I have experienced a certain amount of catharsis in writing about the war. Having spent fifty years thinking and researching the historical, cultural and psychological repercussions, Poisoned Jungle explores many aspects of the war throughout the novel. I have tried to do that without a didactic narrative or pedantic characters. Portraying how lives are impacted through events in realistic terms conveys a more powerful message than any moralizing can. That is the power of literature. The novel, in particular, allows for a complex interchange of how people are affected by historical events.

I share a lot of DNA with Andy Parks, the medic in Poisoned Jungle. His platoon members come from a diverse set of backgrounds. Each character shares in the tension and struggles of surviving his twelve-month tour in the Nam. Not every man makes it. Each must find his own inner strengths to cope with the enormous stresses of combat and facing the possibility of his own death. At the same time, strong bonds are developed, and platoon members rely on each other. It is a paradox of war that in the midst of such brutality, selflessness also emerges. Not in everyone, and not to the same degree. Some individuals arrive in the war zone already damaged by life. Some cope better than others.

The Professor is another of my favorite characters. Not the strongest or bravest member of the platoon, he gains the respect of his fellow soldiers because he comes to grips with his fears. The entire platoon is pulling for him because they know how difficult the Nam is for the man whose most remarkable facial feature are the oversized black-framed glasses on his head. With one year of junior college, he is the most educated man in the unit except for the lieutenant.

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Vietnam was a class war. Poisoned Jungle reflects that. For the most part, the American soldiers in the war came from modest to poor backgrounds. James Fallows wrote a remarkable article titled What Did You Do in the Class War Daddy? It helps explain the utter contempt many of the privileged had for the soldiers who bore the brunt of the war the elites of society sanctioned but made sure their own sons avoided. Perhaps it is why I feel a fierce affinity with my fellow veterans which rises above differences in opinions about the war.

I was deeply touched by a simple statement a Vietnam combat vet sent to the website after reading the ARC copy. “I have had difficulty reading Poisoned Jungle because it takes me back to exactly the way things were in the Nam.” A high compliment from one who has been there.

Followers of my blogs will also detect an anti-war sentiment. Proponents of the war have continued to revise history to justify American involvement in Vietnam. My bottom line is not to defend communism or the Vietnamese government. I am not an apologist for either. The Vietnamese people have suffered generations of war and poverty at the hands of the Chinese, French, Japanese (WWII), and Americans. After them, the ideologues of their own government sent hundreds of thousands into so-called reeducation camps and fleeing as refugees to the rest of the world (the Boat People).

In my view, the war was unwinnable. The Vietnamese had been there before with foreign invaders. That’s what we were to many Vietnamese. To this day I hear talk of tactics among the revisionists. If only the war had been fought better strategically, we could have won. In reality, we made many of the same mistakes as the French. We failed to learn from their miscues or our own. The Vietnamese were steadfast and patient in their resistance. Frances Fitzgerald’s Fire in the Lake is still a sound analysis of what went wrong for the Americans in Vietnam. I’m not sure any type of tactics would have made a difference.

Early on the U.S. made a commitment to the technology of war. It’s what many American leaders felt we did best. I’m sure countless hours were spent on tactical matters when a bit of history would have been more worthwhile. Chemical defoliants destroyed the landscape and some crops while our firepower killed many of the enemy and a lot of civilians. I can’t think of a worse strategy for pursuing the official policy of “winning the hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people. There were a few valiant attempts on the ground to make that happen, but most American troops knew it was nothing more than propaganda. Leave it to the grunts of the war to come up with expressions for the way things really were. Put crassly, a common saying told it like it was. “Grab ‘em hard by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow.” Such is the nature of war.

So, when The Pentagon Papers exposed the fact that as early as 1965 the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, knew the war was unwinnable, it revealed the unbelievable callousness of continuing in Vietnam. Tens of thousands more young Americans died and many times that number of Vietnamese on both sides of the conflict. Estimates of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong combatants, plus their South Vietnamese opponents are estimated at one million dead. One to two million civilians lost their lives. When the U.S. finally did leave, it exposed our Vietnamese allies to dangerous repercussions. Wars are easier to get into than out of.

I know how difficult it was returning to an ungrateful nation. It would have been nice not to be the scapegoats of so many Americans. A slogan comes to mind. “Too young to vote, but old enough to kill.” I certainly didn’t want any pats on the back for participating in a questionable war, but it would have been nice to have been accepted back into society while I sorted things out. It would have been nice not to have been blamed for a war I didn’t start.

My affinity with other Vietnam veterans runs deep because I also knew what they endured in the war. It took courage and strength to survive. That is something the young men James Fallows wrote about couldn’t take from us. That, and the fact we didn’t use a rigged system to avoid a war while someone else went in our stead.

A note for readers and subscribers…

Many thanks to those following and sharing my blogs, on Facebook and elsewhere. Also a big thank you to our ARC readers (ARC sign up here). I hope you enjoy Poisoned Jungle. A brief and honest review of the novel posted to Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, and other platforms are always appreciated.

I’ll be taking a week off from blogging to enjoy the summer. We’ll resume posting on the first week of August.