Colors of War & Peace by D.M. Thompson

Colors of War & Peace (190 pp. $14.99, paper) is a collection of eight short stories written in a creative nonfiction style by D.M. Thompson. It is one of the best literary works dealing with the Vietnam War I have read in years.

Thompson served in Vietnam in 1968-70 with MAC-V SOG, the covert Studies and Observation Group. He was called back in 1978 to serve eight years with the 11^th Special Forces Group. Each story in this book is told in first person and they follow each other in a mostly chronological order.

In the introductory story, “Blue Tattoo,” it’s 1967 and a session of Army Officer Candidate School is more than half over. There are still building inspections to face and pugil stick training matches to be held, but the hardest thing ahead for the cadets is finding the required date for the Senior Ball.  

In the second story, “Walking Point with Sergeant Rock,” the narrator is now a “bush-tailed lieutenant,” living in a “jerry-rigged camp” alongside a small airstrip in South Vietnam. He is fighting alongside the indigenous people of the mountains, known as Montagnards, and their “crossbow culture.” He has lost twenty pounds during his first month in-country, mainly the result of constant diarrhea.  

“Boxcar Orange” is a reference to the new, wild, color schemes being used by Braniff Airlines for their planes that frequently carried U.S. troops into and out of the war zone. The narrator is two months into his second tour and has just boarded a plane to Sydney for a one-week R&R. While sitting buckled-up in his seat he worries that he is helpless inside a large stationary bulls-eye for 122mm rockets.

“Challenging Disaster” takes place on January 28, 1986. Our narrator now works for a brokerage firm while attending occasional drills as a member of the Special Forces Reserve. Getting to his office requires him to walk down a long hallway, “dark and drafty as a French prison.” Many of the people and things he encounters cause him to recall some act of violence during the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, the space shuttle Challenger moves closer to its rescheduled launch time.

Dan Thompson

In “Black Hand” the narrator is preparing to make one of his regularly required Reserve parachute jumps. Maj. Wilson is sitting in the number-one slot, making him the “wind dummy.” His jump will help determine if wind speeds are safe enough for the others. Waiting his turn, the narrator’s thoughts go back to a combat jump he once made into a situation of “controlled chaos” in Vietnam.

This is a great collection of stories written in a unique, experimental style. Thompson’s use of the English language is a joy to behold. While writing stories that seem to be exploding in several directions, Thompson never lets them get out control.

Dan Thompson has a new fan and I’m thrilled to help spread the word about him and this fine literary work.

–Bill McCloud

Of Ashes and Dust by Ron Roman

Of Ashes and Dust (Addison & Highsmith, 260 pp. $29.99, hardcover; $9.49 Kindle), is a bizarre alternate history novel about a Vietnam War veteran dealing with troubling memories of the war while the world seems to be collapsing around him. Author Ron Roman is a former University of Maryland Global Campus English professor who lives in South Korea.

Main character Will Watson is a college professor in a small New England town recovering from what he describes as a “newly splintered marriage.” A Vietnam War veteran who considers himself “socially constipated,” Watson received “decorations from hell to breakfast.”

He develops a promising friendship with another Vietnam vet, Mark Mercotti, a computer salesman Watson describes as “Soldier sphinx. Steady of hand and pony of tail.” Mercotti’s last assignment in Vietnam, we learn, involved “aerial phenomena,” and he remains suspicious of people he refers to as “orientals.”

Watson frequently dreams of seeing UFOs during times of stress on the battlefield. He recalls that he spent a lot of his time stargazing at night in Vietnam, and thinks he probably went a bit crazy there. The two men share an interest in invisibility, teleportation, and time travel.

Watson begins a relationship with a younger teaching assistant and also joins a local militia group. The assistant is of Japanese heritage and though he sometimes refers to her as “a Jap” or his “China doll,” they quickly become inseparable. He begins spending as much time as possible with Mercotti, the assistant, and militiamen.

Some sort of international economic collapse takes place as banks fail, oil availability plummets, and the president signs an executive order suspending sales of private firearms. National Guard troops are called up, and there is an unconfirmed report of a biological attack in Canada.

After a strong, well-written, enjoyable first half, this novel began falling apart for me. I found the conclusion to be unsatisfactory, but it may work for other readers.

–Bill McCloud

Our Helicopter War by Garland R. Lively and John H. Hastings

The 161st Assault Helicopter Company is a legendary outfit that played a pivotal role in the Vietnam War. Garland R. Lively and John H. Hastings’ Our Helicopter War (500 pp., $59.95) is a splendid book assembled by a dedicated group of members and friends of the 161^st.

The 161st was born at Ft. Benning in August 1965 and de-activated in January 1968 and reorganized into the 123rd Aviation Battalion of the Americal (23rd Infantry) Division. Based for most of its tour at Chu Lai, the unit operated primarily in I Corps in northern South Vietnam and, among other things, provided direct support to the U.S. Special Forces units along the DMZ. 

This is a wonderfully presented book, a black-bound, gold-embossed, coffee-table-sized volume that will appeal to everyone who flew with, rode with, or just paused and watched he helicopters go about their business of war in Vietnam.

Lively, Hastings (the unit historian) and their contributors have done a masterful job assembling a chronological narrative of actions and operations, including successes and failures, during the time the 161st was an active unit in the Vietnam War.

That includes after action reports, daily unit reports, unit histories, and personal reminiscences, as well as pilot banter that pervaded the ready room. The book also contains details about classified, crossborder MACV/SOG operations. And don’t miss the story of the Great Elephant Hunt adventure.

Our Helicopter War is available only through the 161^st Association’s website at https://161ahc.org/161HistoryBook.htm

–Tom Werzyn

Patriot Songs by Jerry L. Staub

Patriot Songs: Poems about Brave Patriots Who Sacrificed to Keep America Safe and Free (68 pp. $7.95, paperbackis a small collection of rather old-fashioned-style rhyming poetry that celebrates the service of men and women throughout our nation’s history. Staub is an American veteran with a lifelong interest in military history.

“A Hero Plain and Simple” addresses the idea of a quiet, everyday hero taking care of his loved ones:

He works hard to support his family,

Each day of every long and tiring week.

He lives his life with grace and dignity,

While praise and notoriety, he never seeks.

“A Memorial Day Prayer” begins this way:

Many American soldiers have marched into eternity.

They’ve given everything they had to give;

Their lives, their souls, and their prosperity.

They sacrificed it all so in freedom we might live.

From “The Appetite of War (The Siege of Firebase Ripcord)”:

Fearful eyes scan a blurry horizon to the fore,

when thunderous blasts all at once begin to roar.

Flashes of light, then screams, right and left,

as shadowy figures trip the wires of death.

Heavy fire along heavily barricaded battle lines,

keep heads pinned down, as retorts it undermines.

Deadly rounds buzz through leaves and trees,

like swarms of thousands of angry bees.

There is likely no other form of writing that can be as personal and heartfelt as poetry, and it’s always enjoyable to read how veterans use the medium to express themselves. None of these poems appear to have been previously published in any literary journals.

Half of the net proceeds from the royalties of this book will be donated to nonprofit veterans’ organizations, including Vietnam Veterans of America.

–Bill McCloud

An Army Lawyer’s Military Journey by George Allison

In detailing his Vietnam War tour of duty in his memoir, An Army Lawyer’s Military Journey: Unique Experiences in a Viet Nam Combat Zone (Carson Street Publishing, $20, paper) George Allison addresses a profound question: What is the nature of military law, and how is it upheld? His book provides insights into the principles and practice of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and how it applies to all service members, particularly those in Vietnam during Allison’s tour duty.

His military service began early when at sixteen Allison joined the Army National Guard in Nevada. On finishing high school, he enrolled at the University of Nevada, Reno and entered its Army’s ROTC program. In 1963 he graduated from the University of California’s Hastings College of Law, passed the Nevada bar exam, and went on active duty with OCS training at Fort Benning. The following year he attended the JAG School on the grounds at the University of Virginia.  

The bedrock of Army discipline is the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Adopted by the Second Continental Congress in 1775, the UCMJ deals with crimes unique to the military, such as what happens when personnel disobey orders or when they flee in the face of the enemy.

Allison details the composition of an Army court-martial. In Vietnam, it included a jury of five officers; a senior officer for a judge; attorneys for prosecution and defense; a court reporter; and a process of Appellate Review in which a designated officer may approve a guilty verdict or mitigate a sentence. Interestingly, Allison notes that the Miranda Rights statement read to arrested suspects was put into military law enforcement practice years before the Supreme Court adopted it into American criminal law.

In 1966, Allison transferred with the Army’s 4^th Infantry Division to the Central Highlands of Vietnam where they established a base just outside Pleiku. Once there, he and his fellow attorneys quickly settled into their routine. It was hardly dull, as much of their time was spent preparing for trials. The JAG officers often traveled to meet with soldiers accused of crimes and to gather witness testimony and other evidence. Reviews and trials were frequently held in the field, sometimes at outposts within range of enemy fire. It was not uncommon for Allison to prosecute or defend soldiers while sitting on the ground.

George Allison

While several courts-martial were routine – such as for soldiers arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct – others were much more sobering. One trial was for a soldier charged with killing his commanding officer after being ordered to carry a mortar round when already burdened with an M60 machine gun.

Other courts-martial included two sergeants accused of raping a Vietnamese woman and a G.I. who allegedly set a sergeant’s tent on fire. Perhaps most disturbing, Allison describes what happened when two men played Russian roulette until the revolver’s single round went off.

George Allison completed his Vietnam War tour in 1967 and returned to civilian life in Nevada where he founded a successful law firm. Reflecting five decades after his service in the war, Allison writes: “It struck me that relating my entire military journey, which spanned many years and had a profound effect on shaping my life, might be a good way of describing that feeling of pride in some kind of interesting manner.”

He succeeded. This account is an illuminating one and well worth the read.

–Mike McLaughlin

Immigrant Warrior by Henrik O. Lunde

In his autobiography, Immigrant Warrior: A Challenging Life in War and Peace (Casemate, 402 pp. $39.95, hardcover; $17.49, Kindle) retired U.S. Army Col. Henrik O. Lunde concentrates on his three tours in the Vietnam War, two as an infantry leader and one as a diplomat.

His recollections include a depth of detail seldom found in war memoirs. They’re mainly based on the field notebooks he kept while in-country, unit reports, history books and other secondary sources related to operations he led, and letters to his wife Florence.

In his introduction, Lunde says that throughout his military career several superiors told him that he needed to blow his own horn more often. He didn’t back then, but quoting the motto of John Adams, “Toot your own horn lest the same never be tooted,” Lunde tells his side of the war as he remembers it in this book.

During his first Vietnam War tour in 1966-67 with the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division Lunde commanded a company that conducted nearly continuous search-and-destroy missions. He obsessed over improving the fighting capabilities of his men, and tirelessly worked alongside them on long missions filled with skirmishes against the North Vietnamese Army’s 95th Regiment.

Describing a venture into Trung Luong Valley near Dong Tre, Lunde admits to making tactical mistakes that separated his company in a major encounter. Despite the poor initial maneuvers, the U.S. troops controlled the fight. The event created a still-unresolved case regarding who said what and who did what. Its impetus came from disagreements between Lunde and his executive officer, 1^st Lt. Phil Mock.

Historians, including Brig. Gen. S.L.A Marshall, joined the dispute through books and articles. Citing official records, maps, and his notes, Lunde disassembles the conclusions of Marshall and others who portrayed him as a weak leader. He conclusively shows that the engagement was a “devastating defeat” for the NVA.

Lunde’s voluntary second tour in Vietnam as a Major took place in 1968-69. He calls it a year “which I came to view as my worst in Vietnam.” Assigned as S-3 to the 9th Division at Bear Cat, he felt overlooked because he had sought a command position.

He oversaw 57 men who merely gathered “a myriad of statistic reports.” As often as possible, Lunde hitched a ride on the C&C helicopter and he tells stories about those flights and rescues. After two months, Lunde became the 2/39 Infantry XO at Rach Kien and assumed responsibility for security duties of the village. The endless turmoil he coped with during that assignment is one of the most interesting parts of the book.

Following his time as XO, Lunde moved to Pleiku as Deputy G-3 Adviser with II ARVN Corps, primarily a paperwork job. However, the nationwide 1969 NVA offensive exposed him to two months of rocket and mortar attacks before he returned to the U.S.

In his final trip to Vietnam in 1973-74, Lunde served as a chief negotiator with the U.S. delegation to the Four Party Joint Military Commission, a unit designed to find military personnel and foreign civilians missing in action after the American POWs had been freed.

Lunde’s group facilitated the return of remains of KIAs, particularly those who died in captivity. He lived in Saigon, traveled to Hanoi, and dealt mainly with North Vietnamese negotiators. At times, their meetings resembled the Paris Peace talks. After bringing home the remains of 23 Americans, Lunde’s job ended.

Col. Lunde

Spoiler Alert: Although promoted to full colonel, Lunde finished his 25 years of service without getting the upper-level infantry leadership role he strongly desired.

The title Immigrant Warrior derives from Lunde’s birth in Norway in 1936. His family lived through the German occupation during World War II. His recitation of his family background and life in Norway could stand alone as a book. Lunde came to the United States in 1951. He excelled at school, especially ROTC, receiving his Army commission in 1958.

Immigrant Warrior lives up to Lunde’s declaration about tooting his own horn. He succeeds by reliving an occasional sour note while playing an otherwise heartfelt melody.

—Henry Zeybel

Black World by Robert R. Rotruck

Black World: Career Changes – Life Continues (101 pp. $9.95 paper and Kindle) is retired Navy CWO3 Robert Rotruck’s second novel featuring former Navy SEAL and CIA black-ops operative Bill York, now a private investigator working for a former CIA colleague in the Washington, D.C., area.  

York gets involved in several operations, including with a series of gangsters who are straight out of Central Casting. This book resembles the first drafts of a potential TV series screenplay.

–Tom Werzyn

The Broken Hallelujah by Wendy H. Adair

Wendy Adair’s first novel, The Broken Hallelujah (Bungalow Books, 370 pp. $26.99, hardcover; $16.95, paper; $5.99, Kindle), is a believable, enjoyable book divided into two stories that come together at the end.

One story is set in 1969 during the war in Vietnam and the other in 2019 in Texas. That’s where Robin Carter, a thirty-year-old woman, is trying to discover what happened to her grandfather that led to be listed as Missing in Action in the war.

Robin, recently divorced, has moved in with her grandmother, who may be dealing with early-onset Alzheimer’s. One afternoon UPS delivers a package from the government—her grandfather’s Army footlocker. Inside it are uniforms, blankets, small boxes, papers, letters, and photos. What immediately captures Robin’s attention are dozens of pocket-sized notebooks filled with her grandfather’s jottings.

“I’m wondering what happened to him,” she says to her grandmother. “Where’s this stuff been all this time? Why was it sent here now?” She reads the journals, along with a small batch of letters that her grandmother had never shown her, and that’s how we learn parts of her grandfather’s story.

Robin then reaches out to veterans groups and government agencies to try to help her understand what she’s reading. She discovers a formerly classified investigation of an incident in which several men were killed and her grandfather went missing. There are hints of illicit drug use, forced sexual activities with under-aged females, and some sort of massacre carried out by Americans.

I enjoyed the moment when, engrossed in reading about her grandfather in Vietnam, Robin says to her grandmother, “It doesn’t mean anything” about a health issue, thereby using her own form of a common phrase GIs used during the war.

With this small anecdote I had no doubt that that this determined young woman was not going to give up until she solved this mystery, and was on the way to reviving her grandfather’s good name.

I admire writers who had no personal experiences with the Vietnam War who spend the time and effort writing creatively about it. Through research and a desire to tell a good story Wendy Adair has produced this well-crafted Vietnam War-heavy novel. For others who may have the same interest, she has done a great job showing them the way.  

–Bill McCloud

The Vietnam Run by Michael Gillen

Whenever the official songs of the American military services are played at public events and veterans of those services are asked to stand when the song of their service is played, I do not recall ever seeing anyone rise when the U.S. Merchant Marine official song, “Heave Ho My Lads,” is played.

As someone who flew back and forth to Vietnam, I had no contact with any Merchant Mariner and had no knowledge that they had anything to do with the Vietnam War. However, now that I have read Michael Gillen’s The Vietnam Run: American Merchant Mariners in the Indochina Wars (McFarland, 376 pp. $49.95, paper; $22.49, Kindle), a well-written history of the U.S. Merchant Mariners in Indochina from 1945-75, I am no longer ignorant. It turns out that merchant seamen were not only in Vietnam during the war, but also decades earlier and later.

Gillen is a history professor who was a Merchant Mariner during the Vietnam War. Some of his predecessors include a slew of noted writers and poets, including Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Ralph Ellison, Herman Melville, Louis L’Amour, Allen Ginsburg, and Jack Kerouac. Those writers, Gillen tells us, inspired him to become a historian of the U.S. Merchant Marines.

The book begins with French troops being ferried to Indochina in 1945, immediately after World War II, and the book ends with post-Vietnam War trade and searches for MIAs. During the American war, Merchant Marine ships transported 95 percent of all war supplies and materiel and, in the early years of the war, brought some 60 percent of American troops to Vietnam. In addition, they ferried hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees from north to south when the country was divided in 1954 and out of the country at the close of the war in 1975. 

The Vietnam sea run was the American equivalent of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Forty-four Mariners, including the last three names inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, died during the war, as their ships were targeted by the enemy with floating mines, rockets, snipers, and water mine sappers, known as “swimmers.”

The book well-researched and exhaustive without being exhausting. It includes interviews and material from enemy sources, informative endnotes, lists of abbreviations and acronyms, maps, photos, the story of Gillen’s two post-war visits to Vietnam to deliver medical supplies, and heartwarming rescues of Vietnamese boat people.

Gillen notes that the U.S. Merchant Marines are not mentioned in Ken Burns’ 2017 18-hour PBS series, “The Vietnam War.” I never thought about it at the time, but after reading this book, realize that this was a grievous omission, as America could not possibly have fought the war without those men who put themselves in harm’s way.

Read this informative and lucid book so that you do not make the mistake that Ken Burns and I did.

–Harvey Weiner

A Thousand Chances by Dan Hickman

Retired U.S. Army Gen. Dan Hickman opens his book, A Thousand Chances: A Memoir of Life and Death in the Air Cavalry during the Pivotal Year of the Vietnam War (Palm Wars Publications, 343 pp. $14.95, paper; $5.95, Kindle), with a sobering thought: Why did “they” send us there to fight and possibly die if they never intended to win?

This story of one man’s experiences in a senseless war mirrors many other Americans’ experiences in Vietnam. From the very first pages I felt a strong sense of camaraderie with Hickman as I read about how he dealt with many unknowns while he traveled the steep learning curve of surviving a war during his 1968-69 tour of duty. 

As the title indicates, in a war you face death many times without knowing when your luck will run out. It can come from any direction and sometimes for the dumbest reason.  

Dan Hickman, a life member of Vietnam Veterans of America, humbly lets the reader in on the dumb things did as a helicopter pilot with the 3rd Battalion of the 17th Air Cavalry in seemingly endless combat and just barely survived the consequences. That he recalls those close calls so vividly fifty years later is one indication that he is still haunted by them.  

I remember experiencing moments similar to what he describes as day-to-day life in the Vietnam War—from the chaotic response to incoming to questionable protocols that came down from above that needlessly placed my life on the line.   

Reflecting on that, Hickman aptly cites a quote from Catch-22 that says it all: “The enemy is anyone who is going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”   

Reading his characterization of his platoon as a Band of Brothers, I thought back to being with my unit and it totally resonated. I especially felt that way when he quoted Col. John P. Geraci, who commanded a brigade Hickman supported. Geraci had been my battalion commander. To this day he is held in high regard by the battalion’s veterans. 

Gen. Hickman

After reading Hickman’s accounts of his combat missions in the most difficult of conditions and of his surviving close calls again and again, I imagine that he came home feeling like a survivor. He served in the Army National Guard after coming home from Vietnam. He was recalled to active duty in 2003 and went on to command a reinforced Armor Brigade in the Iraq War.

Hickman writes that North Vietnamese units did not begin coming south until Viet Cong units were decimated during Tet 1968. Although the NVA did increase the movement of troops southward to fill the decimated ranks after Tet, the 1st Cavalry had fought North Vietnamese regiments as early as 1965 in the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley and U.S. forces battled their divisions during the Siege of Khe Sanh in early 1968.   

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this nicely written memoir and highly recommend it.

— John Cirafici