Description
Summer Wind is the fascinating and heartbreaking story of Indiana soldier Dick Wolfe was preserved in scores of letters he sent home to family and friends and sent to him in Vietnam from July 1967 to early January of 1968. On the rare days Wolfe spent at relatively large base camps in Vietnam, he penned long, detailed letters to his wife, mother, and friends. Most of his correspondence, however, was written in brief snatches in a tent-covered hole by the light of a single candle at primitive night defensive positions.
Dick Wolfe’s letters held little back. He told in great detail of the all-but-unbearable heat and humidity and of rain episodes of epic proportions. He described huge and often bizarre-looking insects and snakes he encountered wading through stinking and muddy waist-high water and episodes of fierce fighting. Dick Wolfe’s letters also shed light on the complexities of an American army rifle company in Vietnam at the apex of the war, revealing the budding friendships and bonding among the thrown-together group of young American men of Alpha Company.
The authors of Summer Wind: The Vietnam War letters of Richard “Dick” Wolfe have quickened this unique correspondence and brought it fully to life. Using materials such as personal interviews, diary accounts, personal journals of the men who served with Dick Wolfe, official military reports, recorded air-to-ground conversations, newspaper articles, memoir pieces, and military history accounts of the Second Battalion, Eighteenth Infantry of the First Division, the authors weave together a tale with the greatest amount of context, delivering an astounding awareness of the incredible stress of combat—both on combatants and the “folks back home.”
The story is a real-time chronicling of the impact of the war on all concerned—family, friends, and the community where Dick Wolfe grew up—written with a simple eloquence that puts flesh on the skeleton of an understanding of war’s pervasive and lasting effects.
About the Authors
An Indiana and Midwest historian and author, Randy Mills is a professor of the social sciences at Oakland City University in Oakland City, Indiana. He is the co-author, with his wife, Roxanne, of Unexpected Journey: A Marine Corps Reserve Company in the Korean War, the well-received case study of the call-up of Marine Reservists during the Korean conflict, published by the Naval Institute Press. He has written two other military history books on the experiences of common soldiers in combat who are faced with extraordinary circumstances: Honoring Those who Paid the Price: Forgotten Voices of the Korean War, published by the Indiana Historical Society Press, and Troubled Hero: A Medal of Honor, Vietnam, and the War at Home, published by Indiana University Press. He is also the author of a biography of Indiana’s first governor, Jonathan Jennings, published by the Indiana Historical Society, and a book on Midwest frontier religious history: Christ Tasted Death for Every Man: The Story of America’s Frontier General Baptists. His numerous articles on Indiana and Midwest history have been featured in magazines and journals such as Traces of Indiana and Midwest History, Indiana Magazine of History, Journal for the Indiana Academy of the Social Sciences, Journal for the Liberal Arts and Sciences, Ohio Valley History, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, American Baptist Quarterly, and Connections: The Hoosier Genealogist. Randy Mills presently lives in Oakland City, Indiana, with his wife, Roxanne.
Roxanne Mills is an author and an Associate Professor of English at Oakland City University in Oakland City, Indiana. Her writing interests include fiction and dramatic non-fiction, as well as the improvement of college student writing. She is the co-author, with her husband Randy, of Unexpected Journey: A Marine Corps Reserve Company in the Korean War, the well-received case study of the call-up of Marine Reservists during the Korean conflict, published by the Naval Institute Press. She is also the author of numerous professional articles on English education and regional Indiana history. These articles have been featured in journals and magazine such as Journal for the Liberal Arts and Sciences, Traces of Indiana and Midwest History, Indiana Magazine of History, American Secondary Education, Education, College Student Journal, and The Social Studies. Two of her most recent works, “The Court Martial of an Indiana Marine in Vietnam,” and “With Complete Disregard for his own Personal Safety: Adventures in Writing Accurate Accounts of Military Combat,” appear in special military history issues of the Journal for the Liberal Arts and Sciences. Roxanne Mills presently lives in Oakland City, Indiana, with her husband, Randy.
