Vietnam War Fiction

The year is 1969. Private Andy Carter serves in Quang Ngai Province with his brothers in arms. While any one of them would die for each other, a vocal draftee in their squad constantly stirs up trouble. Ramsey, a former anti-war protestor and enemy sympathizer, believes they’re on the wrong side of the war. His stance angers his fellow soldiers and leaves them wary of him. When a routine recon mission uncovers an enemy tunnel, Carter suspects there’s more than meets the eye. This mission will leave Carter questioning the value of a soldier’s life and the madness of war.

These 12 stories reflect the combat infantry experience of the Vietnam War--in the gritty “Tanks,” “Called of God,” and “Incubation Period.” There’s also the woman’s perspective of Arlene, a naive Red Cross volunteer or “Doughnut Dolly,” in “A Man’s World.”

The short stories contained in The Many Deaths of Comrade Binh are fiction. This does not, however, mean they aren't true. Retired naval officer Kenneth Levin readily admits to some artistic license, but each tale is based on actual events that occurred during the Vietnam War.

In 1961, equipped with a master’s degree from famed Columbia Journalism School and letters of introduction to Associated Press bureau chiefs in Asia, 26-year-old Beverly Deepe set off on a trip around the world. Allotting just two weeks to South Vietnam, she was still there seven years later, having then earned the distinction of being the longest-serving American correspondent covering the Vietnam War and garnering a Pulitzer Prize nomination.

A scathing indictment of the corruption of the human soul by war, Kenneth Levin’s bracingly honest and harrowing debut is reminiscent of masterworks like Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War. A decorated combat veteran whose his own experiences in Vietnam are combined with the personal interviews of North Vietnamese veterans, Levin deftly explores the nature of man amidst the chaos and horror of war. As illuminating as it is disturbing, Crazy Razor demonstrates with stark clarity that the real villain in war…is war itself.

Loss of Innocence is a story of the early days of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. It is a story of one young man's journey into that covert world. Boots comes from a simple life, but he finds that the world is nothing like he imagined when he teams up with Silver, a career soldier and more, and learns what war is really about.

Though his father—a WW2 vet—tries to talk him into staying in college, young Andy Carter wants to follow his dreams. Dreams of serving his country and bringing communism to its knees. He joins the Army and after training finds himself due to ship to Vietnam.

It didn't seem possible. Four college students shot dead May 4, 1970, by Ohio National Guardsmen during a protest against the Vietnam War. The shootings at Kent State University would shock the nation and spark a mass student strike across the country, the only one in U.S. history.