There I Was: The War of Corporal Henry J Morris, USMC
Encyclopedia
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
novel by David Sherman
David Sherman
David Sherman is an American novelist who deals overwhelmingly with military themes at the small-unit tactical level. His experiences as a United States Marine during the Vietnam War show prominently in his work.-Biography:Sherman was born in Niles, Ohio...
published in 1989 by the Ivy Book imprint
Imprint
In the publishing industry, an imprint can mean several different things:* As a piece of bibliographic information about a book, it refers to the name and address of the book's publisher and its date of publication as given at the foot or on the verso of its title page.* It can mean a trade name...
of Ballantine Books
Ballantine Books
Ballantine Books is a major book publisher located in the United States, founded in 1952 by Ian Ballantine with his wife, Betty Ballantine. It was acquired by Random House in 1973, which in turn was acquired by Bertelsmann AG in 1998 and remains part of that company today. Ballantine's logo is a...
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The entire novel is written from two alternating points of view: as described by the title character in telling the tale to his son; and as it happened in fact. The author's apparent intent is to show how a participant's rendering of the occurrences very frequently diverges from the events themselves as they actually happened. For example, apparently in order to deflect his own personal bravery onto a fallen comrade, Morris tells his son how a comrade of his single-handedly broke an ambush his platoon had come under and received a posthumous medal for the act, but the reader learns that in the actual events Morris himself is the one who broke the ambush and received the medal, whereas his comrade had been killed early in the engagement.