DESCRIPTION:

Semper Cool is the fascinating, sometimes hilarious and always thought-provoking true story of a well-off Long Island teenager who enlists in the U.S. Marine Corps seeking adventure and his father's approval and finds both, plus more danger than he ever could have imagined. Barry Fixler gets molded into a Marine and sent to Vietnam, where he is assigned to a company that would soon etch its place in Marine Corps lore. Fixler’s Echo Company defends a hill at Khe Sanh against overwhelming enemy numbers in a 77-day battle that is considered one of the greatest military victories in the history of modern warfare. With its vivid imagery, Semper Cool thrusts readers into a “grunt’s-eye view” of the blood, guts, tears and laughter of war, as told by a Marine who returned home a man and a patriot. Be prepared to laugh and cry and ultimately thank God for the men and women willing to risk their lives for the freedoms that so many Americans take for granted.

EDITORIAL REVIEWS

FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Many Vietnam veterans look back in anger on their wartime experiences, but Fixler, who endured one of the bloodiest battles of the war, isn’t one of them. The gruesome 77 days he spent defending an isolated hilltop near the border with North Vietnam forms the core of this nostalgic memoir. Growing up in a predominately middle-class Jewish neighborhood, Fixler was dazzled by his father’s stories of WWII and volunteered for Vietnam to earn his respect. As a teen, Fixler got into his fair share of trouble and that cockiness seeps into these pages. Arrival at the Marine Corps’ Parris Island boot camp is compared to “being thrown into a Nazi concentration camp.” He celebrates his sexual escapades and never sugarcoats the nasty business of war; he’d do “everything again in heartbeat.” Yet as wistful as he is about the “discipline” and “camaraderie” of the Corps, he’s unrelenting in his scorn for the soldiers who return in psychological pieces, suggesting that soldiers should just get used to killing. Nowhere near the league of We Were Soldiers Once…and Young, Fixler is nonetheless an intriguing, rare bird: a man who survived “hell in the raw” without a trace of trauma–or remorse.
Copyright 2011 PWxyz, LLC

FROM FOREWORD REVIEWS
Most books about Vietnam (e.g., The Things They Carried, Born on the Fourth of July) would not be described as optimistic. Despite its upbeat title, Barry Fixler’s Semper Cool isn’t all that optimistic, either. It’s an unabashedly honest memoir without a trace of touchy-feely sentiment.

Fixler grew up in suburban Long Island, New York, as a privileged troublemaker. Though he never wanted for anything—by age sixteen he had a horse, two cars, and a motorcycle—he was determined to be cool, which led to joy rides, petty theft, and the occasional fistfight. Seemingly the only thing he respected were the Marines, whom he learned about through his father’s World War II stories. They made an impression: Without telling his parents, Fixler joined the Marines as a high school senior. “I wasn’t a bad kid,” Fixler writes, “but I just had this gut feeling that I needed more discipline, and I wanted excitement and adventure.”

Later he adds, “All I thought about was adventure and surviving boot camp. I almost forgot the part after that: we all go off to war.” And he did, spending 1967 and 1968 in Vietnam. Most of the book recounts that time, with the best parts focusing on the massive uncertainty and terror surrounding preparation and combat time.

Regarding boot camp at Parris Island, Fixler recalls that he and his fellow recruits were “so bewildered and isolated from the civilian world that it was easy to imagine [drill sergeants] killing us and getting away with it.” As an experienced Marine during the epic, gruesome battle at Khe Sanh, Fixler faces an impossible task: leading a new wave of green, scared Marines that replaced the injured and the dead. “In no way could I show fear to the new guys. I had to raise my confidence to a new level,” he writes. “Those guys picked up on that real fast, and pretty soon, the ones who survived, they talked the same [way].”

Fixler also writes extensively about his life after Vietnam, which includes foiling an armed robbery attempt at his jewelry store and raising funds to treat a Marine who was nearly killed in Iraq. The self-congratulatory tone of those tales somewhat deflates the book’s raw energy and emotion, but it doesn’t tarnish an amazing accomplishment: Fixler entered a gruesome war and emerged as a physically and emotionally whole patriot.
Copyright 2011 Foreword Reviews

FROM MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
Semper Cool: One Marine's Fond Memories of Vietnam is the true-life memoir of a Vietnam veteran. Author Barry Fixler enlisted in the United States Marine Corps as a teenager; he experienced terrible violence and hand-to-hand combat at the Siege of Khe Sanh, and gives the reader a boots-on-the-ground view of war. Yet he had positive as well as negative experiences, and ultimately the hardships he endured shaped him into a patriotic American. His story is captivating, inspirational, and unflinching in its chronicle of the good, the bad, and the ugly of war. Through the Barry Fixler Foundation, the author seeks to raise at least one million dollars to benefit physically wounded veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan - one hundred percent of the author's royalties from "Semper Cool" will be donated to this worthy cause.
Copyright 2011 Midwest Book Review

ADDITIONAL INFO:

Author Barry Fixler is very active in veterans’ and civic organizations; he was designated 2009 Rockland County Veteran of the Year. Barry is also popular with Second Amendment firearms ownership advocacy groups. A mini-documentary of the gunfight in his store still airs nationwide on TruTV, and the raw survelliance video is popular on YouTube (watch it here).