How Can You Mend This Purple Heart

by T.L. Gould

Like the Afghan war today and the ten-year war in Iraq, the Vietnam War left no one unchanged, particularly not the nearly eleven hundred Americans who lost multiple limbs and returned home from Vietnam to face a different kind of battle: acceptance.



How Can You Mend This Purple Heart goes inside the minds of amputees struggling to heal from the ravages of war and chronicles a journey of love, redemption, and joy, a journey of pain and anger . . . and a journey of hope. Most of all, it is a journey of the human spirit and its triumph over the most impossible odds.



In this riveting first novel, author T. L. Gould draws upon his experience recovering in a military hospital to create a plain-truth, no-holds-barred narrative stark in its simplicity, detail, and humor. From dressing changes and morphine drips to off-site forays into neighborhood bars and brothels, Gould chronicles the precipitous journey to recovery of the men of Ward 2B: how they learned to walk again, to love again, and to triumph over crippling injuries.



A farewell to his family in the summer of 1968 begins what would have been a four-year enlistment in the Navy for eighteen-year-old Jeremy Shoff. It is a third choice for Jeremy: a choice he let others make for him. A few months earlier he had made a verbal commitment to join the Marines, and the jungles of Vietnam were waiting. But somehow—between the 2-S deferment, the ensuing fistfights with his old man, and the lovemaking with his flower-child girlfriend—he gives up on the Marines and is left with no other choice. It is a choice he will regret for the rest of his life.



How Can You Mend This Purple Heart is a tribute to all the combat-wounded veterans of past and present conflicts.



Winner of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation’s James Webb Award for distinguished fiction.

216 pages, Paperback

First published March 24, 2009

About the author

T. L. Gould was raised in rural Missouri. In the fall of 1968, Gould enlisted in the US Navy during the Vietnam War era. In May 1969, he was involved in a horrific car accident and spent the next fifteen months in the US Naval Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he was lucky enough to share ward space with combat-wounded Marines and discovered what war can do to human beings-physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Reviews

[George Polley]

How can you mend a purple heart? According to the men I've interviewed over the years, it isn't easy. My uncle Martin went to France in 1918 as a happy-go-lucky eighteen year old whom everyone loved and came home two years later emotionally shattered and alcoholic. No one ever knew what had happened to him over there except that he drove ammunition trucks to the front lines. He didn't say a word about his experiences until, at age 66 and no longer drinking, he told his sister (my mom). Two years later, his health ruined, he died, sober and a happier man than he'd been in fifty years.

The title of the novel is a good one because it describes so well the condition of men and women and women who return from combat having experienced things beyond their imagination, things that damage their hearts. My uncle's wounds shattered his heart.

Each of the young men in this story have terrible physical wounds. Their bravado and, in Earl's case their fear and doubt, reveal the deeper emotional wounds of the heart that are at least as shattering as the terrible physical wounds they have received and need mending.

How Can You Mend This Purple Heart is a worthy addition to the literature of war, soldiering, survival and recovery. I heartily recommend it.

[John Podlaski]

Jeremy Shoff wanted to join the Marines, but his girlfriend persuaded him to join the Navy instead - a strategy that could keep him out of Vietnam. After completing his training, he receives orders for a year-long cruise on an aircraft carrier; the war in Vietnam would go on without him. However, he never makes it to his ship - a couple of days before leaving, Jeremy and three of his friends go out on a drinking binge and suffer horrific injuries when their speeding car crashes into a bridge abutment. Seaman Shoff barely survives and is transferred to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital to mend.

Once Jeremy awakes from his coma, he finds himself in ward 2B - his fellow patients are Marines and Navy sailors who have lost limbs or sustained other traumatic injures from battles and booby traps in Vietnam. The sights and sounds that greet him are overwhelming, leaving him filled with guilt, sadness and remorse.

The story eventually evolves around the struggles of six injured soldiers in the ward. Readers experience a wide range of emotions while these soldiers mend and struggle through rehab - relearning basic tasks that they can no longer perform.

As the months pass, these soldiers learn to function with their physical limitations and help one another whenever possible. Visitors are few and far in between for the patients in this ward...all they have is each other. This story is about developing trust, friendship, brotherhood and loyalty between this small band of brothers while experiencing the pain of hardship, loss, and perseverance.

As time goes on, this band of six soldiers - teenagers all - get into mischief. The group is innovative in some of their endeavors and I found myself laughing out loud - too many times to count. I was also surprised by the compassion they received from complete strangers when outside the hospital compound. My favorite part is when an Admiral visits the ward, and then berates the patients for not saluting him as he passes their beds. Seaman Shoff has heard enough and goes off on him, telling him that instead, it should be him saluting each of these heroes when passing...they've earned it! The Admiral threatens him with court-martial, but friends in high places get him absolved for this insubordination. Nevertheless, Seaman Shoff is a celebrity in the ward.

I thoroughly enjoyed this tome and recommend it to everyone...it is the side of war we don't hear much about, but continues daily as long as wars are fought.

John Podlaski, author
Cherries - A Vietnam War Novel

[Charles Remington]

During the Vietnam War Jeremy Shoff receives his call up papers but is talked out of joining the marines by his girlfriend. He joins the navy instead, with happy visions of world travel and visits to exotic ports which are quickly dispelled when he is involved in a serious road traffic accident. Severely injured, he wakes in a navy hospital where ward 2B will become his home for some considerable time. How Can You Mend This Purple Heart goes on to describe how he comes face to face with the harsh facts of war - brutally injured young men, victims of bombs and land mines, missing limbs and organs, with splintered bones and broken spirits, struggling to come to terms with their shattered lives. As Shoff’s injuries were not received in combat he is riddled with guilt, feeling that he does not belong amongst these battle veterans, and faces violent derision from some of his fellow patients, who label him a ‘non-combat mothafucker’. Slowly though, he is accepted and the hard hitting story which is based on true events, follows the fortunes of a group of young soldiers, most still in their teens, as they try to mend their broken lives. It is a long hard road described in unflinching detail by the author Terry Gould; the physical pain, the mental suffering but also the lighter moments, the black humour and the kindness and sympathy of strangers. This is not an easy read but I urge you read this book for the sake of all the broken young men, victims of the endless wars we seem unable to stop.
This is one of the hardest reviews I have undertaken - trying to do justice to the subject matter of How Can You Mend This Purple Heart. T.S. Gould has produced a hard hitting, unblinking narrative which at times brought me close to tears. I am thinking particularly of one episode where a young marine is brought into the ward. Not only having had parts of his body blown off, but also suffering from extensive phosphorous burns, he is in desperate pain and pleading piteously to be allowed to die. The book should be required reading for all those politicians and men of religion who would send our young men and women to war. Sadly, however, during the sixty-five years I have been on this planet I have seen such a stream of wars, skirmishes, so called police actions and atrocities in the name of some faction or religion that I have come to believe that as long as wars are good for business we are just going to keep having them. When will we ever learn?

[Mandy]

In 1968/9 Terry Gould spent 15 months in a naval hospital in Philadelphia recovering from a car crash. In that same ward were young men who had returned from Vietnam maimed in both body and soul. He draws upon his experience for this powerful and searing novel of the harrowing aftermath of injury and what it’s like to try to come to terms with a broken body and perhaps build a new life. Many thousands of young Americans lost limbs during the Vietnam conflict, some of them multiple limbs. One moment they were high school students attending the school prom, the next they had lost arms and legs and received severe facial injuries. Gould does not flinch from describing what their recovery and recuperation was like. Seen primarily form the viewpoint of 18 year old Jeremy Shoff, we see the agony, the anger and the devastating effect on family and friends as they all struggle to cope.
There are no easy answers in this book, and certainly nothing romanticised about war and fighting and heroism. What Gould describes could, and does, apply to any war any time. It’s a polemic, no doubt about that, and should be required reading for all those who make the decisions to send our finest young men to the battleground. If some of the injured do manage to come to some sort of acceptance, this doesn’t detract from the horror of broken minds and bodies. There may be brotherhood and solidarity to be found, but that can never be a substitute for a shattered life. Whether this is a great work of literature or not hardly matters. What it does is take an unflinching look at what war does to combatants – and no doubt civilians caught up in the madness of war as well – and present the reader with an unforgettable and haunting account of young men who will suffer for the rest of their lives. Read it and weep.

[Joyce Gilmour]

T. L. Gould’s book, How Can You Mend This Purple Heart, truly found a spot in my heart. He takes his readers right into a military hospital and the experiences of men returning from the Vietnam War, having lost limbs and are having to learn how to cope with their physical limitations, and even more so, their psychological scars. This book is a novel, but it is obvious from Mr. Gould’s story that he has “been there,” in that hospital and shares from his perspective and memories the stories of a number of courageous young men. Readers will find themselves laughing and crying as they progress through this book. The men from Ward 2B have many things to learn after their injuries: “to walk again, to love again, and to triumph over crippling injuries.” Mr. Gould makes How Can You Mend This Purple Heart “a tribute to all the combat-wounded veterans of past and present conflicts.” I highly recommend this book…but be ready to see the results of “the conflict” on the lives of these young men. Be prepared never to be the same again after reading this book, because it will have an impact. Thank you, Mr. Gould, for getting this story to us. I can close my eyes and see right into Ward 2B…and because of it, I have an even higher respect for those who have had to struggle to triumph on their journey. Most of all, thank you to all of our veterans…past and future.

[Tim Roux]

One of the most terrifying things about life for me is that a child can be damaged at an early age and then is mutilated or disfigured for life. That is what Stacey Danson's 'Empty Chairs' is all about - being prostituted from the age of three in her case - but it is also the gist of 'How Can You Mend This Purple Heart?' where young men of 20 have stood on a landmine - or their mate has - and they have lost one, two or even three limbs. One minute they are lithe young men at the peak of their physical prowess, the next they are angry cripples, in this case publicly derided for taking part in one of the most unpopular wars in history.

This is an extraordinary book for the way it describes how these Vets came to terms with their appalling injuries. Apparently during the First World War only one person ever survived a triple amputation. During the current occupation of Iraq I am told there is one a week, so this book is still highly topical.

It reads a bit like a theatre piece or TV series and, sure enough, next year it will be premiered in a playhouse in Pittsburgh.

It is also outraging and funny. You may well laugh and sneer until you cry.

[Angel_b]

Like the Iraq and Afghan wars today, the Vietnam War tore at the bodies and souls of those who served, particularly those who lost multiple limbs and returned home to face a different battle: acceptance. In How Can You Mend This Purple Heart the searing story of their physical and emotional struggles is told through the eyes of a shame-ridden non-combatant convalescing in their midst.

Synopsis from Smashwords

[Sandy Haramut]

Just reading about the Vietnam vets in the Naval Hospital in PA brought back memories. My husband was wounded in Vietnam and was at the Chelsea Naval Hospital in MA. It was heart wrenching to see the pain those men went through. Luckily my husband's leg was saved. Jeremy Schoff's account at the PA hospital was quite an eye opener. There could be no braver men.

[Tianne Shaw]

Such an excellent step back to how Vietnam vets were treated during the campaign. Sure it wasn't everyone's idea of a war but the way they were treated after being injured was just something they didn't deserve.

[Devin Lind]

An enjoying read with lots of heart and humor. There were some grammar errors and typos, but good nonetheless.