A Sense of Honor

Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1981. Second printing [stated]. Hardcover. Good/Very good. [10], 308, [6] pages. Map. Discoloration on top edge. Other edge soiling. James Henry Webb Jr. (born February 9, 1946) is an American politician and author. He has served as a United States Senator from Virginia, Secretary of the Navy, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, Counsel for the United States House Committee on Veterans' Affairs and is a decorated former Marine Corps officer. In the private sector he has been an Emmy Award winning journalist, a filmmaker, and the author of ten books. In addition, he taught literature at the United States Naval Academy and was a Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics. As a member of the Democratic Party, Webb announced on November 19, 2014, that he was forming an exploratory committee to evaluate a run for President of the United States in 2016. On July 2, 2015, he announced that he would be joining the race for the Democratic nomination for president, but stepped down from running in the primaries on October 20, 2015, stating that he was "not comfortable" and "unhappy" with many of the party's political positions. This is the author's second novel. In it, he returns to the traumatic period of the Vietnam War. He offers not only a brilliant realization of what it was like to be a midshipman in the U.S. Naval Academy in the watershed year of 1968, but probes even more deeply into the conflicts that tormented a whole generation of young Americans--conflicts between the claims of war and peace, of patriotism and humanity, of self-interest and a sense of honor. Derived from a Kirkus review: Annapolis in February 1968, with zealot midshipmen studying and training and losing themselves in sports. . . while in Vietnam the Tet Offensive is smashing the US Special Forces. And most zealous of all is senior Bill Fogarty, going for the Marines, who rises an hour early to get in his running despite snow and ice, grieves over his buddies' deaths or cripplings, and has no patience with weakling plebe John Dean. Dean is perhaps the brightest student now at Annapolis but is too needle-shy to give blood. So, while Fogarty leans hard on Dean (forcing him to sleep on springs, to run before dawn), Webb presents a parallel conflict: Captain Ted Lenahan, well-decorated hero back from Vietnam and now Company Officer for Marines, is a believer in a non-regulation sort of leadership and is being run ragged by his immediate superior, Commander Mad Pratt--a supreme boor who writes Ted's fitness reports and controls his career. And thus, while Fogarty goes to a former classmate's funeral, Lenahan visits a paralyzed classmate with a cupful of brain missing. Finally, then, Dean eventually runs over an icy seawall in the dark and emerges in everyone's eyes as a potential officer--but Fogarty's drill has made him fail a chemistry exam, and an investigation of that and of a food riot against Mad Pratt lead to Fogarty's expulsion and Lenahan's transfer back to Vietnam. A well-told narrative with crisp detail on the Annapolis experience.