‘“He should have died”: the Vietnam veteran who never really returned‘, Guardian Australia, 25 November 2015
Partly a review of historian Michael McKernan’s memoir (When this Thing Happened) about his brother-in-law, Joe Stawyskyj, a national servicemen, injured for life during his tour of Vietnam, partly a rumination on the nature of writing about people damaged by history (McKernan’s prose is ‘sparse, characteristically elegant … unsentimental but deeply moving’) and partly about aging and productivity. The comments also are interesting, in that many of them underline the difference between opposition to war, then and now, and compassion for the women and men, like Joe Stawyskyj, who have to fight it.
Another review by Meg Gurry in Inside Story.
