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175 pages, 11 photos, 1995
$29.00 cloth, 0-87745-506-6, 978-0-87745-506-6
$16.00 paper, 0-87745-507-4
, 978-0-87745-507-3
“The tale woven by Peg Mullen is as heart-wrenching as it is engrossing. Peg is a real leader in the fight to discover what happened to our boys in Vietnam. And she has proven that a farm woman from Iowa really can make a difference.”—Senator Tom Harkin
“In this poignant postscript to Friendly Fire, Peg Mullen tells us how she tried to stop the war and ease the pain of other causalities. Bereft of her son Michael, she mothered other women's sons, war-damaged souls who washed up on the doorstep of her Iowa farm or in her mailbox. She was one of the most compelling personalities of that awful era—focused, fierce, unadorned—and her book is very like her.”—Mary McGrory, columnist, Washington Post
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.
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