5 comments about Soldier's Heart: An Inspirational Memoir and Inquiry of War.

1. This book details Lee Burkins' experience in the Vietnam war and its aftermath. Written in a non-linear fashion, the book is a collection of poignant vignettes and memories. This allows for a psychologically realisitc and "big-picture" way of understanding the story of Mr. Burkins' past. Jumping between the mountainous jungles of Vietnam, Hawaiian VA hospitals, and civilian life in the States, the reader gets a simultaneous sense of the past, present, and future. What is most truly impressive, however, is not the story of the war itself, but the story of Lee's path in reckoning with the trauma of war, coming to terms with it, and purifying his heart.



2. Amid the increasing number of books about Vietnam this book is quite special. It is the personal memoir of a man who spent his time in Vietnam in the Special Forces, and has spent much of his life since recovering from the experience. Thus the narrrative covers his youth and joining up, service in Vietnam including fighting with the Montagnards, returning home, pineapple farming in Hawaii, another stint of military service again in Hawaii, and a lot of hard work fighting for veterans' rights and counseling other vets. What is striking about this narrative, however, is that it does not follow a linear conventional structure. Rather it has a sort of spiraling structure, with each successive section looping back or forward in time and space. But this isn't confusing, it is in fact very effective in conveying that sense of acute dislocation that accompanies post-traumatic stress and is suffered by so many veterans.
   It is a tribute too to the author's writing style that the reader is bowled along; I read most of it at a single sitting. The stories too in themselves are gripping, by turns sad, humorous, disturbing (some very disturbing), and inspiring. But the main sense that comes across is immensely life-affirming, a real impression of the author as a man who has faced his demons and is coming out the other side.
   Overall, this book is a good read. More than that too, it is one man's intensely personal testament to the post-Vietnam trauma of American society, and thus deserves a significant place in the broader corpus of the literature of war.



3. Forget the typical cliches like "riveting", "incredible", and "fascinating" because Lee's work goes above and beyond all of that. This is not simply a book or a memoir - it truly is an "Inquiry of War" and war is something that Lee Burkins has a fair amount of knowledge in. From the jungles and bomb craters that surround the Ho Chi Minh Trail system inside Laos and Cambodia, Lee and RT Vermont fight for their lives against hoards of North Vietnamese Army troops and the suicidal odds of MACV-SOG's secret war. But perhaps the most difficult war Lee wages is the one that dominates his psyche and his mental well-being. This is one of the most powerful books I have ever read; it is raw and unbridled and remarkably unique. Thanks for everything, Lee.



4. I have just finished reading Lee Burkins' remarkable book, Soldier's Heart. It touched me deeply and opened my eyes and my heart to so much that I could never have otherwise known. Those of us that sat on the sidelines during the Vietnam war - regardless of our politics - were not only blinded to the plight of those who fought, but also, through our own lack of concern, inadvertently contributed to their pain. In writing, Lee has reached out to us, reconnected, and given us all the opportunity to heal. For this, I am profoundly grateful.
   
   I will be passing Soldier's Heart on to my adult children. It should be mandatory reading for their generation and those that follow. Without access to a warrior's experience and vision, how will they ever be able to understand the human costs of contemporary warfare, or have any hope of piercing the veils of untruths and diversionary distractions that constantly envelope them. Lee Burkins' painful but life affirming book is a gift to us all.



5. While deployed to Iraq as a Mental Health Officer, I fortuitously discovered Lee' Burkin's Soldier's Heart, while searching for inspiring books to enhance my work with combat soldiers. I was so intrigued by what I read, I reached out to the author, who allowed me to interview him from Iraq, regarding his journey beginning 37 years before in Vietnam. What I wanted, and what is in short supply today are warriors who have been transformed by their experiences, versus being labeled by themselves or others as broken or permanently damaged. From his authentic PTSD "earned" as a SOG operator and healer himself (The author was an S.F. medic) through Post Traumatic and Stress-Induced Growth, Burkins thrives psychically where many did not, largely because of his transformative journey, and personally resilient personality, combined with a relentless pursuit of justice for other veterans, what the Buddhist's term "For the sake of all living beings".
   
   Like many of the soldiers I served with in Special Forces, in the end it is Burkin's unconventional outlook and relentless pursuit of authentic experience which take him from Southeast Asia, through Asian Metaphysical Arts like Tai Chi and Chi Gung, only to emerge as an advocate for peace and compassion. The book is controversial, direct and written in a narrative format which easily slips between deep penetration missions, authentic psychotherapy sessions and historical VA struggles, culminating in a warrior attaining no less than a Phoenix-like transformation. As Erik Erikson might call it, the author attains integrity versus despair which gripped so many of his generation and is affecting my brothers and sisters in arms today.
   
   Applicable for today? Absolutely, as the author has sat with his journey long enough to convey it with wisdom and compassion and relevancy during our time. Easily could be catalogued under Special Operations, psychotherapy, martial arts or wisdom literature. Especially recommended for those who will not volunteer themselves as a passport into the soul of a warrior who transmutes his suffering and experiences and brings back the teachings for us all of us with ears and hearts to listen.

1 comments about Persia in the Great Game: Sir Percy Sykes: Explorer, Consul, Soldier, Spy.

1. Persia was interested in the Great Game as one of the possible routes to India for the Russians and for this reason became the object of England's important presence in this area. The political situation of Iran today finds it roots in the confilctive relationships between Britain and Russia during the Victorian Age and the early Nineteenth Century.
   
   Sir Percy Sykes was one of the principal englishmen that influenced the permanence of the English in Persia and due to his remarkable caracter is still rememberd there today.
   
   Antony Wynn draws abbundantly from Sir Percy's, his sister Ella's and his wife Evelyn's diaries, official documents and correspondance to bring back to life this rocky and slightly megalomaniac server of his country. From training in the cavalry in India, to the extensive explorations of Kashmir, Ladakh, Turkmenistan and the whole Persian territory, Sykes' career is followed to the founding of the Kerman consulate and after that the permanence in Meshed, where he probably really influenced the insucess of the Russian attempt to annex the North of Persia.
   After WWI Russia and Britain became allies and the services of Sykes became very important. Eventhough a diplomat and not a military he founded and commanded the South Persia Rifles that became the first modern Persian army. In contrast to the Central Governement he managed to check the influence of the Germans and check the tribal disorders mustered up by Wassmuss and defeated the raiding tribes of the South ensuring the safety of commerce.
   After the war, Lord Curzon showed no sympathy for this knowledgable but difficult to treat military/diplomat, and practically determined his retirement. Sir Percy however had many arrows to his bow and through conferences, articles, books and public apprearances managed to support his vast family.
   
   Antont Wynn writes with detail and is never boring. Historical biographies gain much when contextualization is attempted. In this aspect I found the book a little defective even if the bibliography and the recalls to other sources is satisfying. The photographs add flavour to the reading helping to visualize the caracters.
   
   This book is an indispensable read for the understanding of how the Iranian opinion of the West has formed and is still ongoing. The description of the basis of the economical and political relationships between England and Iran are still part of our current situation.

No comments about Medicine and Duty: The World War I Memoir of Captain Harold W. Mcgill, Medical Officer 31st Battalion C.E.F. (Legacies Shared).

No comments about Frontier Cavalryman: Lieutenant John Bigelow With the Buffalo Soldiers in Texas.

No comments about Diary of a March through Sinde and Affghanistan, with the Troups under the Command of General Sir William Nott.

1 comments about Reddo's Raiders: Memoirs of a B17 Bomber Aircraft Commander.

1. Great book about the real life of a B-17 Flying Fortress Crew during World War 2. Facinating details from training through Missions to Germany.

2 comments about The Stars Bear Witness.

1. Goldstein follows Polish-Jewish relations, beginning with slaughterhouse workers around 1919: "Jews and Poles worked side by side and the relations between them were good, despite the fact that both were strongly nationalistic, unruly, and impulsive." (p. 8). As for the 1930 anti-Jewish excesses (Goldstein's words) at Minsk-Mazovietsky, he points out that a mentally deranged Jew had killed a Polish Army Sergeant, and certain Polish nationalists retaliated collectively against Jews (pp. 13-14). The later schmaltzovniks (szmalcowniki; blackmailers) were recognized by Goldstein as "...these dregs of Polish morality..." (p. 208). Finally, unlike Jan Thomas Gross and his fantastic property-guilt-complex notion, Goldstein has a much more prosaic explanation for the intensity of postwar Polish anti-Semitism: "After so many years of bloodletting and terror, the morale of the liberated people of Poland was at a low ebb. And the conduct of the liberators, the rank-and-file soldiers of the Red Army, who did not shrink from robbery and rape, further demoralized the population. The chaos and anarchy of Polish economic life and the dissatisfaction and disappointment of the Polish population were increased by the economic policies of the new rulers." (p. 278).
   
   Some Polonophobes have equated Bereza Kartuska, an interwar internment camp, with the Nazi and Soviet concentration camps. This is utter nonsense: "In his quiet, deliberate way he [Leon Feiner] told me the story of his experiences during the long months in the Soviet prison at Lida. `I was in the Polish Punishment Camp of Kartuz Berez a long time, but that cannot even be compared to what I lived through under our "comrades"...It is hard for me to say it, but what saved us is that the Nazis drew close to Lida.'" (p. 99).
   
   The Polish Underground refused to support the eventual Warsaw Ghetto Uprising more substantively owing to fears of its expansion to numerous Polish victims (p. 194). Interestingly, in the first stage of the deportations of Warsaw's Jews to Treblinka (July 1942; 60,000 initially-slated deportees), many Jews exhibited a comparable attitude:" But we knew that armed resistance would doom the whole ghetto instead of only sixty thousand. And who, no matter how convinced that the whole ghetto was doomed in any case, could take upon himself the responsibility for precipitating such a catastrophe?...The ghetto had no right to sacrifice sixty thousand human beings so that the survivors might continue their slave existence a little longer...But how would the hundreds of thousands who were not immediately threatened with deportation react to such a proposal? Would they consent to mass suicide?" (p. 111).
   
   The Polish suspicion of the leadership of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising being tainted by Communism finds implicit corroboration in Goldstein's following revealing comments: "On May Day, the ghetto fighters undertook a one-day `offensive'. In the evening they held a roll call of their decimated ranks and sang the `Internationale'." (p. 198). Elsewhere, Goldstein himself has no difficulty referring to Communists as his "good friends" (p. 277).
   
   The surviving Polish Jews constantly complained about American Jews not helping them (p. 272). And, in common with many other authors, Goldstein portrays the Jewish ghetto police as Nazi collaborators (pp. 70-71), faulting them for such things as the forcible roundups (including the uncovering of Jews in hiding) for the death trains (p. 106, 116).
   
   Goldstein paints a complex picture of Polish reactions to Jewish deaths (p. 194) and concludes that Poles had, in effect, been numbed by constant German cruelties: "The four years of Nazi terror, persecution, and anti-Semitic propaganda had poisoned their souls and completely destroyed in many of them any feeling that the Jews were human." (p. 194).
   
   Commonly-voiced complaints about Poles not hiding more Jews ignore the draconian scale of German terror used against Poles, as elaborated by Goldstein: "Each day the terror on the Aryan side increased. There were constant raids, arrests, and executions for the slightest hint of contact with Jews." (p. 183). Also: "The renewed terror on the Aryan side has frightened many Poles whose attitude toward the Jews was friendly. The intensive activity of the Gestapo made hiding a Jew more dangerous each day. Schmaltzovniks were everywhere. Every decent instinct was choked off in the atmosphere of terror, executions, extortion, lawlessness, and complete human demoralization." (p. 201). Also: "The wave of raids and kidnapping, the great manhunt in the city streets, began all over again. Entire blocks of houses were closed off. Bloodhounds sniffed and snooped everywhere. Nazi gangs dragged people from their homes, from attics and basements, beating the killing them. In the tense atmosphere that descended on the entire city, the few Jews who had escaped from the ghetto experienced the most terrible fears." (p. 208). Finally, "The raids in and around Warsaw increased the fright not only of Jews but also the handful of non-Jews who were disposed to help them. It became increasingly difficult to find new hiding places and to retain the old ones..." (p. 228). Apart from the obvious ones, there were countless other daunting challenges facing Polish rescuers of Jews, as elaborated by Goldstein (pp. 213-221).
   
   Goldstein credits Poles for smuggling food into the ghetto (p. 750), for playing the leading role in unmasking Treblinka as a death camp (p. 118), and for warning Jews about the fraudulence of Hotel Polski (p. 203). He points out that the Polish Underground provided several men who, being familiar with Warsaw's sewer system, mapped movement routes within the ghetto and escape routes out of the ghetto (p. 198).
   
   The oft-mentioned looting of Jewish valuables by Poles has another side. After the German-forced evacuation of Warsaw following the doomed Warsaw Uprising, Jews hiding from the Germans amidst the ruins of Warsaw spent time looting the valuables that had been previously buried by the Polish Varsovians (p. 270). Eventually, a theft-and-barter ring developed between the Warsaw-Jewish and the outside-Polish shabrovniks (looters) (p. 271).



2. "The Stars Bear Witness" is not only a devastating record of the annihilation of Polish Jewry, but also the story of a singularly fearless and principled man who had dedicated his life to the Jewish workers of Warsaw -- and, often, to all Polish Jews who required aid and protection. The book's introduction tells us that Goldstein, later known respectfully and affectionately as Comrade Bernard, joined the newly-created General Jewish Socialist Labor Union party--"Bund"--as early as age 16. By 17 he was helping to organize fur workers outside of Warsaw. Arrested and imprisoned numerous times for his political activity, he was exiled by the Tsarist authorities to Siberia when he was still in his early 20s. After the Russian revolution, he returned to Warsaw and became one of the most prominent figures in the Bund and in the trade-union movement. From the 1920s onward he functioned as the head of the Bund's self-defense and militia groups. These were employed first to defend against attacks by Communists, and later to defend against Polish ultra-nationalists and fascists (the Endeks and Falanga). When anti-Semitic sentiments escalated in Poland in the 1930s, Jews became the targets of discriminatory practices and violent attacks. "The Bund was the only organization to carry out an active fight against the anti-Semites" (p. 11). Sometimes they were assisted in these efforts by Polish Socialists, though most of the time "the Bund fought alone." In 1936, after a confrontation in the Warsaw streets, Goldstein was arrested by the Chief of the Security Police, Captain Runge. Called to account for himself, and threatened with incarceration in "the notorious Polish concentration camp, Kartuz Bereza," Goldstein is reported to have declared: "As long as you refuse to protect the Jewish people, I will do it. If I am to get Kartuz Bereza for that, go ahead and send me there." (p. 15)
   
   In "The Stars Bear Witness," Goldstein relates, in extraordinary detail, the destruction of the Jews of Warsaw, a community that numbered some 500,000 people. Much like Wladyslaw Szpilman in his Warsaw ghetto memoir, "The Pianist", Goldstein presents an unvarnished account of Jewish life during the war. He does not gloss over the unseemly and deplorable actions of particular members of the Jewish community, but he reserves his greatest opprobrium for the Nazis, their Ukrainian and "Lettish" accomplices, and for the considerable portion of the Polish population who, either actively or passively, abetted in the extermination of their Jewish fellow-citizens.
   
   As a memoirist, Goldstein possesses a humble style. He says little about himself and his own situation for the first quarter of the book. Instead, he focuses upon the events that affect the Warsaw Jews as a whole. When he distinguishes individuals, they are typically members of the community, many of them Bundists, who tried to ease the plights of their fellow-sufferers. Only after a great proportion of the ghetto Jews have been sent to their deaths in Treblinka, does Goldstein begin to reveal more about his own story. By this time, he is a hunted man. He finds himself, like every other Warsaw Jew, under a death sentence. For a period lasting several years, he is sheltered by a number of courageous Poles. And, remarkably, while in hiding, he somehow continues his organizational work for the Bund--communicating with other Jewish fugitives, the Polish underground, and doing whatever possible to help Warsaw's last surviving Jews. His is a tragic, moving, and astounding story.
   
   What it is not, I regret to say, is an absolution of the Polish populace, as suggested by the review on this site by Mr. Peczkis. Mr. Peczkis's review misrepresents Goldstein's book in a way that is truly shameful. Mr. Peczkis quotes selectively and insidiously from the book so as to deflect all reasonable blame away from the Poles--and, shockingly, he appears even to suggest that the Jews somehow deserved their gruesome fate. I quote from his review:
   
   The Polish suspicion of the leadership of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising being tainted by Communism finds implicit corroboration in Goldstein's following revealing comments: "On May Day, the ghetto fighters undertook a one-day `offensive'. In the evening they held a roll call of their decimated ranks and sang the `Internationale'." (p. 198). Elsewhere, Goldstein himself has no difficulty referring to Communists as his "good friends" (p. 277).
   
   What Mr. Peczkis attempts to do amounts to a desecration of the memory of the murdered Jews of Poland and also to that of Bernard Goldstein, whose heartbreaking book he perverts for his vile purpose. Goldstein wrote his book hewing to no partisan agenda, and it should be read in the same spirit.
   
   In the book, Goldstein makes it clear that no Jew could have survived in Warsaw without the help of a sympathetic and heroic Pole, but he also makes it clear that many other Jews would have survived if not for the actions of other Poles who--either for reasons of personal gain or atavistic hatred--betrayed and killed any number of desperate Jews who had managed to secure for themselves some precarious refuge outside the ghetto. Many of these predators were known as schmaltzovniks, Poles who extorted money from Jews in hiding--and denounced them once their money was exhausted. Mr. Peczkis refers glancingly to them in his review. About them, he says: "The later schmaltzovniks (szmalcowniki; blackmailers) were recognized by Goldstein as '...these dregs of Polish morality...' (p. 208)."
   
   For a fuller and more accurate impression, I will quote Goldstein at greater length:
   
   "Many times we asked the Polish underground to handle the schmaltzovniks as German collaborators, whom the underground used to condemn to death. We could not take any action ourselves. It was dangerous for a Jewish face to be seen on the street. Far more dangerous was the possibility that a Jew might be discovered in the act of killing a Gentile. Such an action might enflame the entire Polish community against us.
   
   The illegal press often carried notices of persons who collaborated with the Germans. They usually received a sentence of death which was carried out by the underground. Several times it printed warnings against the schmaltzovniks, but I did not hear of a single trial or of any punishment being meted out to them. Despite our appeals, the Polish underground refused to consider a serious campaign against these allies of the Germans ...
   
   Such scoundrels as the schmaltzovniks operated freely and openly, without hindrance, without any signs of popular disapproval. How this was possible remains a psychological mystery." (p. 180-181)

2 comments about Binding Up the Wounds: An American Soldier in Occupied Germany 1945-1946.

1. I give the author credit for trying to recreate his life at age 20. He has done an admirable job in vignetting his life in Munich as an occupation soldier. His memory is accurate. However: he went through this experience with a song in his heart and no connection to the actual landscape. He makes no real effort to meet those he occupies, And when he does, he usually blushes. I guess that is to be expected from a 20-year-old from rural Mississippi. The edict against fraternization is no excuse - nobody really obeyed it anyway. Did he never wonder why there was no civil government, police, etc. in Bad Aibling? Because the Military Government forbade any kind of political structure. Why did his German aquaintances never mention relatives or friends in other parts of the country? Because the Military Government did not allow mail or any other part of communication until the end of 1946. Why did he hitchhike into Munich instead of simply taking the train>? Because there was no transportation, the Military Government having forbidden people to leave their community. What about those Polish Displaced Persons( DP)? They were offered cash and a Care parcel if they would return to Poland. They took it, and a few weeks later they were back in Munich. What about the black market? In early 1947 a unit of the USArmy, armed with machine guns, stormed a housing block in Munich given over of DPs. The black market cigarettes they carried out where measured not in packages or cartons, but in tons! Why were those German students not studying? Not only was the university bombed out, but it belonged to the State of Bavaria, that did not exist anymore. What about food? General Lucius D, Clay in Berlin determined by fiat the number of calories every German got - no matter what was on the rationing card. The author is dead-right about general Muller, though, who came into the Munich railroad station on Goering's special train and insisted on a red carpet. Did the Germans like the Americans? Those GIs kept completely to themselves and were rarely seen. But a military occupation is always rough on the occupied. And they never understood that this is the price to pay for losing a war. It would have been psychologically easier if the USGovernment had not insisted on calling it an "eduction towards democracy". It is to the author's infinite credit that he maintained his basic values and humanity. The green recruits who came after the combat soldiers went home were the real horor.



2. "Binding Up The Wounds" by Leon C. Standifer. Subtitled: "An American Soldier In Occupied Germany, 1945-1946" Louisiana State University Press, 1997.
   The theme of this book is set by the quotation of the part of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, which we all know and which is triggered in our memories by "With malice toward none..." In this, his second book on the War, retired professor Leon C. Standifer recounts his experiences in dealing with the conquered German people, learning a little of the German language and learning, it seems, a lot about life and the opposite sex. Professor Standifer has written a very charitable book, using the Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865) for a framework for a theme of forgiveness and understanding with the defeated Germans. So many Americans, who tend to quote this section of Lincoln's Address, neglect that in that Address, Lincoln also said that it would be just if the tragedy of the Civil War continue "... until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword". This clearly applied to the Germans who had drawn so much blood.

   In his first book (see "Not In Vain: A Rifleman Remembers World War II"), the good professor gives the story of his days in combat and how he earned the Combat Infantryman's Badge, that pale blue emblem of having served on the front line. In this present book, Standifer tells the story of his unit's adventures as they begin to understand the Germans as fellow human beings, and not as targets on the field. Since he started out as a very young man from the "back woods" of Mississippi, he grew up in combat and then he was first exposed to urban life in the old cities of the Sudetenland and Bavaria. Throughout the year in occupied Europe, (he says that he had a "ball"), his experiences were firmly filtered through his fundamental Christianity and his background in segregated Mississippi. I can understand some of his background. A dozen years after the time of his book, (1958), I was stationed at Naval Air Technical Training Center, Memphis, and, as a Native New Yorker, I found the segregation in Tennessee to be irritating and different enough to be exotic. Further, in all of Memphis, they did not know what a pizza was, let alone know how to make pizza. (I suspect that national chain restaurants have changed all that today.) So, Standifer's outsider's account of beer drinking, Catholic Bavarians rings true. I suspect that some of the nostalgia that seems apparent on the author's part is due to the fact that 1945-1946 was a happy year when he was young. This is an excellent personal memoir.

No comments about Barbie III and Company.

No comments about The Life of Simon De Montfort Earl of Leicester with Special Reference to the Parliamentary History of His Time.