January 7, 2022
Colloquium Topic: A Quiet Cadence, A Novel About Combat and Its Aftermath
A Quiet Cadence is a unique novel combining an authentic depiction of the intensity of ground combat with an accurate description of what a veteran goes through when he comes home from his war. Though set in Vietnam and its aftermath, the story and its themes are universal: Sometimes it takes years for a combat vet to understand what his war did to him when he was young. And even longer to explain the cadence he has marched to since then to the people he loves. In A Quiet Cadence, family and friends know Marty McClure as a kind, peaceful man. They aren’t aware that when he was young, he plumbed the depths of terror, hatred and despair with no assurance he’d ever surface again. Now he needs to reveal what happened in Vietnam and how, with the help of Patti, his wife, Corrie Corrigan, a disabled vet, and Doc Matheson, a corpsman turned trauma surgeon, he made peace with the ghosts that have visited his dreams all these years.
With the perception and reflection of a man on the cusp of retirement from a career teaching high school kids, Marty recalls the relentless intensity of prolonged combat as a teenage Marine machine gunner facing booby traps and battles in a war with few boundaries. Arriving in Vietnam, he is appalled by the savagery of his fellow Marines as they hunt an enemy indistinguishable from the villagers he believes they are there to protect. But as friends are crippled or killed over the ensuing months, Marty has to fight not only the enemy but the vicious darkness growing in him. Wounded and sent back to the U.S., he struggles to make sense of all he has lost in a war his country abandoned. He works to become a good husband, father and teacher while he fights to bury the war and rails against friends' enthusiasm for the Memorial and the Welcome Home for Vietnam Veterans planned in D.C. Only if he accepts help from his wife and his friends will he find real peace.
Colloquium Speaker: Mark Treanor
Mark Treanor’s first novel, A Quiet Cadence, the story of a young Marine in combat and dealing with its aftermath over the years since his war, was published by the Naval Institute Press in 2020. A Quiet Cadence won the William E. Colby Award as the best solo work of fiction or nonfiction of 2020 that has made a major contribution to military history, intelligence operations or international affairs; the American Library Association’s W. Y. Boyd award for the best military fiction published in 2020; and the Military Writers’ Society of America’s 2021 Gold Medal for Historical Fiction. The novel has also been enthusiastically endorsed by Gen. Jim Mattis, Adm. Michael Mullen, Gen. David Petraeus, and Adm. James Stavridis among numerous others.
A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Mark served as an infantry and artillery officer (2dLt. – Capt., 1968 – 1973) in the U.S. Marine Corps where he led a rifle platoon in Vietnam, an artillery battery in the 2d Marine Division, was aide de-camp to the Commanding General of the 2d MarDiv, and was an instructor in leadership, weapons and tactics at The Basic School. He is also a graduate of the University of Maryland School of Law and recently retired as Chairman of the Board (non-executive) of Virtus Investment Partners, Inc. and as an Executive Leadership Coach with Cambria Consulting, Inc. Previously, Mark was the Senior Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Wachovia Corporation (1999-2008). Prior to that he was Senior Partner of Treanor Pope & Hughes, a Maryland law firm he founded, and had previously been a partner in the Maryland firm of Miles & Stockbridge.
Mark is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior fellow of the American Leadership Forum. He is former Chairman of the Advisory Committee to the Export-Import Bank of the United States, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Visitors of the U.S. Naval Academy, Chairman of the National Defense University Foundation, and a former member of the Boards of the National Defense University, the University of Maryland School of Law, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform, the University of North Carolina Center for Banking and Finance, and the Financial Services Roundtable. He has participated in Department of Defense - sponsored fact-finding missions to Iraq, the Horn of Africa, Yemen, the Caucasus and other locations in Africa and Europe.