A Lifetime in A Year by Lynda Ebanks Harrison

A Lifetime In a Year: Remembrances by Vietnam and Vietnam-Era Veterans in Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War 2015 (Sparrows2, 86 pp., paper) book contains thirty stories from veterans who responded to a questionnaire from the Daughters of the American Revolution Star of Destiny Chapter in Katy, Texas.

The chapter’s Historical Preservation Committee chaired by Harrison edited the responses, which primarily came from Texas Vietnam War veterans, both men and women. These short reminiscences reflect pride in wartime service, whether in combat or support units.

Alfred Landon Peterson writes: “On my first tour at the 45th Surgical Hospital on the Tay Ninh base camp for three months, we got hit with rockets and mortars every hour on the hour. We would look at our watches and at five minutes to each hour, we would lie down on the ground and wait until all the rockets came in and hit the base.”

Helicopter pilot Gerald (Jerry) L. Ericsson recalls: “Jim Malek was a favorite aircraft commander. He would drink a little too much the night before and the more he trusted me, the more he would let me do before I was instructed to wake him up. So as he slept, I learned a lot.”

Nurse Judy)Hooper Davis says: “I worked twelve hour shifts, at time six days a week. Because it was intensive care and recovery room, the work was non-stop. It was very stressful. So many things I’d never seen before and we did whatever was needed to save lives. Before Vietnam, I had little over one year of nursing experience. After leaving Vietnam, I had a lifetime of nursing experience in one year. My roommate in Vietnam was so devastated by the tour that she never nursed again.”

Some of the veterans note that this is the first time they publically shared their Vietnam War experiences. John B. Boyd best summed up their feelings: “I was a nineteen year old Army NCO. I did a tough, demanding job in combat conditions and did it well. I was proud of my accomplishments. This is something I never shared because no one cared.”

The DAR cares. In this book they have given a few more Vietnam War veterans the recognition they have earned.

For ordering info, email StarOfDestinyDAR@gmail.com

—Henry Zeybel

Vietnam Warrior Voices by Mark Masse

Mark Masse is a professor of literary journalism at Ball State University. His new book, Vietnam Warrior Voices, Life Stories:  Caputo,  Del Vecchio, Butler, O’Brien (Mark Henry Masse, 94 pp., $5.99, paper; $4.99, Kindle), is a work of literary journalism. It is based on a series of interviews Masse did with the four “warrior voices” of the subtitle.

In about seventy pages of text, Masse gives the reader the pith of what these writers have tried to accomplish in their books.  He gives the impression that all four have been tormented, angry souls at some time in their lives. Maybe that is a characteristic of most authors who write books that deal with war. War is not a happy subject.

I got a good sense of what these men have accomplished in their lives and in their writing careers. Plus, this book would have motivated me to read their books—if I had not already read all of them. I am motivated to reread John Del Vecchio’s novel, The Thirteenth Valley, as I didn’t much like it the first time I read it a long time ago.

If I were still teaching a Vietnam War literature course, I would use this book as an introductory text. It would work well for that purpose.

Mark Masse

I’ve met Bob Butler and Tim O’Brien, and my impression of them and of their work is about the same as Masse’s. So I figure that the portraits he draws of the other two, Del Vecchio and Philip Caputo, are equally accurate.

I find myself asking why I’ve not met Caputo or Del Vecchio. I don’t know; maybe I lacked the motivation. Certainly both of them have been out on the road giving talks and signing books—the purgatory of authors who wish to sell books.

I suggest buying and reading at least one book by each of these guys—they are worth that much effort.  They have all worked hard at their craft and have achieved some notice, even as fame and fortune have—by and large—eluded them.

The author’s website is markmasse.com

—David Willson

American Brothers United By Billy R. Robbins

American Brothers United (ABU Press, 583 pp., $20.18, paper; $9.99, Kindle) focuses on a regiment of the 101^st Airborne Division in Vietnam from July 29, 1965, to August 1966. This story is told by former Staff Sgt. Billy R. Robbins with the help of many of his ABU brothers who contributed chapters and pictures.

Robbins spent thirty years in the Army, retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1987. The amount of research that went into this thick book is amazing. Robbins tracked down many ABU men who served with him and also makes reference to several books written about the same topic.

American Brothers United also traces the history of the ABU and what has happened to many of the men Robbins served with. It also contains information on reunions, his father, and even Donut Dollies in Vietnam. With such an extensive and ambitious topic, at times I found it difficult to grasp the main points Robbins was making.

This book is not without controversy. Besides documenting the heroic efforts of ABU in Vietnam, the author is very critical of his commanding officer, Maj. David Hackworth. He says that “Hacky” put ABU lives at risk to further his career, calling him “a LIAR- a FRAUD! A MALFUNCTION!”

Robbins also includes a chapter discussing Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, decrying his misbegotten Project 100,000, which drafted men who were, as Robbins puts it, “severely limited—both mentally and medically.”

American Brothers United is a very ambitious effort and a must read for Airborne Brotherhood veterans.

—Mark S. Miller

Old Songs by Neal M Warren and Adam Lizakowski

Neal M Warren served in Vietnam with the U.S. Marine Corps from 1966-67. Adam Lizakowski is a Polish-born poet, translator, essayist, and author whose literary work has been translated into many languages.

Warren and Lizakowski are co-authors of Old Songs: Anteroom Poetry in Both English and German (Outskirts Press, 148 pp., $14.95, paper). Many of the poems and prose pieces in this little book comment on war, especially Warren’s. The story of his that impressed me most is “Imagery of War—1967 (The Story).”

Here’s an excerpt:

“Journal Entry—Sun—30 March 1986. My contribution, I used a weapon that could maim as well as kill. A projectile loaded with an explosive would be dropped down a reinforced tube by me and be propelled as far as four thousand meters. It was easy to be ignorant in the position I held. The more ignorant I was, the greater the burden of truth when it arrived.”

He goes on to say that time does not heal all wounds. That’s saying a mouthful.

I’ve noticed that myself about war. Because Warren was in country during the same time period I was, his words hit home more than those of Lizakowski. My favorite piece by Lizakowski in this book is: “The poet should be a dog who pokes his nose in the garbage can smells the roses in the emperor’s garden barks and howls at the moon even if it ignores him.”  Who can argue with the wisdom in those words?

I’d quote one of the German poems in this book, but it’s a struggle for me to translate even a short one as my high school German class was long ago and far way in the Yakima of the 1950s.

Warren’s prose poem, “Imagery of War,” is worth the price of this little book. It’s twelve pages of truth, poetry, and the best journal entries I’ve stumbled upon in the pursuit of writing book reviews.

I highly recommend you buy this book and read it.

—David Willson

Fighting for Freedom by Charles F. Bolden Jr. and Gail Lumet Buckley

Charles F. Bolden Jr., and Gail Lumet Buckley’s Fighting for Freedom (D Giles, 80 pp., $16.95, paper) is the fifth in the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s “Double Exposure” series. The book contains a series of captivating photos from the Civil War to the present day of men and women in uniform.

Though the writing is brief, tantalizing details emerge about African American military history most of us know nothing about. The writing accompanying the images is succinct and clear, adding enticing details.

The photos themselves, all sixty-two of them, are stunning in their beauty and power. There are many of groups of African American men and women troops, as well as single portraits and snapshots. It is striking to see photos of handsome young men, smiling with pride on the way to war. They are healthy and dignified, knowing they are going to serve their country. Then there are the images of men back from battle, their faces haunted, their shoulders slumped, exhaustion and pain etched in their faces.

Quite a few women are included, such Capt. Della Raney, who in 1942 became the first African American nurse accepted into the Army Nurse Corps, and all of the female members of the all-black, World War II 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion.

There is a photo of military training at Tuskegee, as well as one of a smaller group of Tuskegee airmen; a stereoscopic image of African American volunteers in the Philippines in 1899; a shot of Gen. Lloyd Austin III, the former Commanding General of American forces in Iraq; and one of two unidentified soldiers giving the soul power salute in Vietnam in 1967.

There are also a few photos of African American people going about their everyday lives—a wedding, a woman in a park in Washington, D.C.—that remind us that before and after war many black people had to fight for their own freedoms here at home. And that they had lives like everyone else— memories, pain, glories, and joys.

The book contains no preaching or proselytizing, making it even an even more powerful look at African Americans’ military experiences.

—Loana Hoylman

The Mighty Jungle by John A. Bercaw

John A. Bercaw served in the U. S. Army, as well as in the Marine Corps and the National Guard. He spent a year in South Vietnam as a helicopter pilot and his experiences form the background of The Mighty Jungle (CreateSpace, 154 pp., $8.75, paper; $2.99, Kindle). In addition to this thriller, Bercaw is the author of Pink Mist, a memoir of his tour of duty in Vietnam.

This novel has two main characters: a warrant officer pilot near the end of his time in the Vietnam War, and a young and very green infantry lieutenant. When their helicopter is shot down and crashes in the jungle, all the others are killed and these two characters are thrown together to attempt to evade capture and survive in that very hostile environment.

Bercaw is very graphic about what they encounter in the “mighty jungle.” Insects and other creepy crawlies the least of it. Spoiler warning: The green lieutenant does not make it. The warrant officer manages to barely survive capture (and torture) by the enemy, and ends up back in the safety of the U.S. Army. He is treated fairly and with compassion, which surprised me.

Dieter Dengler—the Navy pilot who was shot down, captured, and escaped his captivity in Laos—is cited. The Mighty Jungle has much of the flavor of Dengler’s classic book, Escape from Laos, and I was impressed that Bercaw had done his research so well.

This is an engrossing and exciting thriller and I very much enjoyed reading it. The song, “We Gotta Get Out of this Place,” is quoted and never has it been more appropriate. The extreme misery of being lost in a jungle has never been portrayed with more intensity and realism. I put the book down with gratitude that my tour of duty in Vietnam did not involve any such adventure or risk.

Bercaw in country

The aspect of the novel that unnerved me the most was the worms. The two characters eat worms and also produce them from both ends of their bodies.

I figured that the worms would do them in. I was half right. The medical personnel who work on the survivor are much focused on the small creatures who inhabited his body.

Showers, soap, and poison soon bring them under control, but the psychic trauma is not so easily dealt with.  Time and the love of a good woman helped some.

There’s a lesson in that.

—David Willson

In-Country by Phillip B. Fehrenbacher

Bill Mauldin’s cartoons immortalized infantrymen Willie and Joe who fought in Europe during World War II. In Up Front, which contains a collection of those cartoons, Mauldin calls his drawings “pictures of an army full of blunders and efficiency, irritations and comradeship.” His basic criterion for humor insists that men of purpose have the capacity to “still grin at themselves.”

In a similar manner, Phillip B. Fehrenbacher drew more than a hundred cartoons based on the Vietnam War. He served nearly two years in Vietnam, in 1968-69, but only began producing cartoons in 2015. He collects them in In-Country: Memories of a Tour of Duty in South Vietnam (CreateSpace, 116 pp. $16.95, paper).

In explaining the long delay, Fehrenbacher might cite Mauldin who said, as a cartoonist, “maybe I can be funny after the war, but nobody who has seen this war can be cute about it while it’s going on.”

Books by the two men share a commonality in that they depict the average GI as a pawn fighting for survival on multiple levels in an arena not of his choice. Their humor derives from situations in which life could hardly be more miserable, but it is.

Fehrenbacher nails the plight of soldiers in a combat zone, but his humor could benefit from tighter unity. His cartoons would be more effective if he had arranged them chronologically. In other words, he should have started with those about new arrivals, then featured experienced troops, then short timers, and finally men ending a tour. In the middle of the book, for example, he depicts a departure of a Freedom Bird, which just does not fit there. Chronology would build a story-telling continuity.

Fehrenbacher also oversells his humor. Above many cartoons, he explains the situation. Below the cartoons, he presents titles that repeat the explanation. But his cartoons are strong enough to stand alone and speak for themselves.

Because Fehrenbacher had nearly half a century for reflection, I expected deeper insights and criticisms of the war to emerge from his drawings. Nevertheless, his final cartoon makes the book’s strongest political statement. In it, a lieutenant asks, “So then…what would the colonel like the body count to be?” A seated colonel looks puzzled and says, “Hmmm….”

On the other hand, I might have expected too much from the book.  “The cartoons are not always funny,” Fehrenbacher says, “but hopefully jog the memories of those who were there and inform those who were not.”

Undoubtedly, he fulfills that goal.

—Henry Zeybel

Dak To and the Border Battles of Vietnam, 1967-1968 by Michael A. Eggleston

After a thirty-year career in the U.S. Army, Michael A. Eggleston became a historian. His first five books focused on the American Civil War, U.S. Marines in World War I, and Vietnamization. He addresses a different aspect of the Vietnam War in Dak To and the Border Battles of Vietnam, 1967-1968 (McFarland, 224 pp. $35, paper;  $9.99, Kindle).

The North Vietnamese designed an offensive in and around Dak To, Eggleston writes, to try to draw U.S. and South Vietnamese forces away from the large cities, thereby setting the stage for the 1968 Tet Offensive. What’s called “Hanoi’s Plan” changed the enemy’s strategy from replying primarily on Viet Cong guerrilla warfare to a conventional North Vietnamese Army offensive designed to “cause a spontaneous uprising [among South Vietnamese] in order to win a decisive victory in the shortest possible time.”

Con Thien, Dak To, and Khe Sanh were the primary NVA targets. In other words, the North expected to “win in a single stroke,” Eggleston says.

The plan appeared unrealistic and did not work, as Eggleston notes. At the same time, he explains a disparity in American strategic thinking regarding a choice between pacification and attrition programs. In the end, Gen. William Westmoreland’s costly body-counting war of attrition strategy prevailed.

The core of the book is a long chapter about the many battles fought along the Cambodian and Laotian borders near Dak To. This chapter alone—in which Eggleston recreates a series of hill battles—is worth the price of the book.

“Vietnam’s bloodiest campaign started on 15 June [1967], when the 24th NVA Regiment annihilated a CDIG [Civilian Irregular Defense Group] patrol led by two U.S. Special Forces advisors near Dak To,” he writes. After that, the men of the 4th Infantry Division and the 173rd Airborne Brigade did the brunt of the fighting. The combat lasted until Thanksgiving.

The recounting of five days of fighting for Hill 875 tells as much about the horror of war as anything I have read. Eggleston calls this engagement “the costliest fight of the Vietnam War.”

Eggleston’s most informative research comes from unpublished memoirs written by infantrymen who fought in the battles. Their actions and observations fascinated me; among them the fact that the extraordinary became routine. Additionally, Eggleston uses published memoirs by infantrymen, Combat Operations After Action Reports, secondary sources, magazine and newspaper articles, newsletter excerpts, TV reports, and other video sources. He also relies on personal knowledge gained during his two tours at Pleiku.

He concludes with a chapter, “Aftermath,” that summarizes what happened during the 1968 Tet Offensive and follow-on action across South Vietnam. And he takes the narrative up to 1975 when the North finally prevailed.

Eggleston is opinionated and readily points fingers at those he believes were responsible for America’s failure to keep South Vietnam out of communist hands. “If any single person can be blamed for precipitating our full involvement in the war in Vietnam,” he writes, for example, “it was [Secretary of Defense] Robert McNamara.” Eggleston also faults Gen. Westmoreland failing to see the war’s big picture. Additionally, he names and blames lower-level commanders who put their careers ahead of the lives of the men they led.

Michael Eggleston

Along with a list of definitions for acronyms, he includes biographical sketches of key participants in the book, a chronology of Vietnamese history from 1930-77, unit organizations, and a list covering nineteen pages of the names of U.S. personnel killed in the Dak To fight.

Eggleston labels the organizational style of his writing a hybrid because it “merges the official history of the war with the oral history of people who were there.”

The depth of his research provides personalities for each of his accounts of battle. He delivers an extremely interesting approach to history.

—Henry Zeybel

Broadcasters: Untold Chaos by Rick Fredericksen

Rick Fredericksen, the author of Broadcasters: Untold Chaos (Amazon Digital, 207 pp., $4.99, Kindle), is a Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam War. Fredericksen, a veteran journalist and author, has written an interesting and readable book about the many years he spent in Southeast as a foreign correspondent, including a stint as CBS News’ Bangkok bureau chief. Broadcasters is sort of all over the place, which is fine with me as it is written in easy-to-read sections and deals with subjects I enjoyed reading about.

The one I found the most interesting was the fairly long section on Agent Orange. Because I have Multiple Myeloma, which is associated with exposure to dioxin among Vietnam War veterans, I was eager to read what he had to say.

In contrast to nearly everything else I’ve read about dioxin, Fredericksen focuses on what Agent Orange and the other dioxins the U.S. military sprayed in Southeast Asia have done to the people who live there. Most books and articles about AO published in this country tend to start with the havoc that the spraying and exposure has wrought on veterans and all but ignore the citizens of Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia.

Fredericksen includes photos of the displays in Vietnam that are available for tourists to view that show how dioxin affects the fetus. Horrible, scary stuff. I actually felt lucky that AO has done so little to me by comparison. And to my offspring.

Rick Fredericksen during the Vietnam War

I recommend this book to those who want to dip into some readable and interesting essays by a man who has spent much of his life in Southeast Asia writing and thinking about what the American presence there has meant. Not all of it is good and not all of it is popular among the folks who live there.

Even Filipinos have some bad things to say about Americans in this book. I enjoyed reading about Imelda Marcos and her 3,000 pairs of shoes.

So there is some fun in this book. Quite a bit, actually. Buy it and read it.

—David Willson

The Reason You’re Alive by Matthew Quick

Matthew Quick is best known for his big-selling 2008 novel, The Silver Linings Playbook, and the even bigger Hollywood movie it spawned in 2012. The book and film received generally positive reviews. More than one critic, however, has pointed out that the plot—about a young man overcoming mental illness—strains credibility (to the breaking point) and the characters bear little resemblance to real human beings.

In his new novel, The Reason You’re Alive (Harper, 240 pp., $25.99, Quick again deals with a main character with serious mental problems. The reason you’re reading this review on this web page is that the character is a Vietnam War veteran.  Said veteran is “an opinionated and good-hearted American patriot fighting like hell to stay true to his red, white and blue heart,” Quick’s publisher says, “even as the country he loves rapidly changes in ways he doesn’t always like or understand.”

There’s little doubt the guy (who narrates the story) is opinionated and patriotic. But good-hearted? I couldn’t get that word out of my mind as I read page after page after page of the veteran spouting anything but “good-hearted” words. For example, throughout the book he refers to Vietnamese as “gooks” and “little yellow” people. Doctors are “fucking moron[s] and nurses are “cold bitch[es].”

I guess some of this crude, offensive spouting off can be classified as “opinionated.” And I am sure there are people who agree with some or all of this. But why center a novel on a character who is a mean-spirted, bigoted, misogynist, racist boor?

Some reviewers (and the publisher) talk about the humor in the book. Perhaps some of this Archie-Bunker stuff tickles some people’s funny bones. But I didn’t find anything close to humor on one page of the novel.

Another distressing aspect of the book is Quick’s ultra-clichéd depiction of his central character. The guy is little more than a one-dimensional stereotype: a mentally unbalanced, cammie-wearing, gun-loving Nam vet haunted by the dozens of men, women, and children he offed in the war. How do we know this? Quick has the guy conveniently tell us that he and his buddies “did things you can’t even imagine” in Vietnam, killing maybe “hundreds of gooks,” many of them civilians, and “burning so many villages.”

Then there are the credibility-stretching plot details, including the fact that the narrator somehow amassed a fortune in the world of finance after the war and his best friend in a multi-billionaire. And that in Vietnam the guy is ordered to “break” a fellow grunt, an American Indian, who scalped dead enemy soldiers and kept them on his belt. He “breaks” the guy by humiliating him in front of the platoon, forcing him to crawl all but naked on the ground and pick up cigarette butts with his teeth.

Mathew Quick

Spoiler alert: The book’s penultimate extended scene is another piece of preposterousness: a meeting arranged by the vet’s billionaire friend with the guy he “broke” at the latter’s mansion in Vegas. All goes swimmingly well—including what’s meant to be a shocking disclosure but is lamely predictable.

Before reading this book, I had thought that the tired, stereotypical image of the Vietnam veteran as a one-time merciless killing machine turned mentally damaged and violently dangerous was a thing of the past. Sad to say, its alive (and not well) in this book.

—Marc Leepson