The War You’ve Always Wanted
Pat Dolan’s father has a box. In it are treasures from Jimmy Dolan’s service in World War II—his photos, his medals, his memories. But ten-year-old Pat can’t understand why his father refuses to look in the box. After all, the war was a grand adventure, wasn’t it?
Determined to serve in the Army like his father, Pat enlists nine years later—but it’s 1972, and the American military is withdrawing from Vietnam after seven years of futile combat. As an Army combat correspondent surrounded by people growing more desperate by the day, young Dolan quickly learns how bleak the South’s prospects are. He is forced to witness the slow, steady death of a nation.
When Pat is wounded in action, he wonders if he will live long enough to fill a box of his own. Are there any treasures to be found in a country as fragile as this?
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Mike McLaughlin writes fiction and nonfiction. His short stories have appeared in The Wrath-Bearing Tree, October Hill, and The Metaworker. His historical features have run in American Veteran, WWII History, and American Heritage. He is a graduate of Fairfield University with a degree in English writing. Mike lives in Boston, an excellent place for any writer to keep a low profile and get real work done.