No Peace We came home nearly forty years ago to a place that we didn’t know, and that didn’t know us. We tried our best to fit in, to go back in time, trying to return to who we were and what we had been just a few short years earlier. For most of us […]
Category: War and Military Stories
We were castoffs and slaves, orphans and unwanteds and used-to-be princesses…and we were mighty. ~Lesley Livingston, The Valiant One of the many unfortunate by-products of war are orphans. The orphanages near our base at Phu Cat, Vietnam were visited by the base chaplains who brought sustenance in the way of food, clothing, and […]
Many people have asked about the characters of my books, The Kansas NCO and Back To The World, particularly during speaking engagements. All of the characters in the books are based upon real people, and exhibit characteristics from those people. Some are based more on fiction than on fact, others more on fact than fiction. […]
Every war, every branch of the service, US and other countries, has probably had its “Kansas NCO”. Not necessarily something to be proud of, but a fact of military life, sometimes serving a useful purpose. Joe Campolo Jr., has turned this into a good read, while aligning it with the Vietnam War. An easy read […]
An extraordinary tale about a group of Air Force soldiers stationed at Phu Cat Air Force base in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Working out of a small warehouse on base, their main job was to provide goods and services to nearby bases, outposts and villager. Sometimes, they were tasked to ride security on convoys […]
I had a great time in Benton Harbor, Michigan, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the Vietnam Veteran Tribute hosted by “Lest We Forget”. I was honored to be a guest speaker, and also honored that many people picked up a copy of The Kansas NCO. It was a great program. On Friday afternoon a gentleman […]
Major Michael O’Donnell Major Michael O’Donnell was a helicopter pilot killed in action near Dak To, Vietnam in March of 1970. Although I did not know Major O’Donnell we were in Vietnam at the same time, and in some of the same places. This is a poem he penned three months before his […]
Wars are lost because the ability to wage them, the resources needed to win them, and the will to fight them abates, is lost, or is destroyed. It is my opinion that the South Vietnamese espoused a personal philosophy of every family for itself and instead of prosecuting their war they used both our […]
SOLDIER It hit me in the deepest way…Kris Kristofferson talking about the pro-Vietnam war song he wrote back in the day….when he was in the Army. He emphasized how his view had dramatically changed. He stated back then he was “totally seeing the world from the perspective of the soldier” What is seeing the […]