Doc Jackson’s Letters Home: A Combat Medic’s 1968 Letters from Vietnam

Private E-1 Jerome Jackson’s letters, hurriedly handwritten on muddy paper to his mother from jungles and sandbag bunkers, tell the true, first person, contemporary account of a combat medic, rich with the details of how soldiers survived day to day in a life-threatening landscape. They reveal Doc’s rage against the mismanagement of a military fiasco during what Jackson considered a senseless war. The letters were discovered in his mother’s estate. Interspersed are related recollections as told from his wheelchair to co-author Constance Emerson Crooker, who adds commentary to give context. A testament to raw human courage, the will to persist and survive, even to find grim humor in the absurdity of his fate. A remarkable and truly honest book about war. – Rebecca Pepper Sinkler, Former editor in chief, The New York Times Book Review Fascinating letters from a frontline medic with a need to shield his family from war’s horrors and dangers while relating daily details of army life. – Peder Bisbjerg, Environmental Engineer, twenty years experience living and working in Vietnam This book is a must read for any politician who is thinking of sending young Americans into the carnage of war with the foolish idea of reshaping another country. – John A Wetteland Jr., A Battery, 1/83d ARTY March 1969-May 1970 Doc Jackson’s legacy of truth is recorded in his letters sent home–history that would become a treasured time capsule. –Mike Hastie, Army Medic Vietnam, 1970-71