David Todd

David Todd emerges as the moral conscience of his college class. The American presence in Vietnam, either the decision to fight there or the decision to oppose it, defined in large part the Baby Boomer generation that came of age in the 1960s. David decided to abandon a promising baseball career and to leave college in his junior year to serve in a war whose moral imperative he never entirely embraced. His sense of lostness, thus, is particularly unsettling. To understand David is to understand the trauma of military service and the tectonic impact of experiencing war first-hand. The story of David’s wounding in Vietnam is the first story shared by the narrator. David’s near-death experience along the Song Tra Ky River begins for him what will be thirty years of wrestling with the implications of his decision. Losing his leg symbolizes the permanent psychological...