SON OF WAR The problem with writing an honest memoir is the authors leave themselves wide open for personal attacks. In my memoir I wrote about a number of very bad leaders and obviously they have family and friends who will do anything to protect them. I wrote about a Medal of Honor holder whose medal citation is highly questionable and he was a traitor and collaborator with the enemy as a prisoner of war. There are a thousand people who are thrilled to call him their friend—not knowing his real past. There are thousands more who support him just because he is a Medal of Honor holder and they don’t give a snap about the truth. I knew all of that when I wrote SON OF WAR, and I knew I would take a lot of heat from the Special Forces “community” for exposing Cavaiani as the liar and phony he really is. There were 27 other Special Forces men with him during the rout where he was awarded the Medal of Honor and 26 of them survived with a lot of reasons to shut me up for personal reasons. What makes a REAL Special Forces soldier is he is not afraid of the odds when he chooses his course. I was the first officer in Germany to put down a race riot without negotiating with the rioters. I made a lot of enemies by doing that by making a lot of people look bad for their conduct or better said—lack of leadership. I not only refused to commit a war crime by executing prisoners of war—I went a step further and stopped others from doing it. Again—plenty of guilty people to now come forward and try to discredit me. I received an interesting email from Amazon this morning informing me that my memoir SON of WAR was rated best in its category. Considering there are approximately 500,000 eBooks being published every year it is a compliment. More importantly for me was the unsolicited four-star review written by Brigadier General John R. Scales. He commanded all Special Forces in Afghanistan. I wrote the memoir for my family without hiring a copy editor or investing in any professional and then decided to publish it as an eBook; so there are rough patches in the editing and a few typos I didn’t catch—but my intent is to tell real life events that might help new leaders. I think I accomplished that goal. General Scales criticized my tying in my civilian experiences with foster care to military action, but what’s interesting is war is what drove me to help kids. For those who have experienced close combat there are three major paths taken afterwards; one can turn inward and become a drunk/addict or one can develop a very callous outlook toward mankind…and there are those who just want to live in peace for the rest of their lives helping others when the opportunity rises. Colonel Robert B. Rheault was one of the latter spending his life operating an OUTWARD BOUND program for kids—a career way beneath his capabilities but satisfying to his post combat needs. SON OF WAR, focuses on doing the right thing as an army officer when others were not. Some officer are never confronted with an honor call—others avoid situations where they have to make an honor call and a few officers end up having to make numerous honor calls during their military careers. Few careers survive to tell the tale after the first one. My military career seemed to have been filled with honor calls and I was surrounded by many fellow officers who pretended they did not see them or they compromised their honor to stay competitive. We all would like to think when one does the right thing under extreme pressure—that person is rewarded for their courage. Life—does not agree. The truth is those who compromise their honor, lie, manipulate and cheat end up winning the prize more often than the honorable person does. So why be honorable? When Lieutenant Calley ordered his platoon to murder 512 women and children—the men obeyed and many in this country called him a hero. When Lieutenant Kerrey ordered his men to cut the throats of three children and their grandparents and then had his men machinegun down 23 women and children—we gave him the Medal of Honor 14 days afterwards and then made him a senator. I refused to have my trainees cheat; execute 10 VC POWs or take part in a black-market ring. I demanded medical attention for my soldiers and I put down a race riot and in each case—I was faced with bad efficiency reports, dismissal from the military, shunning by my contemporaries and pass-overs for promotion. My officer branch considered me a maverick—someone who was untrustworthy! So why do some of us do the right thing knowing the punishments for doing so will be severe? I guess it’s because of what we think of ourselves. SON OF WAR, is unlike my fiction stories where I hide the truth to make a point—the memoir tells the truth from corrupt officers to black racism running rampant within our military. I tell the true story of a race riot in SON OF WAR, but I tell an even truer story hidden in fiction about reverse racism within the military in my novel RABBIT HUNT. Honor—it can be as fragile as a soap bubble or as indestructible as the Word of God. SON of WAR can be found at amazon under kindle eBooks for $2.99 Thanks… Donald E. Zlotnik, Major (Ret) Special Forces and 173rd at Dak-To 1967 amazon/Son-War-Donald-E-Zlotnik-ebook/dp/B00DVOVTGG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394293573&sr=1-1&keywords=donald+e.+zlotnik
Posted on: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 12:15:15 +0000
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