Richard C. Geschke

In Our Duffel Bags is a memoir co-written by two citizen soldiers, Richard Geschke and Robert A. Toto, who served in the U.S. army from 1969 to 1972. Straight out of college, these two fresh-faced young men found themselves at the army infantry school in Fort Benning, Georgia, preparing to be “grunts” in the very unpopular Vietnam War. But it’s not like they didn’t at times ask themselves “why I went the route I did”, and why one of the most popular march songs happened to be “We Gotta Get Out of This Place”.

Sometimes personal, sometimes painful, the reader is not only guided through their many harrowing ordeals but is also witness to all they had to go through: loneliness, fear, rigorous training, the battlefields, unbearable tedium, controlling officers, homesickness, post-traumatic stress. Both fascinating and riveting, the book transports the reader from one part of the world to another, from the U.S., to Berlin, to Panama, to Vietnam, providing an honest glimpse of an era.

Geschke’s tour of duty in Germany lasted 18 months. He spent the first few learning to be an officer and another few in garrison duty either in the field or at military training camps. To put it in his own words, Geschke “became enamoured with the history of Berlin”, a city divided, where a wall was built by the German Democratic Republic to keep its citizens from fleeing to the West. His recollections are both haunting and disturbing: “Scaffolds were built on the west side that rose above the wall… Sometimes there were families upon the deck so they could wave to relatives…the trapped prisoners of the USSR.”

Before being shipped off to Vietnam, Geschke and Toto were sent to train at the Operations Warfare School at Fort Sherman in Panama. The Panama jungle was forbidding with its impenetrable and endless foliage, its equatorial heat with 100% humidity, swamp lands, and “black palm”, a plant like “the vegetative equivalent of a porcupine.” Jungle survival skills learned in Panama were critical for combat efficiency and survival in Vietnam.

At the age of 24, now a well-trained junior officer, Geschke arrived in Vietnam. In Toto’s case, right up until the last moment, he believed he would be spared this mission – his first thought was “Those sons of bitches really sent me here!” Geschke, spending time in Da Nang and in monsoon season, learns to tolerate slum-like living conditions, torrential rains, swamps, mosquitoes everywhere, and itchy army blankets. Geshcke then goes on to Phu Bai, then to Long Binh. Much territory is covered from artillery missions, to military hierarchy, to substance abuse among the troops, to a Thanksgiving dinner.

In Our Duffel Bags not only brings to life the Cold War and the Nam era but shows how it all came to impact the world today. Geschke and Toto have remained friends for 42 years, the latter even being best man at Geschke’s wedding. Life in the military was like no other, filled with frustration, anger, agony but it was also filled with a great sense of pride and patriotism. Unfortunately, in 1972 when Geschke and Toto, along with other U.S. military, returned home after giving their best, they were only looked down upon. In Our Duffel Bags has made up for lost time, and brought with it the long deserved respect and support these citizen soldiers should have got in the first place. After reading this book you will come to understand and appreciate the Vietnam era like never before. It is a candid expose and with much historical worth, not to be missed.… (lisätietoja)