“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country,” is one of the sentences that we typed over and over again while learning the art of typing in high school.

I don’t believe most of us gave it any more thought than that. But when the war in Vietnam was becoming a reality, it became more than just words on paper. Hundreds of thousands of men from all across America headed to their selective service recruiting office to join in a cause that would give those words meaning. But after a short time, many Americans were convinced that they should in good conscious “aid their country in protest.” The country became divided, and a faction took over the media and chose to attack the soldiers fighting the war along with those in Washington who made the commitment to winning, but then didn’t make it possible to do that.

The country became more and more fractious and confused. Who are the real enemies? But one thing stood out, those in harms way did what they committed to do and were in no way the enemy to anyone but the North Vietnamese. When it came time for the warriors of a fractured cause to return home, there was no welcome home for these heroes that lived in fear and pain of the mind and body. Returning soldiers attempted, often with great difficulty, to re-join families and communities. Most did not talk or even think about the war. Not thinking about it was hard–real hard–often impossible.
Jenny La Sala has helped open up a plethora of emotions, feelings, fears, and opinions. She also created a necessary dialog that has been suppressed and locked up for decades in a decaying psyche; a psyche racked with the physical wounds of war, an intense horror of the mind imploding with the disease of PTSD and decades later with the destruction of the body from its exposure to Agent Orange. She has stepped into a void and has successfully filled it with a platform that gives many, that she has chosen, to take their stories and experiences and give us an opportunity to understand and accept those that have lived what most of us couldn’t even start to feel and understand.

But, after reading the stories in her book, we will begin to comprehend and empathize with those that lived, and survived the narrative captured in the 423 pages of “Never Forgotten,”—so that we will indeed ‘never forget.’
~ Tom Haines, Vietnam Veteran

BOOKS HONORING ALL WHO SERVED IN WAR
AMAZON: www.amazon.com/Jenny-La-Sala/e/B00NR36UYM/ref