MWSA Book Review

Book: When You Hear The Bugle Call
Author: Peter S. Griffin
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
Genre: Memoir / Non-fiction / Vietnam /PTSD


Reviewer: Bill McDonald--MWSA Founder

A Veteran’s Story That Needs To Be Read

I had read author Peter Griffin’s first book. It was basically prose, thoughts and comments about his Vietnam Experiences—but his memoir, “When You Hear The Bugle Call” brings the reader a much fuller spiritual and emotional story. It allows you to reach out and embrace his life with a deeper understanding. The tale begins in his early childhood dealing with his older brother’s death in the Korean War.

You will find yourself walking with him and sharing his fears, observations, anxieties and physical discomfort as he does his “tour of duty” in Vietnam. That part of the book is really great and needs to be understood before continuing on with his story when he later becomes a police officer. However, his life after Nam takes you to the whole issue of PTSD and his own lack of understanding about it. But the sad part is that no one else around him, including the VA at that time, fully understood what that whole issue was.

Griffin draws you into his life story like a spider with a sticky web. You know that you are caught and are struggling. You find yourself entangled emotionally but you cannot fight it and the more you read the more you are wound up in this man’s personal life experiences. You hurt for him and scream injustice and want to reach out and rescue him from what is happening. But all the reader can do is turn the pages in hope that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

The book has punch, power and spiritual energy. It will move you and “piss you off” as well. You will wonder how our country can be so insensitive to its veterans. In the end, the author does the right thing with his book and leads readers to a path out of despair as we see his life turning around. There is no doubt that the baring of his soul will help others. This book will lead some to inner healing as they too go out and seek help for themselves or their loved ones.

This is a riveting account of a warrior and God loving man who gave willingly of his heart and soul in service to his country both as a soldier and as a police officer. He is no saint. He points out his own faults along his journey. He is a courageous man and one you would want to cover your back!

This book, although not professionally written, makes up for any lack of polish with a life story that will impact you like few others books you will ever read. I fully endorse this book for all veterans and their families to read—no matter what war or conflict. This book can be a bridge to inner peace if one takes the lessons from this personal tale. It is a memoir that is on my short list of the truly honest books that deal with PTSD.
 

Other books by Peter S. Griffin

Thoughts, Memories, and Tear: An Anthology of War, Death, and Remembrance