A Table In The Presence and Nam Vet

by Lt Carey H Cash

I just got this in the mail. I've read a lot about Chaplain Cash and this book and wanted to see what the talk was all about. I got the chance to get it and for free so now I guess I have to make some time to read it. Lieutenant Carey H. Cash, Chaplain, United States Navy, is a battalion chaplain to infantry Marines based at Camp Pendleton, California. In Operation Iraqi Freedom, his unit was the first ground combat element to cross the border into Iraq. He is a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and was commissioned as a chaplain in 1999. Carey and his wife, Charity, have five children, and live in Southern California.

Along with this book I also received another free book called "NAM VET, Making Peace With Your Past" by Chuck Dean. Chuck’s book Nam Vet is not only for survivor’s guilt survivors. It’s for Nam vets, too. Actually, that’s who it’s primarily for. Nam Vet is not the most eloquent document, I doubt Chuck figured it was. But in the midst of all the books on Vietnam I’ve read over the years—even obscure ones, such as Vladislav Tamarov's Afghanistan, Soviet’s Vietnam (San Francisco, 1993) or Home Before Morning by Lynda Van Devanter (New York, 1983)—both very heavy!—Chuck’s book Nam Vet is so straight at you, so sincere. He takes you through the Nam to the VA and the world, back to the Veterans Hospitals, the clinics, through the dreams and running and memories and "two decades and a wakeup." He takes you there. He carries you along, right there with him.

Only at the end of the book does he lay down the Point Man International program. In the first eight chapters Chuck tells the stories of Nam vets, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and "Living For DEROS," "A Different Kind of War," "‘It Don’t Mean Nothin"," "Nightmares," "Survival Guilt and ‘Things I’ve Done’." Chapters nine and ten discuss the Veteran’s family, coping addictions, dead ends. Then in chapter eleven, Chuck tells his own story, Vietnam 1965-66, re-uping, the CIA, AWOL to Canada, his and his wife’s recent conversions to Christianity. Final chapter: "Making Peace with Your Past."