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Title: Friendly Fire
Author: C.D.B. Bryan
Narrator: Mauro Hantman
Format: Unabridged
Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins
Language: English
Release date: 12-13-16
Publisher: Dreamscape Media, LLC
Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 2 votes
Genres: History, American
Publisher's Summary:
Drafted into the US Army, Michael Mullen left his family's Iowa farm in September 1969 to fight for his country in Vietnam. Six months later, Michael was killed, not by the North Vietnamese, but by artillery fire from friendly forces. With the government failing to provide the precise circumstances of his death, Mullen's devastated parents, Peg and Gene, demanded to know the truth. A year later, Peg Mullen was under FBI surveillance. In a riveting narrative that moves from the American heartland to the jungles of Vietnam, to an interview with Mullen's battalion commander, Lt. Col. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Bryan brings to life a military mission gone wrong, a family's explosive confrontation with their government, and the tragedy of a nation at war with itself.
Members Reviews:
Good read
Shows the struggle this family faved even after the tragic loss of their son in a war so controversial yet to this day
Worth reading
Excellent history and book.
Five Stars
Well written eye opener on the Vietnam era
In depth book
In depth book about what took place, when a young man from Iowa, was killed by "Friendly Fire" in Viet Nam. A mother & father who rebelled against the US Government & remained bitter, the rest of their lives.
Antiwar Memoir of Bereaved Farm Family
Bryan was a journalist and author during the mid-twentieth century, and Friendly Fire, which originally began as a story for the New Yorker and grew into something more, tells the story of the Mullen family and their response to the death of Michael, a clean-cut young man that answered his draft notice, dutifully served and was killed by friendly fire not long after he was sent to Vietnam. Thanks goes to Open Road Integrated Media and to Net Galley for the invitation to read and review. This is right up my alley and I found it compelling. It was published digitally May 10, 2016 and is now available for purchase.
Michael Mullen was the favorite son of Iowan farmers Gene and Peg Mullen, working farmers steeped in traditional values and respect for authority, who had never questioned the US involvement in Vietnam. If the government said that US forces were fighting there to contain the spread of communism and keep Americans safe, then it must be so. Michael was the kind of young man that called people âmaâamâ and âsirâ. When his effects were delivered to his family following his death, there were no fewer than three rosaries heâd carried on his person. He had expected to return from service, as his father had done from an earlier war, and inherit the family farm. His family was part of the Silent Majority to which governmental authorities referred when defending the role of the USA in Indochina.
In short, they were the last people anyone would have expected to see become anti-war activists.
Michaelâs death rocked parents Peg and Gene, and their grief eventually alienated them from the three children left to them. The part of their story that galvanized me was in reading their intelligent, sharp responses during the initial period following their bereavement. For many of us facing the loss of any loved oneâand the death of a child is the worst loss of allâferreting out information about that personâs days, weeks, even months is our last link to them. But Peg and Gene took it to another level when they realized that some of the information they had received was untrue.
