back home. Writing these poems brought him home.

    Many of the poems are illustrated with artwork created by members of the Providence Art Club in Rhode Island. All earnings from this book will be donated to the Vietnam Veterans of America.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWordWorthyPress, LLC
    Release dateMay 30, 2020
    ISBN9780985504823
    Fragments: The long coming home from Vietnam
    Author

    Bruce Berger

    Bruce Berger grew up in suburban Chicago. A poet and nonfiction writer, he is best known for a series of books exploring the intersections of nature and culture in desert settings. The first of these, The Telling Distance, won the 1990 Western States Book Award and the 1991 Colorado Book Award. His articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Sierra, Orion Magazine, Gramophone, and numerous literary quarterlies; his poems have appeared in Poetry, Barron’s, Orion Magazine, and various literary reviews in the United States, Scotland, and India, and have been collected in Facing the Music.

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