The Last Vietnam Veteran by Joe Murphy

Joe Murphy’s The Last Vietnam Veteran (222 pp. $7.99, paperback; $4.99, Kindle) is a very readable, semiautobiographical novel centered on the diverse stories of the last living eleven (perhaps thirteen) Vietnam War veterans. Murphy tells his tale through the eyes of the narrator, who eventually becomes the last man standing. No spoiler alert is necessary since the reader is told who the sole survivor is at the beginning of the book.  

If you are a Vietnam War veteran, reading this novel will seem like listening to and relating to the war stories Murphy spins out as if you were at a VVA chapter meeting or sitting belly-up to a bar, without having to buy a round of beers. Readers who are not Vietnam War veterans can eavesdrop and wonder if these stories are true. As one of the characters says: “When the facts and the legend collide, go with the legend!”   

Some are Murphy’s vignettes are funny, some are implausible, but almost all are poignant. A few of the characters went to school with the narrator or lived in his hometown. However, most were from different units, different backgrounds, and served in the war at different times.

Several themes permeate the book. One is survivor’s guilt on many different levels. Another is the guilt rear echelons who did their jobs and went home felt since they were not in combat. Then there’s the guilt of those who were in combat but believed they should have done more. Finally, the guilt of those who never went to Vietnam while many of their compatriots did.

Another theme is the existence—and value—of Vietnam Veterans of America. Murphy, who joined the Army in 1966 and served in Vietnam with 64th Quartermaster Battalion at Long Binh, presents VVA as a forum where Vietnam War veterans help their fellow veterans and talk about their war experiences with men and women who are interested and will understand. The book is a great advertisement for VVA, which—among other things—helps preserve the national and personal memories of Vietnam War veterans’ sacrifices and stories.

The additional themes of nicotine addiction (unfiltered!), alcoholism (“Mr. Beer”), and PTSD and reoccur throughout the novel. The narrator, for example, has built a bunker in the garden of his house and keeps an extensive survivalist cache in his root cellar.

Joe Murphy

But it is survivor’s guilt that leads to his belief that “we owe” and “I did not do enough.” This accounts in part for the desire of almost all of the book’s characters to help other veterans. The narrator also reflects on how one year of a long life would dominate the remaining years of so many lives. 

The answer may be contained in the cliché that although a veteran may have left Vietnam, Vietnam has never left the veteran. That that experience, in other words, cannot be left behind.

As Murphy writes: When two Vietnam vets met, one of the most common questions they ask of each other is, “When were you there?”  Many a vet will pause… and reply “Last night.”

Murphy’s book posits the many reasons why this is so. Although legend, for many it is fact and it is why you should read this book.

His website is joemurphybooks.com/

–Harvey Weiner

Winds of Discontent by Don Meyer

Don Meyer’s novel, Winds of Discontent (329 pp. $24.95, hardcover; 14.95, paper; $4.95, Kindle), is a throwback to the paperback men’s adventure novels that were popular from the 50s through the 70s, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The story takes place in Vietnam, mainly during the years of the French Indochina War, then up to the time of the big American involvement. Meyer is a Vietnam War and worked six years on writing this novel.

It’s late 1945 and nineteen-year-old Sinclair Langdon, the son of an American mother and British father, has decided to stay in Vietnam after his father is posted back to China. He befriends two men who will play important roles in his life. The first, Frenchy, is a soldier of fortune running guns to Vietnamese rebel groups fighting the French. Langdon goes to work for him.

The second, Edward Bourke, works for a small British newspaper and Langdon will also winds up working for him. The plan is for Langdon to accompany Frenchy on his dangerous missions and report what he sees and learns to Bourke, who will write them up in his newspaper.

In true adventure-novel style Langdon falls in love. In this case its with Yvonne Renaud, a beautiful young Eurasian (Vietnamese and French). That’s quite a bit for a nineteen-year-old to handle, but the times and the environment cause him to grow up fast.

The two nineteen-year-olds quickly develop a physical relationship. She comes with a history she’s ashamed of, though, having been forced into sex slavery by Japanese forces when she was sixteen. She’s the daughter of a prominent French officer dying of cancer, a man determined to arrange a marriage for her with a military officer.

Like I said, there’s a lot going on here.

While delivering more and more American weapons to Vietnamese rebels, Langdon is also writing about the growing ill feelings building in the countryside about the French.

The years go by. There’s a lot of gunplay. Each main character gets at least one bullet wound.

I enjoyed reading Winds of Discontent, which is basically an old-style pulp men’s adventure tale. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  

–Bill McCloud

Zigzag Men by Larry Sherrer

Zigzag Men (Brass Books, 273 pp. $14.95, paper; $2.99, ebook) by Larry Sherrer is an enjoyable, darkly humorous novel of the Vietnam War, focusing on a group of helicopter pilots battling an inefficient, inept military system every bit as much they’re fighing the enemy. In fact, the “villain in this novel,” Sherrer tell us, “is a dysfunctional army.”

Larry Sherrer, a member of Vietnam Veterans of America, served as a scout helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War. He flew out of Quan Loi Base Camp near An Loc in South Vietnam in 1971, the same location and time in which the novel takes place.

Warrant Officers Eldon Zigman and “Roach” Surr arrive together in-country, having been friends since flight school. Zigman, who is almost too tall to be a helicopter pilot, quickly develops a bad attitude about the Army and the war. Roach is almost not tall enough and didn’t like the Army from the get-go. The only thing he hates more than lifers is the Army itself.

Both men were draftees. Now they’re entrusted with flying quarter million-dollar helicopters at a time when there is an appalling attrition rate for chopper pilots.

Flying as scout pilots out of Quan Loi, the two men see plenty of air action. Zigman is convinced the system is going to kill him, but he feels powerless to change it. He’s constantly making lists of ways he might die and separating them into categories.

A few pilots are considered to be jinxed because they always seem to find trouble. Sherrer writes about men who don’t want to be promoted into additional responsibilities and others who have concerns about the quality of aircraft maintenance. In one scene, a pilot battles to control a helicopter that suddenly loses its hydraulics. In another, a pilot loses his memory after his helicopter is hit. Another has an out-of-body experience in reaction to combat.

Humor is often an important way people in the military deal with stressful situations. Using humor in writing about the experience can be an effective technique. I’m keeping Zigzag Men in my library to reread again. Highly recommended.   

–Bill McCloud

Of Helicopters and Heroes by Gary Bowman

Gary Bowman served as a helicopter crew chief and door gunner during his 1971 tour of duty in the Vietnam War. He decided to write a novel, Of Helicopters and Heroes (198 pp. $8.99, paper; $2.99, Kindle), about his experiences rather than a memoir. He used his experiences and those of other helicopter crews in the 101st Airborne to create his plot.

As usual with an autobiographical novel, you have to wonder which parts reflect the actual experiences of the writer and his comrades and which parts are made up. Since Bowman does not enhance the narrative with incidents that are not believable, it appears everything in the book either happened to him or to someone he knew.

The main character is Tim Burroughs, who comes from a dysfunctional family. He enlists because he figures he will be drafted or be “volunteered” by a judge. His limited knowledge of the war gives him the belief that he will be fighting communism.

The book eschews describing Burroughs’ training and plops him into a helicopter several months into his Vietnam War tour. He’s 19, and no longer a cherry. He is a crew chief and a good one.

Burroughs and his unit encompass a typical Huey helicopter and crew over the period of a one-year tour. The missions include inserting and extracting Special Forces teams. Sometimes these missions are in Laos. He experiences a helicopter crash. He stops an ARVN officer from throwing an old man out of the chopper in flight. They carry Donut Dollies to a base. An ARVN accidentally fires an RPG into the deck of the chopper. They rescue an ambushed unit by landing in a very small space.

In one of his last missions, Burroughs leaves the chopper to save a wounded soldier. He should have gotten a medal for that deed, but the action took place in Laos so, officially, it never happened?.

Bowman does not use the book to preach. However, he does offer some insights about the war. Burroughs loses his faith in God (after deaths of another crew), but not in his country. He is critical of the press. They make a big deal of the accidental killing of civilians, he says, but say nothing about good things, like Americans rescuing civilians from a flood.

He points out that the further from the bush, the more the perks (like hot water showers), but the more chicken shit (saluting). Another point he makes is that troops were not given enough time to recover from physical and mental wounds. “It’s a system of musts, not wants.”

Unlike other self-published Vietnam War books, Bowman’s does not have any major spelling or grammar problems. It is an easy read, except for the many abbreviations that he assumes the reader knows.

I enjoyed Of Helicopters and Heroes in which Gary Bowman gives some love to crew chiefs and door gunners. Most Vietnam War books focus on pilots, but the crewmen were an important component of all helicopter operations. 

The book is informative about the experiences of everyone on the chopper and the vignettes are entertaining.   

–Kevin Hardy

The Rains on Tan Son Nhat by Christopher McCain-Nguyen

Christopher McCain-Nguyen was born in Vietnam and came to America as a student in 1966. He settled in the U.S. where he became a successful businessman. His debut novel, The Rains on Tan Son Nhat (469 pp., $16.99, paper; $2.40, Kindle), gestated for 25 years before it was published in 2021. He partially dedicates the book to “all the fighting men of the Republic of South Vietnam” and “members of the U.S. Armed Forces who sacrificed so much in the Vietnam War.”

Main character James Saito lives on a California farm with his wife and daughter from his first wife, Mai, who was left behind in the turmoil of the American evacuation from South Vietnam in 1975. The story flashes back to when Maj. Saito, an intelligence officer, arrives in Saigon in 1966. He meets the beautiful Mai the first day and falls head over heels for her. 

Mai was adopted by a doctor who supported the Thieu government. He was not exactly thrilled when an American asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage, especially since Mai had been betrothed to Chung, a future doctor. Chung soon leaves to join the National Liberation Front as a doctor. The lives of these three people will be affected by the events in the war from 1967-75—and beyond.

This novel is not based on a true story, although McCain-Nguyen weaves facts (and opinions) about the war into the narrative. It’s a romance novel, but one that also has strong descriptions of the events that led to the fall of South Vietnam.

There are stretches of the book during which the main characters disappear and the book becomes basically a tutorial on the war. There is a good section on the Tet Offensive and a vivid description of the collapse in 1975. The story includes a rare glimpse of VC fighters living in the jungle.

Americans tend to stop reading about the war when it gets to 1973 and the withdrawal of the last U.S. combat troops, but the war buffets Mai and her friends and family after that. McCain-Nguyen forcefully condemns the U.S. for abandoning South Vietnam and has Chung muse about fighting for the wrong side.

He also explores the role of destiny in life. Mai stays in Saigon because it is her destiny, an Asian concept that puzzles James. Before the flashback kicks in, we learn that James is returning to Vietnam to see Mai before she dies of cancer. 

That was the biggest problem I had with the book. I appreciate an author wanting to be creative, but giving away the ending before the love story kicks in was a poor decision. It reduced the suspense. Also, the love triangle provides little tension because Chung is out of the competition early.

Although McCain-Nguyen put his heart and soul into the book and meant for it to enlighten as well as entertain, it is poorly edited and contains spelling and grammar problems. Reading it can be a bit distracting. 

If romance novels are not your cup of tea, you might enjoy this book because of its heavy dose of Vietnam War history. Perhaps too much, though, as the novel is long and the characters sometimes get overlooked in the long timeframe.

–Kevin Hardy

Back in the Day by Steve Heuton

Back in the Day (Dorrance Publishing, 220 pp. $18, paper) is a coming-of-age novel set during the Vietnam War. It covers high school, the draft, the war, bar fights, and run-ins with the law. Heuton served in Vietnam in 1970 with the U.S. Army.  

It’s the late 1960s and Jimmy Reno is a high school student. The story begins a tad uncomfortably as Jimmy notices his younger sister’s “butt wiggle” as she runs, grins, and observers, “Little sister was growing up.” Before long Jimmy and his pal Stan go out looking for girls who “put out.” Jimmy is 17 and occasionally gets grounded. He has typical girlfriend problems.

Jimmy also is the center for the football team. One of the stars is John Milner, which I remembered is the name of the cool, car-racing fifties guy in American Graffiti. After they graduate from high school, Stan joins the Marines and Jimmy winds up in the Amy. His girlfriend Angie goes off to college.

Jimmy reports to Fort Lewis for eight weeks of Basic Training at the book’s half-way point. Then we follow him through eight more weeks of Advanced Individual Training. Next stop: Vietnam.

“It was hot, humid and it stank,” he says upon arriving in-country. “I could hardly breathe the first couple of days. What a shit hole!”

Arriving at his assigned unit, Jimmy learns that he is the new weapons man. His main job is to repair broken weapons. After seeing some early action, he thinks he’ll never see his girlfriend again.

Heuton is a fine writer and his story goes racing along. In the end, though, it winds up being nothing more than light entertainment. No harm, no foul.

–Bill McCloud

Girl from the Racetrack by Robert Brundrett

Robert Brundrett enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1969. He was sent to South Vietnam, where he served as an adviser to the South Vietnamese Navy. He spent time at river and coastal-support bases and worked for the Navy Construction Bureau in Saigon.

Those experiences inspired his novel, Girl from the Racetrack (Orange Frazier Press, 254 pp. $22.95, paper).Joe Savage, who roomed with main character Charlie Strickland in college, tells the story of his buddy’s romance with a South Vietnamese woman after the men are reunited in South Vietnam in 1972.

Charlie, whose job is working with the South Vietnamese Navy on a design for a swift river craft, grew up with a love for horses, especially race horses. In Saigon, he goes to Phu Tho Race Track to take in the action. That’s where he meets a jockey named Kim and her trainer and father, Binh.

Charlie is invited to visit the family on their horse farm. Romance is in the air immediately, but first the bond must winds up being forged in adversity as Charlie and Kim get a friend out of jail and barely survive a mortar attack. Later, they hide in a barn during the NVA’s Easter Offensive. Their escape involves horses, naturally. The romance proceeds fairly smoothly, but there are snags below the calm surface. After all, this is a fictional romance.

Part of the intrigue is Kim’s brother Bao, who may be a Viet Cong operative, and Charlie may be spying on him. There’s also Charlie questioning what we are doing in Vietnam and wondering if South Vietnam wouldn’t be better off reunited. Although he doesn’t let his misgivings affect his relations with Kim’s family, an Ugly American character—Charlies’ racist superior—believes that the Vietnamese people are inferior and not worth the effort.

I assume this story of Charlie and Kim was either inspired by a romance that the author was involved in or that he knew the couple. Building on that, this is a rare time when I would have wished for a true story to be more enhanced for entertainment purposes.

I review a lot of war movies, some based on true stories. Usually, those movies are not good history lessons because they stray too far from their source material. In this case, I wish Brundrett had jazzed the story up a bit. The plot teases some espionage, but doesn’t deliver.

Aside from a couple of danger-filled moments, Charlie and Kim’s romance goes pretty smoothly. The greatest hurdle the couple have is navigating the red tape necessary to get Kim to America.

The war is on the periphery in this book; it seldom takes center stage. Charlie’s job is far from the jungle. Which makes Girl from the Racetrack an unchallenging story set in a war. But Brundrett is a competent writer, and if you are a romantic and don’t want death to seep into your novel reading, you might like this book.

–Kevin Hardy

Her Father’s Land by Jeff Kelly

Jeff Kelly served a tour of duty in the Vietnam War in 1968 with the U.S. Marine Corps and wrote about it a 2001 memoir, DMZ Diary. Kelly has now produced a novel, Her Father’s Land (Booklocker.com, 418 pp., $22.02, paper; $2.99,Kindle), which is inspired by his experiences in Vietnam.

He served at a fire base built on the site of a razed hamlet. The gravestones caused him to wonder what it must have been like for the villagers to abandon their homes there, along with the graves of their ancestors. So Kelly has set Her Father’s Land at Fire Base Alpha-3, the closest American base to the DMZ, and interweaves the stories of U.S. Marine, North Vietnamese Army, and Viet Cong characters into the novel.

With Alpha-3 within range of North Vietnamese artillery, the new battalion commander, Col. Favors, is not thrilled about being a sitting target. He feels Marines are best used in an aggressive manner. One of his best men is Lance Cpl. Tim “Monk” Montgomery.

An NVA officer named Huang Van Nhu is in charge of operations against Alpha-3. He and the main character, a female Viet Cong cadre named Tran Xuan Ha, are a couple. Ha goes undercover to get information from an incompetent, cowardly Marine lieutenant named Jones who uses connections (his uncle, a U.S. Senator) to transfer to USAID. 

Getting himself out of Alpha-3 gives Jones chance to go after the beautiful Ha and—like most lotharios—he thinks she really digs him. To get her in bed, he’s soon blabbing secrets that get Marines killed.

The love triangle of Nhu, Ha, and Jones is the core relationship in the book. The second half follows the trio as Ha and Nhu attempt to get the kidnapped Jones to the North so he can be used as a political pawn. Meanwhile, battles rage around Alpha-3.

Kelly tries to avoid the flag waving in many Vietnam War novels and movies by being evenhanded. Since he limits himself to a few main characters, he is able to develop them well. Jones comes off as a stereotypical ugly American, but the others are all good examples of combatants sincere in their dedication to their side. Favors and Nhu are worthy adversaries and anyone would want Monk or Ha in their squad. 

Jeff Kelly

Kelly writes well with few flourishes. This is not a romance novel. He walked the walk so he is able to get into the heads of his Marine characters. Monk, for example, processes a buddy’s death in less than a minute. He goes from shock to acceptance, eliminating the denial and grief phases, “a skill they all mastered well,” as Kelly puts it.

He goes on to describe combat and weapons like someone who has seen the elephant. The noise from an AC-47 Spooky, Kelly writes, is like “a wail of banshees, a choir of tortured souls, a technological song of megadeath.” On the other hand, Kelly’s choice of not dumbing things down might cause not well-versed in Vietnam War military lingo to have Google handy.

Jeff Kelly has seemingly read Vietnamese memoirs because Nhu and Ha are not stick figures. You won’t root against them. I hope.

The main theme of the novel is that the war was a conflict of American technology and firepower versus the enemy’s zeal—an elephant trying to kill a mouse with a sledgehammer.    

–Kevin Hardy

Heart Shots by Bob Lantrip

Heart Shots: A Vietnam War Veteran’s Troubled Heart (Friesen Press, 156 pp. $27.22, hardcover; $15.49, paper; $4.99, Kindle) by Bob Lantrip is a short novel about a young Marine’s experiences in Vietnam and how he deals with the effects of PTSD after coming home from the war. Lantrip, who holds a retired Chiropractor, served as a U.S. Marine in the Vietnam War.

In the novel, main character Damon Lee Lane joins the Marine Corps because he likes the uniform. Graduating from his training in San Diego he knows he is joining “a brotherhood that would last a lifetime.” After Boot Camp at Camp Pendleton he finds himself thinking that “the most fun part of preparing for war was that the Marines were taught how to blow up stuff.”

His thinking sobers up as he finds himself developing “the mindset of surviving Vietnam.” Pondering the question of how one really prepares for war, he decides that “perhaps the best way to survive a war was to have a reason to.”  With that in mind, Damon gets married a few weeks before he leaves for Vietnam.

He arrives in Da Nang at the end of 1969 and is sent to Chu Lai. He engages in a great deal of combat action during his first few days with men wounded and killed all around him.

We read of air strikes being carried out by “angels from heaven.” There are times when orders are given to burn all the structures in Vietnamese villages. There are poisonous centipedes and attacks by the near-mythical rock apes who throw huge rocks at the Marines from the jungle trees before swinging away to safety.

One of the book’s heroic characters, squad leader Wild Wit, serves two tours in heavy combat, then returns home, as many others did, with “No Purple Heart, no Medal of Honor—just the pride within that he had done his job. One day he was there, then gone the next.” Damon returns only to spend the rest of his life dealing with PTSD and survivor’s guilt.

Along with an interesting story, Heart Shots includes information aimed at helping those who still carry emotional scars from the war. Heart Shots is a useful PTSD handbook with a religious emphasis.

–Bill McCloud

Operation Embankment by Michael Trainor

Michael Trainor’s Operation Embankment: The Story of America’s First Casualty in Vietnam – 1945 (Alta Vista Group, 556 pp. $18, paper; $9.99, Kindle) is an first-rate work of historical fiction. Trainor is a teacher who has traveled extensively throughout Europe and Asia. This is his first book, the result of ten years of research and five years of writing. He has created a detailed, fly-on-the wall look at just one month, September 1945, when the United States, along with much of Europe and Asia, stood at an important crossroads.

Maj. Peter Dewey is considered to be the first American service members killed during war in Vietnam. His murder, more likely an assassination, occurred on September 26, 1945, and his name is not on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. His body has never been recovered and the identity of his killer has never been conclusively established.

Peter Dewey entered military service in August 1942 and worked as an intelligence officer in French and British colonies in Africa. The next year he was transferred to the OSS, where his short stature and glasses set him apart. Assigned to OSS headquarters in Algiers, he won his parachute wings and led his first team into combat. He later commanded a team of about fifty OSS men.

On September 4, 1945, Dewey’s OSS team arrived in Saigon, where they were given the task of gathering intelligence for the State Department on the three main players in the post-World-War-II power struggle for Indochina: the French, the British, and the Vietnamese. This assignment became known as Operation Embankment. The OSS team was also was given the task of finding American POWS and arranging for their release; checking on the condition of American property and installations; and investigating war crimes.

The Japanese had recently surrendered in Indochina, and France was planning to regain its former colonies. Meanwhile, an organized Vietnamese force was dead set on winning independence. The British also expected to have a say in the future of the former French colonies of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Dewey began collecting what information he could from many sources. Other topics of concern were the Chinese government and the opium trade.

Peter Dewey quickly came to realize that no European nation would ever be able maintain control over Indochina and he clashed with the British commander who wanted to crush the Vietnamese independence movement.

Following complaints from the British, Dewey was relieved of duty and ordered to leave Vietnam. On the day he was getting ready to depart, September 26, 1945, he was killed in an ambush, most likely by Viet Minh troops.

The novel tells Dewey’s Vietnam War story, as well as the investigation into his death and the shockwaves it sent around the world.

Unresolved questions include the matter of whether Dewey was the intended victim or a random one; who was behind it the killing and why; and his body’s ultimate resting place.

Trainor’s Operation Embankment is the story of one man during one month, but it’s a story that resonates in international and political circles to this day. The effort Trainor put into this massive novel should be celebrated.

–Bill McCloud