Loon: A Marine Story (Hardcover) ~ Jack McLean
Book Description
A lyrical memoir of a prep school boy who creates his own path to higher learning: enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps, fighting in Vietnam, and then studying at Harvard.
Kids like me don’t go to Vietnam.
Raised in suburban New Jersey, Jack McLean attended the prestigious Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, with George W. Bush. After graduation, and eager for change, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. At the time, Vietnam was a country and not a war.
In Loon, McLean takes readers from Andover’s privileged campus, to the infamous Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island, to the battle at Landing Zone Loon in the rugged hills along Vietnam’s Laotian border. During that period, Jack transformed from a sheltered boy, into a Marine, and ultimately into one of a handful of survivors of a horrific three-day assault during some of the heaviest fighting of the Vietnam War.
Richly textured and full of action-packed battle scenes, Loon is a piercingly honest and beautifully written story of an infantry Marine and his comrades as they face the challenges of boot camp, stateside service and, ultimately, war. It neither glorifies nor mystifies. It simply tells the story, and in so doing, teaches us a great deal about courage, honor, sacrifice, and is a powerful portrait of a period of American history.
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