Bringing Mulligan Home:

I gotta admit, I haven't had it in me to watch the recent debate and all the other crude, although, as always, I am enjoying reading Caucus99% blogs. So, here's a bit about a good book...

A few weeks ago I read a book that really hit me. It's called Bringing Mulligan Home: The Other Side of the Good War> by Dale Maharidge. It's about a man, a marine, who served in the Pacific during WWII. Like many who served, he spoke little at all about the war, and like many who served he was messed up by his experiences in the war. After his death (his name was Steve Maharidge) his son, Dale, decided to try to find out what his father's experiences had been, and why his father was like he was (angry, loving, mean, quiet, screaming, soft...) and who was in the picture his father had hung on the wall in his basement work area. Mulligan, it turns out, was in that picture.

Herman Mulligan and Dale Maharidge. Mulligan is a bit taller than Maharidge, with his hand on Maharidge's shoulder. From these two articles (and audio interviews) on www.wbur.org 'A Son Faces his Father's WWII Ghosts' and 'A Son Uncovers his Father's WWII History'.

Mulligan never came home, but was killed on Okinawa and buried there. The book contains the war experiences of over two dozen Marines in Love Company; men who knew Maharidge and Mulligan. And those experiences make it clear that no war is 'good', ever - not for the men who fought it, not for the civilians caught in the middle.

The book is hard in a way, but important, to read. If you have a chance and are in the frame of mind to be able to tackle some truth about the WWII battle on Okinawa (I have to admit I was not able to do so, even a few years ago, but I can now) give it a read or give the audio version a listen and you can also listen to 'The Dead Drink First', a continuation of Bringing Mulligan Home in an audible documentary.

Thanks for reading this post. Here's the open thread - remember, everything is interesting if you dive deep enough, so tell us about where you're diving!