Jungle In Black: Revised Edition - Paperback

by Steve Maguire (Author)

Wounded in a swift, savage instant in Vietnam, one war came to an end... and another began Jungle in Black is the true story of one soldier's long journey home from VietnamThis is the memoir of Steve Maguire, a decorated young Airborne-Ranger, infantry officer who commanded a 9th Infantry Division battalion reconnaissance platoon in the Mekong Delta. It was there in November of 1969 while on an airmobile operation that an exploding Viet Cong mine blinded him for life. He lost his sight but not his courage. Jungle in Black is an honest first-person account that never wallows in self pity as the author reassembles his life in a country that had turned its back on the war. Set in Long An Province, Vietnam, Camp Zama, Japan, and Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C., this powerful yet often witty human drama details one man's successful struggle against a war's desolation.

Author Biography

Steve Maguire grew up in Rhode Island and Connecticut, graduating high school at Norwich Free Academy in 1963. After attending The Citadel and St. Anselm's College, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. Following Basic and AIT, he served with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Baumholder, Germany. Graduating from OCS he was commissioned in Infantry, and completed Airborne and Ranger schools. While a Ranger Instructor at Fort Benning, he decided that his future was an Army life. However on 6 November 1969, while leading a Reconnaissance Platoon on an airmobile operation in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, his point man tripped an enemy booby trapped explosive. The blast severely wounded three and Maguire was one of them. Among his numerous wounds was total blindness. An eighteen-month hospitalization followed, most at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The events leading to his marriage there and medical retirement as a captain are detailed in the revised edition of "Jungle in Black." Bachelors and masters degrees at the University of Connecticut, and the births of the first three of six children followed. By the mid seventies, Steve began a new career as a counseling psychologist, working through the next thirty-eight years in a variety of therapist and management positions in social service organizations: community mental health, substance addiction, physical disabilities, developmental pediatrics, and adult mental retardation, in Connecticut, Ireland, Germany, New Hampshire, Virginia, Washington, DC, and Maryland. His final job completed a full circle, returning him to both the U.S. Army and Walter Reed, where for six years, he was the director of their Soldier Family Assistance Center, an organization tasked with providing newly wounded warriors and their family members with critical supports. Steve is a former national president of the U.S. Army Ranger Association. Another of his books, "Mekong Meridian," a novel set in the Vietnam War, will be available later this year.