Melissa Stacy’s Reviews > Witness to War > Status Update

This book is so incredibly informative, moving, and heartbreaking. I absolutely love it. Dr. Charlie Clements is an amazing human being and God bless him for his work and sacrifice helping the people of El Salvador and writing this book about his time there. This memoir is extraordinary in every way. This book is a triumph.

On page 203, Dr. Clements amputates the arm of a 16-year-old boy named Ricardo, "whose left forearm and hand had been seared through by white phosphorous from a spotter plane rocket. His wound was a horrible, stinking mess [...]" The operation was performed with a Swiss Army knife, the skin flaps over the stump sewn up with boiled dental floss. Ricardo survived. The anecdotes that fill this book are heart-wrenching.

This book is so SAD. Not just because of the war and the atrocities, but due to the narrator, Dr. Clements, who comes across as so damaged and unaware of his damage. He writes about his time in Vietnam, and his upbringing. The emotion feels so cold. After the guerillas in El Salvador stop a traitorous plot, Dr. Clements mocks their national anthem. He doesn't seem to connect with anyone, anywhere. Cold compassion.

While I appreciate that Dr. Clements is a Quaker and a pacifist, when he related the story of impoverished Raul Hercules, who united with his two brothers and some friends to storm a murdering warlord's fortress, armed only with some small arms against this sociopath with a well-financed death squad and a long list of mutilated murder victims behind him -- and wiped out the guards as well as the warlord -- WIN!!!