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Manny Garcia's Accidental Soldier: Memoirs of a Mestizo in Vietnam (reviewed by Betsy Ross in your June/July 2003 issue) is an extraordinary book. I, too, fought in combat in Vietnam and helped kill dozens of people. A third of a century later, I am still haunted by that experience. We commit young men and women to death in battle without disclosing the cost-benefit calculus of sacrifice. Each soldier who dies - friend and foe alike - is a child, sibling, cousin, spouse, or parent whose death will devastate scores of others, now and for generations. And those who kill struggle to survive the enormity of their acts. In just the first five years after the end of the war, more than 58,000 Vietnam veterans committed suicide - more than the soldiers killed in combat. As Garcia says, "Some men know numbers. Others know words. But none knows more than a man who knows war." What Manny experienced is unthinkable; what he knows unbearable. His book is a gift of truth and great courage.
Sincerely,
James R. Holbrook
Visiting Clinical Professor
S.J. Quinney College of Law
For years, the Utah Bar Journal has graced its cover with what the Journal calls "Cover Art" - attractive pictures taken by Bar members that capture the grandeur of Utah. With the July 2003 edition, however, I could only shake my head in bewilderment at the cover picture entitled "Day's End at Dead Horse Point." In the foreground, the sun setting on the skeletal remains of a gnarled cedar tree. In the background, red rock pinnacles, buttes and mesas interlaced with sunset shadows. In between, the red desert contrasting delightfully with a deep-blue colored lake. Wait a minute. Hold everything. A lake at Dead Horse Point? Not exactly. The terraced evaporation ponds operated by the nearby potash plant are, in my opinion, a ghastly blemish on what otherwise is a remarkable opportunity to peer into the wild beyond Dead Horse Point. I've often wished that the Utah Division of State Parks and Recreation somehow could acquire the area of the ponds in order to preserve the entire vista at this State Park in all of its glory. Here's hoping that the plant's reclamation obligations for the ponds will do away with them for good one day. In the mean time, as striking as other parts of this photograph are, in the future I hope the Journal resists the urge to elevate pictures of industrial operations to the status of "Cover Art."
Sincerely,
Michael G. Jenkins
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