Dear Gang, subtitled " letters home from a combat photographer with the first Air Cav. in Vietnam," is a collection of letters Gary Vogt wrote to family and friends during the year he spent in Vietnam. In the more than one hundred letters Gary paints a picture of the soldier's eye view of America's most divisive conflict since the Civil War. He tries to shield his mother from the reality of the war while being more forthcoming with his father, a combat veteran of the Second World War. Included are over forty photographs Gary took while doing his job as a combat photographer.
Dear Gang, subtitled " letters home from a combat photographer with the first Air Cav. in Vietnam," is a collection of letters Gary Vogt wrote to family and friends during the year he spent in Vietnam. In the more than one hundred letters Gary paints a picture of the soldier's eye view of America's most divisive conflict since the Civil War. He tries to shield his mother from the reality of the war while being more forthcoming with his father, a combat veteran of the Second World War. Included are over forty photographs Gary took while doing his job as a combat photographer. In his letters Gary asks his family to send him such touchstones of life back home as Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Q tips, Pepperidge Farm cookies and car magazines.
Dear Gang is told from the perspective of the common soldier surviving and marking off each day until you are "short," when your year is almost up and the time to go home is close. This book is a worthy companion to the letters home from Civil War soldiers so brilliantly documented in filmmaker Ken Burn's award winning documentaries. It gives the reader a visceral sense of the boredom, fear, struggle and longing for home felt by so many American soldiers in Vietnam.
- Your Words