The Wages Of War

When American Soldiers Came Home From Valley Forge To Vietnam

June 04, 1989|By KEITH F. MCLOUGHLAND Book Reviewer

The war had ended and the men were coming home. Some were ignored and one veteran, living in San Francisco, complained that he and his buddies had not experienced a single instance of public recognition.

Jobs were scarce and crime was on the rise. So was drug abuse and the prisons soon became overcrowded - at one Massachusetts facility, two-thirds of those incarcerated in a single year had served in the country's armed forces. Many vets complained of general discrimination and the government's failure to keep its promises to them.

Thus, the men who returned home from the battlefields of the American Civil War were often greeted with less than a hero's welcome.

It is the contention of journalist Richard Severo and attorney Lewis Milford that shabby treatment of our veterans approaches an American tradition characterizing the aftermath of virtually every war we've ever fought.

Their book is a history of this mistreatment beginning with the story of Daniel Shays who, as a veteran of the War for Independence, felt betrayed by his new government and led a rebellion against it as a consequence.

The authors have uncovered a great deal of information which rarely makes it into more conventional histories.

Veterans of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War were shortchanged on land and money they had been promised when they volunteered.

Following the Spanish-American War, vets who revealed American atrocities in the Philippines found themselves ostracized back home.

Blacks, who fought courageously and in large numbers in both world wars (and in the Civil War, for that matter) returned to a society that failed to recognize their heroism with social justice.

The Bonus Marchers were driven from Washington by MacArthur's bayonets and tear gas.

The boys of Korea were accused by Sen. Joe McCarthy of being soft.

All of this tells a sorry tale. But Severo and Milford are not professional historians and "The Wages of War" is not intended to be balanced scholarship.

Indeed, the authors probably would not deny that their focus is selective and their purpose chiefly polemical. Both have worked on Vietnam-era veterans' issues and their account of the past - although it fills three-fourths of the volume - is really intended to serve as prologue to their book's damning indictment: the Agent Orange affair.

Here the authors present compelling evidence of government mismanagement (to be understated about it). They produce private correspondence, written in 1979, in which the manufacturer concedes that the chemical may cause liver and neurological damage.

They disclose a suppressed recommendation from the last American defense attache in Saigon calling for compensation to those who suffered the effects of Agent Orange. And, they accuse the Centers for Disease Control of badly bungling their studies of the chemical's use in Vietnam.

This is certainly good investigative reporting and the authors have worked up a very convincing case. The problem is that, when they move in this material, they shift gears from history to something considerably more strident. In effect, they have written two different books - both worth reading.

But by forcing them between a single set of covers, they have weakened the impact of each.

Severo and Milford estimate that, with the current generation of veterans, dependents and survivors, a third of our population "has had a direct or indirect role in serving the military interests of this country."

Given the probability that these figures are accurate, it is a shame that they didn't serve that potential readership with more consistent purpose.

- Keith F. McLoughland is dean of admissions at Christopher Newport College.

* Book by Richard Severo and Lewis Milford

Simon & Schuster. Illustrations. 495 pages. $21.95

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