Bøker av Ronald J Wichers

The nine Myrmidon stories here are of young men drafted into military Service and assigned to an infantry company, in a combat zone, and once there to fight to the death if need be. They are glimpses of little people trapped in a huge conflagration; moreover, they are descriptions of the kinds of things that can and do go wrong in war, any war but especially one in which the troops are given no clear reason as to why they are to kill or be killed. While there were many stories of true heroism that came out of the war in Vietnam, those examples of self-sacrifice are, in a way, clouded, by an overall sense that none of it should ever have been allowed to happen. If there was any "Glory" to be had there it was on the side of the Vietnamese people in defense of their homeland. They were written not because I'm a glass-half-full type but, rather, as a kind of pray, a cry, a hope that this kind of thing - our nation's propensity for wildly and recklessly careening around the world, guns blazing - may never happen again. They are intended as a warning to anyone entering military service to be made aware that, when it comes to war, there is no such thing as a neat "surgical strike" or a "cake walk." It's a ragged, messy, bloody affair where, even with the best of intentions, everyone suffers, especially the "little people".

The dedication for the first edition read as follows:For those who bring war without necessityFrom those who forevermoreBear it.A necessary war, what would that be? doubtfully one waged by the most powerful nation on earth against one of the tiniest and poorest; and for some ten years.We Americans are always acutely aware of our own casualty counts. We have not, however, shown the same concern regarding the Vietnamese, both civilian and uniformed, killed or wounded or driven insane, in the conflagration. One million, two, three millions? The opinions and emotions the war triggered divided the American citizenry as few things have.But On The Fault was not written to address any of these matters. It is simply an attempt to afford the willing reader an opportunity to feel what those who fought in that war felt, in the simple hope that America's involvement in Vietnam would be properly remembered, so that a future gang of reckless fools at the top might be deterred from repeating the horror of a war that need not happen.Even wars waged with the noblest of causes breed a kind of free-floating hatred - the trickle-down poison that can pollute and saturate even the most high-minded of nations. What of one fought without even the slightest justification?All that killing and mayhem; where does it go?Whether all-volunteer or conscripted, isn't it always the little people who carry water for the rich and the powerful? Are you of draft age? Are you registered with Selective Service? Do you have a child or a grandchild of draft age? Do you ever think about the worthiness of our recent wars - these undeclared, unconstitutional military actions? Or do you care? Beware, there could very well be another draft should our adventurism slide completely out of control.Ronald J. Wichers was born in Lake Ronkonkoma, New York. He studied History and Literature at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, until drafted into the United States Army in 1970. He was assigned to a rifle company in the 25th Infantry Division serving in Vietnam and, after sustaining several wounds, including the loss of his left arm, was awarded the Purple Heart Medal, the Army Commendation Medal for Heroism and the Bronze Star Medal. He later studied theology, at the Graduate Theological Union, in Berkeley California. Mr. Wichers has published three novels and a collection of short stories about his experiences in the Vietnam War.

This second volume of the trilogy, Love Beneath the Mighty Dome, continues with the accounts of several Catholic Faithful: Father Manny Moriss, the reclusive and ever faithful traditionalist. Manny's friend, from their days at Saint Simeon the Stylite Seminary, Father Louis Poustello, a self-willed renegade. Father Al Dible, a staunchly faithful gay man, tortured by his unwavering but self-destructive love for an institution that condemns the most intimate aspect of his being. The return of one, Tarkington Spilburn, a sick, soul-less, demented fiend and priest-everlasting, in the order of Melchizedek. Patricia Healy, the enthused young woman who would be ordained but for her sex. Monsignor McNeery, the foreign-born Irishman, backbone of the Church in America and champion of the poor.

What nameless thing sustains us? Religion? What does it mean to be religious? And what sort of woman would faithfully minister to the needs of a dying husband, a man who has neglected her and betrayed her? A woman with no ties to any religious tradition.And how many among us would remain loyal to a nation embroiled in a war that many believe should never have been allowed to happen--a conflict in which the mightiest nation on earth waged war on one of the very poorest?And what is faith? Is it only rote learning of prayers and hymns, moral laws and historical facts? Or is it something that only a few among us are given--a seeking of something, of someone that resides in the heart of all things?Take the journey through The Palisades and wonder.

What if you married a man who didn't care about you? What if there was a child in the neighborhood for whom you developed a special fondness but was nine when you were nineteen and twenty when you were thirty with two children and a husband who still didn't care? And what if you were a boy whose only happy memories were a few soft words uttered now and again by a beautiful neighbor ten years your senior and whose voice and face and figure, back-lighted by the golden light of the setting sun, were all that would sustain you when your life was threatened every minute of every day in the mire of a squalid war nobody wanted?This is the story of Jacqueline and Tommy, their lives stubbornly paralleling with no convergence in sight until one cold night she sees him starving to death on a crowded street filled with happy tourists.What would you do if you saw him there almost unrecognizable, just another mass of neglected, invisible wreckage? Turn the pages of The Fear of Being Eaten - A Biography of the Heart and find out what happened to Jacqueline Rhondda and Tommy Middleton.Based on a true story.