Apocalypse Then: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Thanks to audiobooks, and a job which requires long road trips, I've been able to "read" a lot more than normal. And because of the selection, I've been "broadening my horizons" beyond the books I would normally choose. Case in point is Heart of Darkness--I've had a hardbound copy of it for over a decade, collecting dust in my "classics" section, but just never got around to reading it. When I found an audiobook version in the library, though, I figured there's no time like the present.

What intrigued me the most about this book was that I knew Apocalypse, Now was a film adaptation of it--transposed into South Vietnam circa 1969.

Believe me, I can find faults with Apocalypse, Now. Yet I still consider the original theatrical release of Coppola's film a masterpiece. I hold it up there with John Ford's The Searchers. Both are about epic journeys undertaken by disturbed antiheroes toward a showdown with not just a larger-than-life villain, but their own inner demons as well. BTW: I don't care for the Redux cut at all; as the added scenes just ruined the dark magic of the film as a whole.

So I had great expectations for Conrad's source material. It was interesting seeing how the "unsound methods" argument came about in the book, as well as Kurtz's obsession with "the horror." I also placed the Dennis Hopper character fairly easy.

In Conrad's book, the setting is not Vietnam, but the Congo during colonial days, and Kurtz was not a rogue SF commander, but an ivory supplier. Written in 1902, it very much follows the style so popular in those days. The entire plot is contained in a flashback. Conrad's vocabulary and grasp of English is deft. People, on average, were much more literate then than now (despite what you may have been taught), and it shows here.

But despite Conrad's intricate and flowery prose, the book was surprisingly short. And I hate to knock a classic, but I found the whole thing anticlimactic and lackluster. The version I checked out is supposedly unabridged, so after-the-fact editing can't really be blamed.

The problem, as I see it, has mostly to do with the Kurtz character. In the movie he is almost god-like, and the anticipation is pretty high by the time we meet him. In the book a couple characters talk him up a bit, even the narrator to an extent. But the build-up is half-assed. And Kurtz himself is dying of a disease by the time we meet him. He's supposed to be a great man; a charismatic leader who inspires fanatical devotion in his followers; and so brimming with other-worldly wisdom that mere mortals are mesmerized by his words. "You don't talk to him; you listen." And indeed, a couple characters are enamored by him this way. The natives will gladly kill or die for him, just for the privilege of remaining close to his greatness. Well, Kurtz only speaks a couple complete sentences in the whole novel, and none of his words struck me as profound or exceptional in any way. Maybe he lived up to the hype earlier in his life, but we don't meet him until he's almost dead.

I think director Francis Ford Coppola and Screenwriter John Millius were far more effective, not only at presenting Kurtz; but by selling Willard's journey to the audience as a worthwhile undertaking. They also made it easy on themselves setting the story during Vietnam, because of the drug culture. The film is like a mystical LSD trip, into which the eccentric characters from the book nicely fit. In fact, they ran with that theme, portraying some level of insanity in every scene.

As forgettable as I find the novel, I'm fascinated the film makers saw something in it in the first place. But whatever the seed of their inspiration, they nurtured it, watered it, and turned it into a towering redwood.


 

The Ratbastards #4: Meat Grinder Hill

In an earlier post, I blogged the news about Len Levinson's march to e-book immortality. A couple of his western series have been translated to digital format on Amazon, and one of his war series. After his Sergeant paperbacks (originally released under the name Gordon Davis), his Ratbastards books top my list of guilty-pleasure war fiction.

His platoon of kill-crazy Jap-stabbing GIs now reactivated for a prolonged Pacific combat deployment, I'm still hoping Levinson cuts orders for MSGT Clarence J. Mahoney to resume his gory Kraut-killing campaign in the DTO (Digital Theater of Operations). In the meantime, I am tickled slappy that his blood-splattered prose can now grace the screen of my Kindle.

In this installment, both Master Sergeant Butsko and PFC Frankie LaBarbara are hospitalized in New Caledonia, leaving Texan Buck Sergeant Bannon in charge of the 23rd Infantry's Recon Platoon (the Ratbastards of the title).

US forces are mopping up the final resistance on Guadalcanal, and the regiment is using the Recon Platoon as a screen. In the attempt to catch up to an enemy patrol, Bannon and his platoon of cutthroats stumble right into the Japanese 17th Division, dug in on the Gifu line.

The narrative switches back-and-forth between the action on the 'Canal and the erotic adventures of LaBarbara and Butsko among the nurses on New Caledonia--two completely different plot lines, related only by the fact that these wounded Casanovas are from the Recon Platoon.

There is spectacular action...and not just with the lusty nurses. And not all the combat is against the Japanese. A cheese-eating first sergeant from one of the line companies sics his men on the Ratbastards and the gang violence that ensues is better than any rumble between Crips and Bloods, Outlaws and Hell's Angels, or Jets and Sharks. When the opposing combatants are Japanese, the bloody gore is brutal without the sick, graphic obsession of some more current fiction. And true to form, Len Levinson depicts more bayonet combat in the battle for Hill 27 than probably occurred in the entire island-hopping campaign.

I first read this long ago, in a paperback with Levinson's John Mackie pseudonym on the cover. Upon a recent perusal, it surprised me how many typos I found, and other mistakes (in the space of 3 paragraphs, 1 character's rank changes from captain to lieutenant back to captain, for instance). But it is a great read if you like over-the-top war scenes (without ALL the sickening details of what combat in the Pacific was really like).

As in all his books I've read, Levinson knows how to keep a reader turning pages, sprinkles in some nicely-researched tidbits, and litters the landscape with characters you will either abhor or admire...but always be entertained by.

SpecOps in Pre-Castro Cuba: Silvernail

Have I mentioned lately that the World Wide Web is what's up? One reason I say this is that it makes possible the interaction of bookworms like me with the authors of books they love. 

E-books and Print-on-Demand are what's up, too. Those make it possible for authors once pimp-slapped around by the New York Publishing Cartel to re-issue their backlist and make it available for a new generation of readers. I should say generations, plural, because there's no need for good books to go out of print anymore due to limited shelf space at brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Both of these phenomena (of internet-age coolness) come together in the person of Jim Morris. I've reviewed his Breeder, War Story and Above and Beyond here on the Two-Fisted Blog. With the help of Antenna Books, he is still re-releasing his earlier titles. One of the most recent to become available for the Amazon Kindle is Silvernail. Check it out:

The Green Berets' deadliest asset, he was chosen to do their most dangerous job...

The Green Berets sent Captain John Silvernail to San Sebastian to change the tide of history. His mission: to hook up with the rebel army that was whipping the pants off the U.S. backed dictator. His goal: to win its leader's confidence before Castro did.

But to get on Comachos's good side, Silvernail had to fight for him. And once the fighting had started, there was no telling where it would lead or when it would stop.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jim Morris served three tours with Special Forces (The Green Berets) in Vietnam. The second and third were cut short by serious wounds. He retired of wounds as a major. He has maintained his interest in the mountain peoples of Vietnam with whom he fought, and has been, for many years, a refugee and civil rights activist on their behalf.

His Vietnam memoir War Story won the first Bernal Diaz Award for military non-fiction. Morris is author of the story from which the film Operation Dumbo Drop was made, and has produced numerous documentary television episodes about the Vietnam War. He is author of three books of non-fiction and four novels. He has appeared on MSNBC as a commentator on Special Operations.

Time and Again by Jack Finney

This post I'm giving you a brief respite from all the blood and thunder, to review a time-travel adventure written in the early 1970s.

Simon "Si" Morely is recruited by a super-secret government agency for a top secret project. He is asked to volunteer, though the recruiter won't even tell him what the project is about until he signs on the dotted line. It wouldn't be much of a story if Si did the logical thing and told them to take a long walk on a short pier, so he signs on and gradually learns the project involves experiments in time travel.

Si is the ideal candidate because he is both fairly intelligent, and artistic, which gives him the right sort of cognitive profile for the job.

Like Somewhere in Time, the movie starring Christopher Reeve, the method of time-wrinkling here is hypnosis. So I don't know if that makes it more or less science fiction than plots (improperly) invoking Einstein's relativity theory as a method of time travel.

If you're prone to mentally debating yourself on theoretical matters, as I am, then the hypnotic time travel premise can instigate quite an intellectual quandry for you. Who can define time? I dare you to try, in one coherent, easily understood sentence. It's the 4th dimension we exist in. We can't affect it, influence it, ignore it or define it. We can only measure it. And if it weren't for the law of entropy, it wouldn't be a big deal anyway.

But I digress.

Si travels back to the New York of 1882. His assignment is to observe a man mail a letter (a letter his antique-collecting girlfriend showed him). When he succeeds in his mission and returns, the project is delighted, and tasks him to return and do more of the same. As he does so, Si stumbles on a blackmail plot involving a man who would become a president's advisor.

This mystery becomes the centerpiece of the novel, though Finney gives us a glimpse into a lost, forgotten era with snippets of the early Industrial Revolution urban milleu. Si also develops feelings for a young woman he meets during his time travels ("young" being relative, of course). At one point, he brings her back to his time and it's fun, if not comical, to view the "modern" world through her eyes.

Finney's politics were absent until toward the end of the book, and very understated by today's standards.

In short, Time and Again provides the reader with a nice mellow escape for a while. And if I ever find the right venue, I might even try hypnotizing myself back to a bygone era. If I can take my laptop, I might never come back.

Here Come da Judge. Dredd is the Law!

Don't let the previews fool you, as I did. I had no intention of seeing this flick after watching the trailer. I didn't even plan on renting it from Redbox when the DVD comes out.

Then fate intervened.

On date night with the missus, I took her to Olive Garden, then the 9:30 showing of some artsy suspense flick. Only we had our information wrong and the artsy suspense flick wasn't until midnight. She graciously offered to watch something else, since we were already at the theater anyway. What the heck, sez I, and we buy tickets for Dredd. If it's as bad, or worse, than that lackluster Stallone vehicle from the '90s, I could simply let that pasta from Olive Garden work on my eyelids and snooze the ten buck ticket price away.

I did no snoozing.

I've been hearing remarks that this flick is a knock-off of The Raid. I've never seen The Raid so I can't weigh in on that. What I can say is that Dredd is much more faithful to the comic book source material than I expected. Certainly more than the forgettable Sly action-comedy.

For those not familiar with Judge Dredd, he was the title character of a British comic book from the '80s, about law enforcement in a post-nuke America. (Well, maybe the comic is still being produced...all I know is I haven't seen the comics for quite a while.) In the recovery from a thermonuclear war, The entire eastern seaboard of the erstwhile USA has become one gigantic urban sprawl called Megacity One. You got that right--all the rural areas between cities and towns has been filled in with asphalt, concrete and glass, from the Big Apple to Miami. It is an autonomous city-state, with a streamlined justice system. Dredd is basically Dirty Harry in this post-apocalyptic world; officially empowered as judge, jury and executioner. And he rides the mac-daddy of all motorcycles.

There is also a Megacity Two on the west coast of North America, with a ruined wasteland ("the Cursed Earth") in between. (That's pretty much how New Yorkers and Los Angelites view things already, come to think of it.) In an issue of my collection, it is revealed there's an eastern Megacity also, with neo-Soviet judges maintaining order on their streets.

In this movie, Dredd is assigned a rookie whose test scores are just below passing, to assess her potential as a judge. We soon discover she's an empath, too, and her mind-reading skills make her a beast of an interrogator.

The bulk of the film takes place inside a fortress/tower/slum, where Judges Dredd and Anderson are locked in with an army of cutthroat gang-banging scum, hell-bent on killing them. The action is just about non-stop, and the bloody gore is simply Dreddful. (Sorry; couldn't resist.)

This wasn't the result of some beancounting suits commissioning another buddy-cop action comedy dressed up with props and costumes inspired by the comic. The film makers, this time, seemed to know and appreciate the source material.

So many visuals looked to me like they were lifted directly from the pages of the comic--especially the close-ups of Dredd himself. Megacity One didn't quite look like Megacity One in the comics, as I remember them, and the judges' bikes weren't quite as impressive, but they got so much else right, there was eye candy everywhere (no, I'm not talking about the blonde rookie, you pervs).

The most important aspect they got right this time was the Judge Dredd character himself. I applaud them for not going with a big star who would be taking his helmet off every 30 seconds to mug for the camera, and would insist on some stupid subplot or dialog revisions (ruinations) to show his soft, gooey inner teddy-bear soul. I applaud them for writing the dialog as they did. I applaud them for not soapboxing about the Occupy Movement, global warming or the need for taxpayer-funded prophylactics.

I applaud them for respecting the source material and still putting together a great popcorn-muncher that all action junkies should go and see.

Fight Card: Counterpunch--More Than Just a Punny Title

This book is more than just a pun-derful title. It's darn clever plotting, too.

Organized crime had its filthy mitts all over professional boxing in the 1950s and, appropriately, it plays a major part in this tightly written retro-pulp novella.

Characters will make or break a work of fiction, and author Wayne Dundee ("Jack Tunney") scored a decisive win with the Duke, here. He's tough, brave, streetwise and yet a good joe to his very core. To paint it in crude brush strokes, he is similar to a Louis L'Amour western hero, only in a gritty postwar urban setting.

I have great appreciation for the classic pulps, and admiration for the pulp writers. But frankly, those guys were meeting deadlines and worried about bills most of the time; so even some of their great works weren't as carefully polished as this novella. And yet Counterpunch maintains a vintage pulp fiction flavor from cover to cover.

All the Fight Card books are great reads, and this one is exemplary.



The second issue of Fight Fictioneers is hot off the press, too. There are interviews and articles about fight fiction, including some by us Fight Card authors. If you'd like a free copy, let me know.

A Night at the Fights

I don't watch sports that much anymore. I blog about them even less. For the last two seasons the only football game I watched from start to finish was the Superbowl. Boxing and UFC? I just don't sacrifice the time like I used to. But yesterday I was invited to a fight card at the A La Carte Event Pavillion in Tampa...and it proved too good an offer to turn down.

I knew nothing about any of the fighters on the card--partly because I haven't followed boxing for so long; partly because none of them were "name" fighters. Most were fairly new to the sport, though there were a couple veterans who just never climbed very far up the rankings.

But the matches were real crowd-pleasers. Out of 11 bouts, only three went the distance. The 12-round main event was one of those three. As you can expect with so many stoppages inside scheduled four and six-round fights, the action was thrilling.

My biggest complaint was my seat--though closer than I've ever been as a spectator, I was facing the corner post, which blocked my view frequently. I missed no less than three knockdowns because of that stupid post. And though the bouts were being recorded for Telemundo (which means that most of the announcing was done in Spanish and I couldn't make out the fighters' records or weigh-in numbers), there were no big-screens present, hence no instant replays.

Because I knew his manager, I paid close attention to Charlie Serrano's featherweight match against Juan Cruz. And videorecorded the first round on my phone. Despite being one of the three that went the distance, this was a real donnybrook. Holy life-imitates-art, Batman! I find it hard to describe what I saw without sounding like I'm plagiarizing from my Fight Card novella, Tomato Can Comeback. I'll just say that Serrano was a superb fighter--great speed, power, footwork and aggression. If Cruz hadn't been so incredibly tough (probably too tough for his own good), he would have gone down for the count. And Cruz was a southpaw, which confounds most conventional-stance boxers--but Serrano had no problem with him (other than Cruz's head made of solid chromium steel, that is).


At least the judges seemed to be on the up-and-up, as every decision went to the pug who truly won.

Another pleasant surprise for me was heavyweight Jason Barnett, who scored a blood-splattered TKO. I was impressed by his poise. He demonstrated a solid defense, some adroit counterpunching and good power. His left hooks ripped his opponent's face into raw meat and the doctor had to stop the fight. What stank to me, though, was that three times in a row the doctor waited until after the bell rang for the round to start before he examined Terrance "Big Jim" Marba, and Barnett had to wait in a neutral corner while the seconds ticked by. Like somebody had made a deal with the doc to buy Marba some time--time for his head to clear and his legs to solidify; time stolen from Barnett, who could have used it to finish his man sooner. Maybe nothing crooked was going on, but I'd have been pissed if I was Barnett.

Then there was Rad Kalajdzic, a light-heavyweight from St. Pete. Again, I've never heard of him, but he's got quite a following around the Tampa/St. Pete area, evidently. Trust me when I say most of the people in attendance came to see him, and not the main event between flyweights Glen Donaire and Omar Soto.

Here's something I don't understand: tickets are not cheap, and the place was supposedly sold out. But probably a quarter of the seats were never occupied, and a third of them only sporadically. A good portion of the crowd missed some great action because they were getting in and out of their seats for drinks (conspiring with the cursed corner post in further obscuring my view), or standing around hobnobbing, or engaging in screaming matches with other spectators. Why did they even bother coming? They obviously weren't boxing fans.

Well, when Rad Kalajdzic stepped inside the ropes, people finally took their seats to watch, and roared to raise the roof. Lucky for them they paid such close attention.

Shannon Anderson, a Phillidelphia fighter, pounced on Kalajdzic at the opening bell and swarmed him with combinations from every angle. He either wanted to blitz him with a flash-knockdown, or firmly establish who was going to dominate this fight. For a few moments it looked like Rad might be in serious trouble. He wasn't hurt, yet, but he looked dumbstruck--not offering much of a defense and unable to mount any offense, either.

But Rad weathered the storm and overcame the shock of that furious attack, soon revealing why he was so popular. At 1:36 of the first round he scored the only true knockout (not a TKO) of the night. It happened too fast (plus there was the verdammt corner post in my way) for me to see what actually put Anderson down, but he absolutely crumpled, hitting the canvas face-first in a contorted twist, actually unconscious while counted out.

Not that I need inspiration for any more projects right now, but I got plenty last night. I was already playing with the idea for another Fight Card book. Hmm. We'll see what happens.

Who Rescued Who? A Brief Review of "Safe"

This movie reminds me of Mercury Rising--a decade-old suspense thriller staring another bald-headed action star. In it, the good guy has to protect an autistic boy who is a savant with patterns, puzzles and codes. The boy inadvertently figures out an encrypted message and the chase is on. I remember it being a good flick, with a really intense scene which takes place in a crowded elevator.

Replace the autistic boy with a girl genius. Replace Bruce Willis with Jason Statham. Add a 3-way power struggle between the Russian mob, the Chinese mob and a corrupt police force. Season with some extra thumping time for Statham, and there's Safe in a nutshell.

Mei has a photographic memory, and is better than a computer when it comes to crunching numbers, which is why the Chinese mob kidnaps her. Seems they need to figure out a safe combination in the Big Apple. As if the mob's manipulation of her and threats against her weren't enough to put you in her corner, she's also savvy, tough and streetwise--in addition to being an adorable little girl.

Statham was a tough, clean cop--ostracized because he wouldn't play ball with his crooked co-workers. He gets it from all sides. After his wife is murdered, he has little to live for and is contemplating suicide when fate brings Mei (trying to escape the bad guys) across his path.

A snap decision is made and he is now her protector. What ensues is a white-knuckle thrill ride that left me feeling good about the time invested to watch it.

By comparing it to Mercury Rising  I didn't intend to imply Safe was formulaic. I'm sure the limp-wristed fa-hiiiiiiilmmmm critics have deemed it to be. But it wasn't such a worn-out formula that it annoyed me. To the contrary: I would like to watch it again, with some popcorn.

'Til next time, 2-Fisted Blogees!

War Story by Jim Morris

"Ever since Robin Moore wrote that book, we'd been green-bereting up a storm." --Jim Morris, War Story

Vietnam.

Just the mention of that geographic term is enough to spark controversy among  people my age and older. Pretty much every adult I knew growing up had some sort of strong emotion attached to it. My teachers had protested the American deployment there; my parents had feared it; and once in a while I ran into someone who had been directly involved in it.

I think most people would agree the whole mess we call Vietnam was tragic (though my teachers/professors undoubtedly believed it had a happy ending since the Communists conquered the South and Vietnam has joined the number of Socialist dictatorships that American jobs are being outsourced to).

American veterans of the conflict certainly suffered, whether from combat wounds, Agent Orange, being spit on when they returned home and called baby-killers. But nobody suffered as much as the natives of Vietnam. I mean the Vietnamese, of course; but also the Montagnards and Nungs.

Jim Morris was in-country from early on, before the first conventional troops were deployed, until after the Tet Offensive (more on that later). As an officer in Special Forces, he bounced around quite a bit in South Vietnam, able to put both the forest and the trees of that conflict into a perspective that  your average lowly grunt (or a REMF in Saigon, for that matter) could not--at least without years of investigative journalism afterwards, I'd bet.

From Lyndon Johnson on down, the prosecution of the Vietnam War was a confusing, convoluted, self-defeating debacle. But no more confusing or convoluted than politics, or life in general, for the people of Vietnam. In this autobiographical work, we get just enough of a snapshot of the situation over there to appreciate just how complex it was.

More than anything, though, War Story is about a man whose chief aspiration in life was to be a soldier. While other young men were dragged to Vietnam kicking and screaming, or dodged the draft altogether, Jim Morris and other members of the Special Forces volunteered for Vietnam. Against his wishes, Morris was assigned jobs either in the rear or on Okinawa--jobs other men would have killed for. Still, he clawed and scratched his way back to the periphery of the conflict. Sometimes right into the hot thick of it--you can be certain that, unlike some who've attempted to parlay their service into political success, Morris earned his Purple Hearts. In fact, Morris actually feared promotion beyond 0-3 (Captain), because it would nix his chances to command an A-Team.

In the author's own words: "I do not recall a moment in my life when I was not bored, before I got to Vietnam; very few since leaving there. Going to Nam was like trying on my first pair of glasses. Before the glasses I didn't know that other people could see clearly. Before going to Nam I didn't know that everyone wasn't paralyzed by boredom all the time. I suppose that in any well-ordered society people like us would be locked up or shot. But then you would have to get people like us to do the locking up and shooting."

Had there been more officers like this in my time, I might have held to my original plan of being a 30-Year-Man. Or at least 20. Morris was a soldier who cared about the mission, and wanted to make a difference, armed with ideas which could have done so. He worked within the system, but (and this is one thing I love about SF) wasn't obsessed with following counterproductive protocols, or eating cheese. He wanted to fight, and to win, while the average career officer just wants to kiss ass, shuffle paperwork, and admire rows of spit-shined boots and starched uniforms all perfectly dress-right-dressed.

But not only was victory not an objective for the US chain-of-command, the South Vietnamese weren't much interested in it, either. The ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) was infamous for its corruption and incompetence. It would be hard to name a military organization more rife with cowards, crooks, traitors and fools. Whatever good soldiers fought for the South were buried under bureaucratic BS.

Morris relates the story of how some loyal villagers reported six VC (Viet Cong) sighted in a certain ARVN officer's district. "Only one weapon between them." That ARVN commander could have captured them quickly and easily, possibly getting some valuable intelligence into the bargain. Instead, he sent the report up his ponderous chain of command. Three days after the VC left the village, an airstrike leveled it. That's how loyalty was rewarded. Any wonder why most of the Vietnamese citizens turned a blind eye to VC activity?

"All intelligence in Vietnam flowed up, and none flowed down to the people who could use it. But the maps in Saigon were gorgeous."

At one point, Morris compared two of the strategic maps available for MACV brass. One map showed the areas of VC/NVA (North Vietnamese Army) incursion from across the border(s), and the other showed the distribution of American base camps. In context, the latter made no military sense. Had nobody ever thought to make this comparison? Morris didn't like camps, but still, armed with this information, he came up with a plan to interdict a high-traffic stretch of the Ho Chi Minh trail. You would think there would be an outbreak of forehead-smacking among the high command, and a rush to act on this info and hurt the enemy in a big way.  Fortunately, Morris showed his discovery to Colonel Ludwig Faistenhammer--another officer who considered it his job to fight and win. Here's Morris' own words about this man:

'There weren't many like Ludwig. He was the character Fritz Scharne in Robin Moore's The Green Berets. It was the story of how he managed to ambush a VC battalion commanded by a Frenchman... It was such an improbable story that I asked him if it was true. He said it was. "I lay awake nights dreaming up ways to get that son of a bitch," he said. Part of how he set him up was by feeding him false information while playing tennis with him at the Cercle Sportif in Saigon.'

The next camp was, in fact, set up right in the notch Morris identified, though he never did get the command there.

As Morris hops around South Vietnam in War Story, you might want to follow along on a map. Having never been there myself, I was unfamiliar with the geography and sometimes grew confused about where he was and when he had been there before. The command structure on both the American and South Vietnamese sides were equally cumbersome. Heck, it was a convoluted mess by WWII and has only gotten worse every decade since then.

In Morris' war novel, Above and Beyond, he remarks upon some of the field-grade officers deployed in Vietnam that they were "trying to fight World War Two, but with helicopters." In my opinion, that would have been fine, had such sentiments gone straight to the top. After all, MacArthur conducted a successful jungle campaign some 20 years before, without helicopters. But then, victory was the objective at that time; the enemy wasn't allowed to hide behind "neutral" borders; and American commanders were not stifled with ridiculous rules of engagement. But, since kicking the enemy's ass back through North Vietnam and marching through Hanoi was not allowed, Johnson had shrunk the window for success to a very tiny aperture. This was the reality confronted by Morris and others who made an effort to win despite the limitations placed upon them.

"There is only one way to fight a guerilla war and that is to outguerilla the guerilla. You have to steal his political issues and his social issues and his tactics; and if you do that he has nothing left to sell and the war is won. It was so easy. Why couldn't the bastards see it? Maybe that was what made me not one of the boys: the fact that I moved around so much as a kid that I was highly sensitive to new social situations. That was what made me not one of the boys. Maybe I knew what I was doing and 'The Boys' didn't."

And Morris could certainly adapt to new social situations. He didn't just work with the 'Yards (Montagnards--ostracized mountain tribes of Vietnam), but made friends with them. He could make sense of their military and social network, and knew who could get the job done unclouded by the "all Dinks are the same" attitude held by some of the more condescending officers on our side of the fence. One such 'Yard comrade, nicknamed "Cowboy," is a fascinating enough character to warrant his own biography.

The author is not just a Special Forces officer who wants to do his part--he's a soldier, and likes being around other soldiers.

"One of the nice things about being around other soldiers is that they will suffer your bullshit gladly, knowing that sooner or later you will shut up and listen to theirs."

Amen.

I could go on at great length about this book and what I learned from it. I recommend that you just read it and let Morris' narrative speak for itself. Unlike some of my rants here, it is fairly devoid of politics. He mentions more than once his admiration for the VC he was fighting. But not because of what many assume--that the Cong were super-guerillas unparalleled in all history. Compared to the ARVN, any combatant would seem like a super-soldier. The Cong had their limitations, too (which were not exploited). The truth is, many factors worked in the VC's favor. And when Charlie bit off more than he could chew, the Press and the Johnson Administration came to his rescue, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

For the Tet holiday (Vietnamese New Year) in 1968, the Communists launched their most ambitious offensive of the war. They had conquered North Vietnam with a decisive victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu, and now they imagined themselves ready to graduate from their guerilla campaign in the South and do the same to the Americans.

After the Tet Offensive, the news media declared the war "unwinable." With the protest movement back in the US threatening to become a war on the streets, and a Commander-in-Chief who was never committed to victory in the first place, the US caved in to these pressures and began to pull the troops out. Prolonged defeat became the official policy. Tet was what put the final nail in the coffin for any hope of even securing a stalemate as in Korea.

Rather than me pontificate on how the "battle for hearts and minds" was affected by Tet, I'll quote somebody who knew, and saw, and experienced what myself and the "experts" did not:

"These are the facts about Tet: The ARVN found itself during Tet. Units that had never fought well before, or thought about fighting at all, did a creditable job. Public opinion was mobilized against the VC for daring to profane the Tet holiday, and the cities were alienated, when before they had been entirely indifferent to the war except as a profit-making venture. Just in our own little area there, when the Mike Force, which was Montagnard, came through to mop up and check the place out, Vietnamese housewives who, two days before, wouldn't have walked across the street to spit on a 'Yard came out of their houses with tea and cakes for them and hailed them as liberators. Vietnamese actually feeding Montagnards. Tet was such a bad fuckup for the VC that it is scarcely describable, but the Press reported it the other way, and people believed it."

In other words, early in 1968, we had won the battle for hearts and minds that the Johnson State Department had been so fixated on.

How about the strategic picture? Tet was a military disaster for the Communists. What few tactical successes they enjoyed were minor, short-lived and earned at tremendous cost. Even as inept as US and RVN leadership in-theater had been, the VC got their asses kicked all over the map and were in sad shape to continue fighting afterwards. Had the NVA gone toe-to-toe with American forces during or afterwards, we would have won the war despite ourselves.

Morris himself was assigned to a REMF unit at the time of Tet, but he and those under him set out to join in the nearest firefight as if they'd learned of a nearby kegger and were crashing the party. While journalists were screaming "we're doomed!" to the folks back home, American fighting men were ecstatic that the VC were coming out for a stand-up fight. All over the country, VC were getting spanked.

Morris continued marching to the sound of the guns well after Tet, and during another firefight, while helping some wounded GIs get out of harm's way, he received the wounds that would send him home.

War Story doesn't spend any time justifying US intervention in Vietnam, or much time defining what was at stake. At its core it is the story of a soldier who wants to fight, and does so, in the only war that happened to be available. Obviously he was more than just a soldier, but a (at that time) new breed of elite warrior, heartbroken when forced to park behind a desk when there was fighting to be done. In just that respect alone it stands apart from most of the memoirs on Vietnam you may come across.

"Tomato Can" Passing the Acid Test(s)

The "I Love Me" party rages on!

Hey, after the week I just had, I earned the right to be a little narcissistic. I probably earned the right to throw a violent, profanity-laced tantrum...but I don't quite have the energy.

Only very recently did I discover author James Reasoner had his own blog. Cool, sez I, and put it on my blog roll. Then today, when searching the web to find out if Paul Bishop had put up the Fight Card website yet, I stumbled on a blog by Mr. Reasoner in which he reviews a Fight Card book.

MY Fight card book!

How did I miss that?

Anyway, here's a little snippet from the review:

This is one of my favorite Fight Card books so far, and that's saying a lot because I've thoroughly enjoyed all of them. I haven't read anything else by Henry Brown, but I'm going to remedy that as soon as I can.

 Well, it's hard not to be pleased by a review like that. Click here to see the whole post.

Heartfelt thanks to James for taking the time to share his thoughts. I tried to comment on his blog but my message disappeared. Not sure if it's because of my fickle internet connection or if it's part of the anti-spam security.

And speaking of taking the time to share thoughts: coming soon on the 2-Fisted Blog will be my review of Jim Morris' War Story. Then I've got a stack of books read that I need to write reviews for. Then I've got an infinitely more enormous stack of books to both read and review. 

Who am I kidding? I'll never catch up. But there are some authors I've taken an interest in, plus indies who I think deserve some exposure of a 2-fisted nature, and some folks I've kind of unofficially obligated myself to...and those categories overlap.

See ya 'round.

Rocco's Retreads Saddle Up and Move Out

Most of the survivors from my paramilitary novel, Hell and Gone, are gearing up for another go-round. This time they're on a completely different type of mission, in a different Third World hellhole.

In the first novel I kinda' painted myself into a corner at the end, because the thought of a sequel didn't even occur to me. But a few readers put a bug in my ear and, after stewing on it for a while, I realized it would be a shame to never use those characters again. I also had a specific request from a South African friend (who does some "contracting" work not entirely unlike what some of those characters do) that my next novel should involve modern piracy. So guess who the bad guys are this time?

Of course, after deciding to go for it, I discovered there are quite a few action-adventures out there about pirate-busting. Ah, well. It's hard to be original these days. Nobody has yet accused me of "borrowing" a black-market suitcase nuke plot for Hell and Gone, but with the preponderance of those kind of stories/movies out there, I'm sure it will happen. Rest assured, though: I built the plot around some severely under-reported news I was privy to at the time. I won't classify it as "intelligence," though intelligence journals were just about the only news sources covering it.

Anyway, this time there will be at least as much action, if not more. I'm toying with some ideas for plot twists, too. Should be a lot of fun. I'm hoping to take some time off next week and work on it and a few other projects. It will probably be the only chance this year to build some momentum writing it (instead of this paragraph-a-week exercise in creative frustration) so wish me well.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd share the latest Amazon review of Hell and Gone:

On his website, Hank Brown compares Hell and Gone to a novel version of "The Expendables." I'd argue that it's better, and I liked The Expendables. Between the real-world setting, the backdrop of real events, and the portrayal of characters who act and talk like real-life veterans, as opposed to Hollywood's version, it has a plausibility that most movies, and some of the big-name thrillers, don't. The technical details were obviously well researched, and the action was written to draw the reader in. No Clancy clinical detail to make up for lack of experience here. If you're looking for an action fix, look no further. 

My thanks to reviewer Pete for taking the time to share his reaction. It's a real help for working stiffs like me, who are trying to get a foothold in the writing biz, to get reviews and even "likes" on Amazon. While I'm at it, thanks to everyone who left a review. I should share some more of them.

New Fight Card Novella Comes Out Swinging

Tom Garrick had a heart of gold, a jaw of iron, and heavy artillery in both fists. This orphan from the Windy City returned from the Korean War to battle his way up the welterweight ranks, inspiring speculation about a title bid. Then he slugged it out with a top contender who humiliated him over eleven rounds and cut short his victory march.

Popular opinion was he had been exposed as a lucky pretender. The newspapers dubbed him "Tomato Can" after watching the blood splatter around the ring like tomato juice from a tin can being battered by a tire iron.

Now, for some mysterious reason, 'Tomato Can' Garrick is lacing on the gloves again, hoping for a shot at redemption. He has no promoter, no manager, not even a sparring partner. The only one in his corner is a buddy from the war who has never been inside the boxing game before.

There's a punch-drunk pantheon of bums, brawlers and cutthroat contenders just waiting to pound him into Palookaville ... a lonely war widow with her claws in his heart ... and a regimen of dubious training methods which may do more harm than good to his chances. But Garrick isn't going to go down in history as "the Tomato Can" without a fight.

Jack Tunney is the unifying pen name for authors of the FIGHT CARD series - created by Mel Odom and Paul Bishop. Up-and-coming new authors, such as Eric Beetner, David Foster, Kevin Michaels, and Heath Lowrance have all penned entries in the series alongside more established names in the field such as Wayne D. Dundee, Bishop, and Odom.

The books in the Fight Card series are 25,000 word novelettes, designed to be read in one or two sittings, and are inspired by the fight pulps of the '30s and '40s - such as Fight Stories Magazine - and Robert E. Howard's two-fisted boxing tales featuring Sailor Steve Costigan.

Each of the novellas is short, sharp and packs a punch.