Research Catalog

Troubled hero : a Medal of Honor, Vietnam, and the war at home

Title
Troubled hero : a Medal of Honor, Vietnam, and the war at home / Randy K. Mills.
Author
Mills, Randy Keith, 1951-
Publication
Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, [2006], ©2006.

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TextRequest in advance U53.K39 M556 2006Off-site
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Description
xvii, 167 pages : illustrations; 25 cm
Summary
"Kenneth Kays was born in the conservative farm country of southern Illinois. The sixties were in full flower by the time Ken went off to college and discovered a world quite different from the one back home. On campus, drug culture flourished and the Vietnam War had polarized students. College meant a draft exemption, but in spring of 1969 Kays flunked out of school and soon received his draft notification. Denied conscientious objector status, he fled to Canada only to return. Yielding at last to pressure from family and community leaders, he joined up." "In deference to his nonviolent beliefs, the Army assigned him to a medical unit; he refused to carry a weapon. On May 7, 1970, after only seventeen days in Vietnam and just one day after joining a new platoon, the young medic found himself in a ferocious fire fight. Kays' actions at Fire Support Base Maureen would bring him the nation's highest award for military valor. The fighting that night at FSB Maureen was four hours of terrifying chaos. Seven men died. Yet it was just another unheralded skirmish toward the end of a long and fruitless war. Kays returned home with little fanfare and, with other vets, struggled to reconcile his anti-war beliefs and what he and others had done in Vietnam."--BOOK JACKET.
Subject
  • Kays, Kenneth M. 1949-1991
  • United States. Army > Medical personnel > Biography
  • United States. Airborne Division, 101st > Biography
  • Medal of Honor > Biography
  • Vietnam War, 1961-1975 > Veterans > United States > Biography
  • Post-traumatic stress disorder > Patients > United States > Biography
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (p. [161]-162) and index.
ISBN
0253347955 (cloth : alk. paper)
LCCN
  • 2006006950
  • 9780253347954
OCLC
  • OCM64510502
  • SCSB-5278758
Owning Institutions
Columbia University Libraries