Arts of War on the Web

If you live in or near Arlington, Virginia; Wauconda, Illinois; or Manhattan, Kansas, you will now, or soon be able to, take in a new photography exhibition called “The American Soldier: A Photographic Tribute, The Civil War to the War in Iraq.”Curated and produced by Cyma Rubin, this unique exhibit consists of 116 photographs designed to honor men and women who have fought for our country in nine wars, including the Vietnam War. The photos consist mainly of close-ups of soldiers and Marines in combat and otherwise engaged in war zones. The exhibit’s main sponsor is EADS North America, a defense and homeland security contractor. It is co-sponsored and presented by Business of Entertainment Inc.

The exhibit opened at the WIMSA Memorial in Arlington on May 14 and will be there until September 14. It moves to the Lake County Discovery Museum in Wauconda, Illinois, from September 26 to February 14, 2009, and then to the Beach Museum in Manhattan, Kansas, from March 5 to May 31 of next year.

For more info, go to http://www.american-soldier.com/about/

Eighteen-year-old Kyle Nappi of Ostrander, Ohio, has made a name for himself as a collector of military medals, patches, badges, insignia, field gear, and veterans’ autographs. His collection of the latter includes John Hancocks from some 1,600 veterans from 20 countries who served during World Wars I and II, the Korean, Vietnam, and Gulf Wars, and the present war in Iraq.

“The oldest veteran is currently 112 years old and the youngest enlisted at age 14,” Nappi says. “I have autographs from Pearl Harbor survivors, D-Day veterans, airman, POWs, USS Indianapolis survivors, Holocaust survivors, and even German soldiers.”

If you’d like to be part of this collection, send an email to knap607@yahoo.com and tell the young man you read about it on this page.

Agent Orange: A Personal Requiem is a new documentary film by Masako Sakata that chronicles the story of Greg Davis, the filmmaker’s late husband, a Vietnam veteran and former Time magazine photojournalist, who died in 2003 at age 54 of liver cancer–a disease that almost certainly was caused by his exposore to Agent Orange in Vietnam.

Sakata’s film also tells the story of the massive American Agent Orange spraying program in Vietnam and its continuing effects on American service personnel, the environment and on generations of Vietnamese. The documentary includes interviews with Vietnamese doctors, a U.S. Army veteran who has returned to do humanitarian work in Vietnam, and contains not-easy-to-watch scenes of Vietnamese children with disabilities and deformities.

The documentary has been making the international film festival circuit and recently was shown in Tokyo and San Francisco. For more info, go to http://www.vn-agentorange.org/sakata_20060424.html

Good book indexers are worth their weight in precious metals. That’s because an inclusive, accurate index is a key component for any nonfiction book. As The Chicago Manual of Style puts it: “Every serious book should have an index if it is to achieve its maximum usefulness.”

If you have a nonfiction book in the pipeline, you might want to consider contacting Galen L. Schroeder, who has been a top-flight free-lance book indexer since 2001. Schroeder also is a Vietnam veteran, who did a 1967-68 tour, and is a retired Army officer in Fargo, North Dakota. A member of the American Society of Indexers, he holds a Ph.d in Agronomy and Plant Physiology from North Dakota State University.

Shroeder has indexed books on many different subjects, including military history, and the Vietnam War. He can be reached at galenschroeder@msn.com His web site is www.dakotaindexing.com

The Fox TV show “War Stories With Oliver North” will have a segment this Sunday, July 6, at 8:00 and 11:00 p.m. Eastern time called “Leave No One Behind.” The segment will take a look at the work of JPAC, the Pentagon’s Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command

The show, which will be repeated on Monday, July 7 at 3 a.m. Eastern time, includes an examination of the case of Lt. Fredrick Joel Ransbottom, an Oklahoma native who went missing in action in the fighting at Kham Duc in Vietnam in 1968. VVA’s Veterans Initiative played an important role in the recovery and repatriation of Lt. Ransbottom’s remains, as well as those of Skip Skivington, another 196th Light Infantry Brigade trooper who was declared MIA on Mother’s Day 1968 at Kham Duc. We told that story in “Final Honors for Kham Duc Heroes,” a fascinating article that appeared in the March/April issue of The VVA Veteran.

“Combat changes a person. It changed me.”

Those are the words of Marine Corps Vietnam veteran George Eyre Masters in “Missing in America,” a powerful essay he wrote that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on June 29.

Masters uses his feelings about how best to support our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as a way to get into a gripping account of his time in the trenches in the Vietnam War. “Listen up,” he says to those who want to know how to treat returning troops today. “If you’ve never hunted humans, if you’ve never been hunted; if you haven’t been shot at on a regular basis, one thing you could try is to appreciate what this person has been through. Then get down on your knees and pray, and thank your lucky stars it wasn’t you.’

He then takes us back to Quang Nam Province in 1968, and Masters’ evocative prose brings you right into the combat zone. To wit: “Concentrating on the ground, I breathe in shallow drafts. Turning my head I scan the hot, windless valley. Alone under my helmet, wet under my flak jacket, the sweat rolls down the inside of my legs. I follow Valdez, the radio man, 10 meters to my front. Valdez, with his antennas tied down, shifts his rifle. Where Valdez steps, I step. I feel more than see the forward progress of Koster, the point man. Then Frenchy, Davis, Stillman, Billy Mac and Valdez. Hearing Barberra behind me, I’m aware of Duke and Ski like a snake knows his tail.”

Masters is at work on a novel. If it’s as good as his essay, we’re in for a treat. You can reach him at author@GeorgeEyreMasters.com His Web site is www.GeorgeEyreMasters.com