Another Such Victory

An American Fable

De: James Harriss

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

ANOTHER SUCH VICTORY: An American Fable by James Harriss is the story of a classical poet-warrior, cast in the mold of an American soldier, set during the thirty years between 1948 and 1978. Texas cedar chopper Ben Moore gives up courting the noncommittal Laurel Sitwell, stops lamenting that no college offered him a football scholarship, decides his mail order bachelor's degree is worthless, believes his novel will never be published, quits chopping cedar and enlists in the United States Army. He marries the steadfast Susan Fleetwood, who has had a crush on him since time out of mind, and winds up in Officer Candidate School. Meantime, Laurel leaves home, withdraws from college, moves to New York and marries Dr. Saul Irving. Posted in Japan when North Korea invades South Korea, Ben leads a rifle platoon in the first wave of United Nations troops. Three years later, he leaves Korea a decorated combat hero and the sentimental favorite of General Garth Westfield. In 1954, Westfield dispatches Ben to Indo-China, where he observes French Union deployments and writes a report that never sees daylight. Nine years later, President Kennedy calls Westfield out of retirement and sends him, Ben and a handful of others to South Vietnam on a similar errand that costs the general his life. JFK, shortly before his assassination, adds Ben's name to the list of colonels to be promoted to flag rank. But the battles in Vietnam are not the only ones General Moore must fight. Journalist Arthur Kahn, a longtime friend, insinuates that Ben committed mutiny during the Korean War. His and Susan's son Travis is killed while leading a campus peace march. Bereaved of their only child, Susan Moore turns her back on her husband. Ben's closest comrades fall in battle. He narrowly avoids a court-martial for a disputed action during the Tet Offensive. Alone, ravaged by loss, grief, sorrow and guilt, he gravitates toward the only person left alive who knows and loves him: Laurel Sitwell Irving, his high school sweetheart. But the solace she supplies is fleeting, and soon, he is unable to live with himself. His friends are still dead, and he still has a wife. And he still loves her. After his retirement in 1973, Laurel resurfaces to confess that she was carrying Ben's baby when she fled their hometown twenty-five years earlier. Having finally and completely made a home and a peaceable life with Susan, civilian Ben Moore must go to Israel to find Rebekah Claire Irving, the daughter he never even knew he had. When the Syrian surprise attack starts the Yom Kippur War, he is forced by circumstances to assume his last command. ANOTHER SUCH VICTORY: An American Fable by James Harriss is the story of our yesterdays, a story for everyone who struggles to reconcile what never was, with what might have been and to come to terms with what is.