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– Lost Soldiers: “A shirtless man walked toward them along a mud pathway. His muscles were young and hard, but his face was devastated with wrinkles. His eyes were so red that they appeared to be burned by fire. A naked boy ran happily toward him from a little plot of dirt. The man grabbed his young son in his arms, turned him upside down, and put the boy’s penis in his mouth.” ......... Bantam Books, NY, 1st Edition, 2001, (hard cover), page 333. Quote is from para. 10,.Chap. 34.
When I first heard about the "homosexual, underage, incest" angle, I thought that the described behavior happened in some back room behind closed doors that added nothing to the story. Now it seems that the described conduct in the novel was done outdoors by a Vietnamese villager out in the boondocks.
This is a Vietnam war novel, James Webb is a highly decorated Vietnam combat veteran, with the Navy Cross, the Silver Star and two Bronze Stars, and you do see some pretty weird customs in rural areas sometimes in foreign cultures. Nowadays, you don't even have to leave an American major city to see some pretty weird stuff in public.
I was not in Vietnam. James Webb was.
Before jumping into the "he writes homosexual, underage incest" bandwagon, shouldn't we be trying to find out if such a "greeting" was a rural Vietnamese custom that Webb might have actually witnessed in the 1960's?
40 posted on 10/27/2006 7:09:17 AM PDT by Polybius
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What I want to know is:
Was this a rural Vietnamese custom that was actually witnessed by Webb or other American soldiers in Vietnam or not?
Yes or no.
If it was, then this intervew is a perfect time for Webb to say so and, IMHO, that should be the end of that. It would then be a legitimate recounting of actual local behavior witnessed by American troops in Vietnam.
If it was not, then I am at a loss at how to defend including such an episode in a war novel.
Says he would have voted for Roberts for SCOTUS...big deal.
Where else is a PERVERT to go? [tears..]
:))
The books include some graphic sexual passages, as well as frequent uses of a racial slur for blacks and descriptions of Vietnamese women as "monkey-faced."
If this was written by a Republican, the MSM would be going ballistic. What a double standard.