Vietnam Awakening My Journey from Combat to the Citizens' Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam by Michael Uhl, writer and lecturer living in Walpole, Maine. Reviewed by Doug Rawlings Michael Uhl has written a memoir, VIETNAM AWAKENING, that will one day stand alongside the “must-reads” crammed onto the bookshelves of academics, veterans, and students of history.  Uhl has not only mastered the memoir form, but he has also used it to insert his reader directly into the eye of the anti-war storm that engulfed America during the late sixties and early seventies. A person who writes, and then publishes, a memoir has to have real chutzpah.  I mean, after all, don’t most of us ask ourselves this question about our lives: “who cares?”  Who cares if I turn right or left at this or that particular intersection in life?  Close family, of course.  But if our lives are not seen as integral parts of a compelling life narrative of some import, we might as well stick to our diaries or our analysts’ couches. And rightfully so.  But when a person like Uhl arrives on the scene, we better take notice: the scene being America in the mid-sixties, the scene being the anguish overcoming a young man in America facing the stark realities of war, the scene being service in the Vietnam War, the scene being the “awakening” of a soldier to the immorality of the war he has served in, and the scene being the heady atmosphere of organizing protests against that very war. And, of course, the scene being right now – as we confront another war machine gone mad, devouring our soldiers and innocent civilians alike. After years spent reading about a war that I, too, served in and then fought against, I have to say that this memoir rings true.  Very true.  And I’d also say that we who are living in these times and who are actively protesting this latest war should take Uhl’s piercing accounts of life within the anti-war movement of the Vietnam War days to heart. He has not only shone the spotlight on some of the Vietnam War resistance movement’s most important players, but he’s also meticulously detailed their successes and their missteps.  Consider this memoir to be a blueprint for today’s serious anti-war activists. A memoirist had also better take into account his or her intended audience. In this case, Michael Uhl’s VIETNAM AWAKENING is written for multiple audiences: most importantly, if you’re a Vietnam war veteran and a member of VFP, this book will resonate for you in waves and waves of recollection – we can all vicariously recognize ourselves throughout this narrative (I, for one ,was swamped by memories of being a soldier in Vietnam at one moment, while later, caught up in berating myself for not being the courageous and outraged veteran that Uhl became after hitting stateside).  But this book deserves an even wider audience --  it will prove to be a compelling read for anyone who has been a peace activist over the years or just recently entered the fray against the Iraq War; and it definitely belongs on the book shelves of any serious historian interested in what America was becoming in the sixties and seventies.  Likewise, I’d say that it has real value for today’s college students who are interested in what real activism looks like. What I particularly like about Uhl’s account is its honesty.  Sure, the author sometimes waxes a bit effusively about the importance of an event in our collective history and sometimes his role in it, but, damn it,  he is a player of some importance and these events were significant.  But what’s really admirable is how this particular memoirist weaves together both objective fact and subjective musings.  A memoirist had better have his or her facts right or credibility is out the window.  He does. And the excursion through the author’s reflections better also mean something to someone besides a spouse or a shrink. It does. Uhl shines here: his scholarship is impeccable (I’ve never enjoyed nor appreciated a set of footnotes more) and his alternatively self-deprecating and self-congratulatory reflections strike exactly the right tone.  He has a right to be proud of his role in the anti-war movement, and he certainly can be assured that his part in ending that miserable war in Vietnam was a critical one. Michael Uhl’s account of veterans publicly avowing the war crimes that they committed or witnessed is unflinching and meticulously detailed.  As we read this account we become more and more appreciative of their efforts to bring that war to a halt and save their fellow brothers-in-arms as well as the Vietnamese people.  VIETNAM AWAKENING is both necessary as an historical document and also as a topical paradigm for present-day resistors to war.  Uhl is a master of a much-maligned craft – writing the memoir – and an astute chronicler of an era that was peopled by true heroes: those veterans who dared to oppose war.  Uhl has won the right to represent them, and he does so with the appropriate amalgam of scholarly rigor, grace, wit, and honesty. He is to be applauded and, more importantly, listened to.      Reviews "This highly readable, immensely instructive memoir illuminates not only his own coming of age in the Vietnam era, but the struggle of Vietnam vets to tell the American people shocking truths about the criminal nature of the Vietnam war"-Richard Falk, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Princeton University. "Michael Uhl tells us in great personal detail about the brutal absurdity of the Vietnam War environment. Uhl's sensitive self-observation deepens our grasp of psychological currents of an ugly war and of boldly effective forms of opposition to that war"-Robert Jay Lifton, Home from the War: Learning from Vietnam Veterans "Michael Uhl is a gifted writer whose memoir describes his struggle to fully engage and then defend his and our humanity. Uhl's moral outrage and integrity led him to speak out about war crimes in Vietnam, to apply the lessons of Nuremberg, and to play a leading role in the Veterans movement to end that murderous war"-Joseph Gerson, Program Director, American Friends Service Committee in New England; "A fascinating account of one of the lesser known but historically significant organizations to emerge in opposition to the American War in Vietnam...Uhl navigates deftly back and forth between the personal and the public facets...a valuable contribution to both the literature and the history of the Vietnam War, made all the more timely by American involvement in yet another ambiguous, costly, and arguably unwinnable war"-W.D. Ehrhart, author of The Madness of It All