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    How Can You Mend This Purple Heart: A Novel
    Unavailable
    How Can You Mend This Purple Heart: A Novel
    Unavailable
    How Can You Mend This Purple Heart: A Novel
    Ebook304 pages4 hours

    How Can You Mend This Purple Heart: A Novel

    By T. L Gould

    5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Winner of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation’s James Webb Award for distinguished fiction

    In this riveting first novel, author T. L. Gould draws on his experiences in a military hospital with severely wounded Marines recovering from the Vietnam War. He has created a plain-truth, no-holds-barred narrative, stark in its simplicity, detail, and humor. From dressing changes and morphine drips to off-site forays under a fence and into neighborhood bars and brothels, Gould chronicles the precipitous journey to recovery of the men of Ward 2B: how they learned to walk again, to love again, and to triumph over crippling injuries.
     
    How Can You Mend This Purple Heart is not a story about combat in the jungles of Vietnam. It is a story about boys who returned from combat as men—men who left the better part of their youth, a bit of their souls, and a lot of their flesh in a battlefield on the other side of the world. It’s a story about their longing to recapture the spirit of boyhood and rekindle the optimism and fearlessness of youth. And it’s about their struggle to be whole again—or at the very least, to feel whole. It chronicles a journey of love, redemption, sorrow, and joy; a journey of pain and anger . . . and a journey of hope. But most of all, a journey of the human spirit and its triumph over the most impossible odds.
     
    How Can You Mend This Purple Heart is a tribute to all the combat-wounded veterans of past and present conflicts. May they find the strength to continue their lives’ missions and know that the entire nation is grateful for their sacrifices.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMay 6, 2014
    ISBN9781480489042
    Unavailable
    How Can You Mend This Purple Heart: A Novel
    Author

    T. L Gould

    T. L. Gould was raised in rural Missouri. In the fall of 1968, Gould enlisted in the US Navy during the Vietnam War era. In May 1969, he was involved in a horrific car accident and spent the next fifteen months in the US Naval Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he was lucky enough to share ward space with combat-wounded Marines and discovered what war can do to human beings—physically, mentally, and emotionally. After serving in the Navy from 1968 to 1971, Gould earned a bachelor’s degree in technical education from the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio, followed by a master’s in business administration from Baldwin-Wallace University in Berea, Ohio. He is currently retired after a thirty-year career in marketing, advertising, and public relations, and resides near Nashville.

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    • 5/5
      Jeremy Shoff wanted to join the Marines, but his girlfriend persuaded him to join the Navy instead - a strategy that could keep him out of Vietnam. After completing his training, he receives orders for a year-long cruise on an aircraft carrier; the war in Vietnam would go on without him. However, he never makes it to his ship - a couple of days before leaving, Jeremy and three of his friends go out on a drinking binge and suffer horrific injuries when their speeding car crashes into a bridge abutment. Seaman Shoff barely survives and is transferred to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital to mend.Once Jeremy awakes from his coma, he finds himself in ward 2B - his fellow patients are Marines and Navy sailors who have lost limbs or sustained other traumatic injures from battles and booby traps in Vietnam. The sights and sounds that greet him are overwhelming, leaving him filled with guilt, sadness and remorse.The story eventually evolves around the struggles of six injured soldiers in the ward. Readers experience a wide range of emotions while these soldiers mend and struggle through rehab - relearning basic tasks that they can no longer perform. As the months pass, these soldiers learn to function with their physical limitations and help one another whenever possible. Visitors are few and far in between for the patients in this ward...all they have is each other. This story is about developing trust, friendship, brotherhood and loyalty between this small band of brothers while experiencing the pain of hardship, loss, and perseverance.As time goes on, this band of six soldiers - teenagers all - get into mischief. The group is innovative in some of their endeavors and I found myself laughing out loud - too many times to count. I was also surprised by the compassion they received from complete strangers when outside the hospital compound. My favorite part is when an Admiral visits the ward, and then berates the patients for not saluting him as he passes their beds. Seaman Shoff has heard enough and goes off on him, telling him that instead, it should be him saluting each of these heroes when passing...they've earned it! The Admiral threatens him with court-martial, but friends in high places get him absolved for this insubordination. Nevertheless, Seaman Shoff is a celebrity in the ward.I thoroughly enjoyed this tome and recommend it to everyone...it is the side of war we don't hear much about, but continues daily as long as wars are fought.John Podlaski, authorCherries - A Vietnam War Novel