Vietnam War Fiction

Post-World War II America and teenage boys dreamed of adventure growing up in the 1950s, listened to Elvis Presley and read Jack Kerouac, yet it wasn't cruising Route 66 in a Corvette that united them, but Highway 1, known as the Street Without Joy, on the way to Hue city during the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam. It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, Civil Rights and the pill, young girls in long boots and short skirts, but not for those in the jungle and rice paddies of Southeast Asia.

During the Vietnam War, GIs who managed to survive their tour of duty in one piece - more or less - were flown home in chartered airliners. They called those planes "Freedom Birds". This is the story of three young men - from wildly different backgrounds - who meet on such a plane and make a pact to spend three days together in San Francisco. Their goal: to spend every cent of their mustering out money in a party of a lifetime.

Timely and timeless. This is a soldier's story and war is war, whether it's Bull Run, Ban Me Thuot, or Fallujah. Sent to Vietnam after being drafted, Carl Melcher makes friends with both the black and white members of his company in spite of racial tensions of the times. Naive and young for his nineteen years, he learns harrowing truths about life and death when his optimism proves false.

Tiger Woman depicts a brief period of unconventional warfare that tests the boundaries of humanity in a haunting tale of unremitting evil no ordinary soldier ever trains to face. Captain Christen, a dedicated intelligence officer with the 25th Infantry Division, directs an all-out hunt for a roguish female who leads a small guerrilla force with chilling efficiency as she employs depraved acts of psychological warfare to instill terror in those she opposes.

I invite the listener to enter the lives of two young men with completely opposite views of the Vietnam War. One was a helicopter pilot, flying gunship in Hueys. The other enlisted in the navy to keep from being drafted by the US Army. Slightly fictionalized to provide a coherent narrative and to protect their identities and the identities of several supporting characters, the story line is amazing in revealing details that are true, almost beyond belief.

John Ryan never killed anyone; never even fired a gun in Vietnam. He worked in an air-conditioned building in the safest city in Vietnam. If you had to fight a war, this was the way to do it. Friends, parties, weed, and rock n' roll filled their nights. Laughter and comradery were plentiful. They thought they would serve their tour and escape back to the real world without wounds. War leaves no one untouched. No one escapes. All wounds are not from bullets.

In January 1968, the 26th Marine Regiment was ordered to a place in the far northwest corner of South Vietnam called Khe Sanh. John Corbett, an untested replacement in a clean, green uniform, and his fellow leathernecks were responsible for building and defending the combat base, and holding positions on the strategic hills overlooking the Ho Chi Minh Trail as it crossed into Laos and South Vietnam from nearby North Vietnam. Only days after Corbett arrived at Khe Sanh, some 20,000 North Vietnamese soldiers surrounded the base, outnumbering the American Marines seven to one.

Morris, Rudi, Ivan, and Beck are best friends for life. So when one of the teens is drafted into the Vietnam War, the others sign up, too. Although they each serve in a different branch, they are fighting the war together - and they pledge to do all they can to come home together. Haunted by dreams of violence and death, Morris makes it his personal mission to watch over his friends - and the best place to do that is in the US Navy. Stationed off the coast of Vietnam on the USS Boston, Morris and his fellow sailors provide crucial support to the troops on the ground.

Gerald "Jerry" Keyser and I became friends in 1966, when we were both in USAF Pilot Training. In 1970 I got out of the Air Force and Jerry stayed in. We remained friends and I followed along in awe as he went on to have the most amazing flying career I have ever seen. He flew 100 different types of airplanes, helicopters, and gliders during his 20 years in the Air Force, including a stint with NASA, and his 17 years as a test pilot for Hughes-McDonell Douglas-Boeing Helicopter Company in Arizona.

Authors Robert Toto and Richard Geschke have expanded their horizons of their original book, In Our Duffel Bags, Surviving the Vietnam Era, with a poetic interpretation of life in the army. Tracking their adventures in Germany, Panama and Vietnam, the authors wax the poetic version of what they found in their duffel bags looking deeper into the fast changing times of the Vietnam era. With Shadows of Combat the listener will sense the history of what took place in this crucial time in American history.

American aircraft are going down, victim to missile batteries hidden deep in the jungles of South Vietnam, and they bring in an Air Force expert, Colonel Dan Carter, to analyze the defenses and devise a strategy to destroy them. Yet, the Vietcong gets wind of the colonel’s arrival, and plan to murder him. Joe Cooper, Air Cav, returns from an abortive mission to grab an important and high-ranking North Vietnamese. A mission gives MACV an idea to protect their expert.

The war is heating up, and they have no time for R&R before the Hueys take off and carry them to their next mission. A Vietcong fortified town in the Mekong Delta, a stronghold heavily defended by troops and heavy weapons. The Cav’s job is to go in, take the town and locate and destroy the enemy. To give the VC a hard, brutal lesson they will never forget.

Joe runs into a hidden punji trap, and the poisoned stakes deal him a hammer blow. A dustoff back to Da Nang and a long stay in the hospital puts him out of action, and the only consolation is the pretty nurse who attends to his wounds. When he is released, his platoon is in the field, and they give him a temporary posting to another platoon about to fly out to the Laotian border to check out a rumored convoy of vital supplies, weapons, and ammo for the VC.

Private Joe Walker and Third Platoon run into an ambush, and this is no ordinary ambush. Waiting for them is a North Vietnamese armored unit. This is a place where no armor should exist for a long, long way. And Third Platoon has no way to engage enemy tanks. Yet they have a radio, and all it needs is a quick call to Da Nang to call in a squadron of fighter bombers. Until the radio is damaged, and the tanks are coming on fast.

It is 1965, and America is putting more boots on the ground to fight the communists who have sent their powerful People’s Army of Vietnam, the PAVN, south. Their aim is to defeat the South Vietnamese Army, the ARVN, and impose the iron fist of communist rule on the democratic South. Walker knows nothing of politics or military strategy and tactics. A single obsession rules his life: to become a major league baseball pitcher.

Robert Peterson arrived in Vietnam in the fall of 1966, a young American ready to serve his country and seize his destiny. What happened in that jungle war would change his life forever. Peterson vividly relives the tense patrols in the Viet Cong-infested Central Highlands, the fierce firefights along the Cambodian border, the ambushes and enemy charges.

Rookie Joe Walker, 3rd Brigade, 7th Air Cavalry, was finding life in Vietnam tough. The war is building into a major conflict, yet despite his efforts, he feels like a square peg in a round hole. He can’t shoot straight, missed the bayonet course, and nothing ever goes right. He can throw a mean grenade, but the army made him a rifleman, and they’re determined to make sure he can shoot straight. Or else.