 | Unfriendly Fire: A Mother''s Memoir Subjects: Vietnamese Conflict 1961–1975 -- Protest movements -- United States; Vietnamese Conflict 1961–1975 -- Casualties (Statistics etc.); Mullen Peg 1917–; Mullen Michael Eugene 1944–1970; In 1968 Michael Mullen, a graduate student in biochemistry, was drafted; in 1969 he was sent to Vietnam as a foot soldier in Colonel Norman Schwarzkopf's Charlie Company; and in 1970 he was killed by the same "friendly fire" that destroyed thousands of other lives during the Vietnam War. Back home on the family farm in Iowa, his parents made his death a crusade to awaken all parents to the insanity of war. C. D. B. Bryan's Friendly Fire and the TV movie of the same name documented these dramatic years, and Peg Mullen became a national symbol of grassroots activism. Now Peg Mullen shifts from symbol to reality as she tells her story in print for the first time. Outspoken, fearless, and wickedly humorous, Peg Mullen had a duel mission in the years after Michael's death: to penetrate the lies and evasions behind the artillery misfire that killed her oldest son and to publicize the senseless horror of the Vietnam War. Unfriendly Fire draws on the many letters sent to the Mullens after Michael's death; in addition, Michael's own bitter, weary letters home are reprinted. In these the voices of parents, brothers, sisters, comrades, teachers, and Michael himself echo Peg Mullen's call for truth and peace. Writer Peg Mullen was born in Pocahontas, Iowa in 1917. She wrote the book Unfriendly Fire: A Mother's Memoir (1995) about her search for more information about her son Michael's death at age 25 when a U.S. artillery shell fell short and killed him on February 18, 1970, near the South Vietnamese village of Tu Chanh. Her memoir was a follow up to Friendly Fire, a book by C. D. B. Bryan and a television movie of the same name that starred Carol Burnett and Ned Beatty. In 1997, she was inducted into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame. She died on October 2, 2009 at the age of 92. (Bowker Author Biography) |
