I Heard My Country Calling: A Memoir Audiobook

James Webb— author of Fields of Fire, the classic novel of the Vietnam War; former US Senator; Secretary of the Navy; recipient of the Navy Cross, Silver Star and Purple Heart as a combat Marine; and a self-described “military brat”—has written an extraordinary memoir of his early years, “a love story—love of family, love of country, love of service,” in his words.

Webb’s mother grew up in the poverty-stricken cotton fields of Eastern Arkansas. His father and lifetime hero was the first of many generations of Webbs, whose roots are in Appalachia, to finish high school. He flew bombers in World War II, cargo planes in the Berlin Airlift, graduated from college in middle age, and became an expert in the nation’s most advanced weaponry.

Webb’s account of his childhood is a tremendous American saga as the family endures the constant moves and challenges of the rarely examined Post-World War II military, with his stern but emotionally invested father, loving and resolute mother, a granite-like grandmother who held the family together during his father’s frequent deployments, and an assortment of invincible aunts, siblings, and cousins. His account of his four years at Annapolis are painfully honest but, in the end, triumphant. His description of Vietnam’s most brutal battlefields breaks new literary ground. One of the most highly decorated combat Marines of that war, he is a respected expert on the history and conduct of the war.

Webb’s novelist’s eyes and ears invest this work with remarkable power, whether he is describing the resiliency that grew from constant relocations during his childhood, the longing for his absent father, his poignant goodbye to his parents as he leaves for Vietnam, his role as a twenty-three-year-old lieutenant through months of constant combat, or his election to the Senate where he was known for his expertise in national defense, foreign policy, and economic fairness. This is a life that could only happen in America.

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“This memoir takes the author from his birth shortly after World War II to the present, and is a rumination on the changes that the world, the United States, and the military have endured in the interim…Webb is a clear and accessible writer who credits his history, and that of his family and forebears, with molding his convictions and guiding his career choices…A convincing memoir filled with ideas by a man who might be called a contrarian in today’s politics.”

— Library Journal