Yesterday's Soldiers


Book Description

Between 1980 and World War II, South America experienced the unsettling first stages of modernization. During this half-century of economic, political, and social change, the armies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru underwent a process of professionalization as European military missions transformed their officer corps into copies of French and German officialdom. In so doing, European officers inculcated their ideals and values, thought and self-perception?their professionalism?in countries historically vulnerable to militarism. ø Based mainly on a comprehensive examination of European and South American military literature, this study describes the significant contribution of European military professionalism to South American professional militarism. Nunn not only details the workings of the French missions in Brazil and Peru and the German missions in Argentina and Chile, but gives great emphasis to the themes and topics that most concerned the European mentors and their overseas disciples. He demonstrates convincingly that much of their professional literature was based on a yearning for an idealized past, discontent with an unsatisfactory present, and apprehension about a future that might threaten the most cherished of traditional officer-corps principles and aims. ø The study ends with World War II, yet is makes an important contribution to our understanding of South American history since 1940. The military organizations of the four countries considered here confronted what they perceived to be the major problems of their modernizing nations with solutions learned from their European teachers. Since 1940, they have resorted to golpes de estado?most notably the post-1964 institutional golpes?in order to impose forcibly some of those same solutions. Thus, despite increased U.S. influence, many of the programs implemented by military regimes in the latter half of this century bear the indelible stamp of "yesterday's soldiers."




Yesterday's Soldier


Book Description

Yesterday's Soldier chronicles my journey as a young man, thrust from the world of religious life in a Massachusetts Roman Catholic seminary to the US Army, training to be an Infantry Officer during the Vietnam War. I entered religious life in the Congregation of Holy Cross in Massachusetts in 1963 with the intent of being ordained a priest. I lived in a strict male religious community very much like a monastery. Upon graduating from college there, Father Superior decided that I had only a "partial vocation," and released me from my vows and further advancement to ordination. This memoir shares my experiences in the US Army, from basic combat training to infantry advanced training to Infantry Officer Candidate school. It was at Officers Candidate School where I faced the hardest decision of my life to make--to become a non-combatant conscientious objector, risking the Army's punishment and imprisonment for that decision. Surviving the Army's systematic punishment ("the Treatment") during the long months of waiting for a decision in my case, I defied the will of my family, the demands of my church, and faced criminal charges by the US Army. Eventually, I was sent to Vietnam as a Conscientious Objector, where I dealt with more Army discrimination, the hazards of war, and connecting with the Vietnamese people.




Yesterday's Bestsellers


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A study of the popluar fiction of the past.







Yesterday's Hero


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Another day, another zombie T-Rex to put down. All part of the routine for Arthur Wallace and MI37—the government department devoted to defending Britain from threats magical, supernatural, extraterrestrial, and generally odd. But a zombie T-Rex is only the first of Arthur’s problems, as Russian cyborg wizards threaten his life, and his coworkers threaten his sanity.




Soldiers


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Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment


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