HERE’S A SNEAK-PEAK OF THE COVER OF MY NEW BOOK ON VIETNAM AND VIETNAM VETS
This is a non-fiction book, not one of my suspense novels. It contains personal reminiscences of 100 of my fellow Vietnam vets and has some truly memorable stories in it. The book is going through final formatting and edits, and I hope to have it out on Kindle in 6-8 weeks.
Sometimes you’ve got to follow your passion. In my case, that’s the Vietnam War where I and many of my friends served. If your lived in the 1960s and 70s, it was the 800-pound gorilla in the room, one that effected every facet of our lives. Over 2.7 million of us served, 304,000 were wounded, 75,000 severely disabled, and over 58,220 of our brothers and sisters died there.
Unfortunately, all that most of our kids and grand kids know about that war is what they see in the Oliver Sto
ne movie, Platoon, or in the handful of better novels, all of which center on an infantry unit in the jungle on the Cambodian border in 1968. That was Oliver’s war. He was there, bless his Hollywood heart, but it wasn’t mine. In fact, there were hundreds of different wars, depending on the year you were there, the service you were in, your branch, location, job, and your rank.
What I’m writing is not a war book; rather, it is a very personal look at the men and women who served there. The title is “Our Vietnam Wars.”Through in-depth interviews with 100 vets, I hope to capture the diversity of their experience “in country,” in photos and 3-5-page vignettes, and touch on what they did before and after the war, and how it effected them. I now have 89 interviews finished and I think they are fascinating stories.
We are all old and gray now, pushing 70, and beset by a myriad of illnesses, but I hope this book will show what we saw and felt there. Part of the urgency to tell our stories is Agent Orange. It’s killing us off in increasing numbers now, and as many now say, “They didn’t get us back then, but they are doing a first-class job of it now.”
I hope to have this book out by year’s end. I’ll keep you posted on my progress and when you should expect to see it. I think it will be a great read.
Bill Brown
Bill Brown is the author of 9 suspense novels currently available on Kindle — Burke’s War, Burke’s Gamble. and Burke’s Revenge in the popular Bob Burke action adventure series, Aim True, My Brothers, Amongst my Enemies, The Undertaker, Winner Lose All, Thursday at Noon, Cold War Trilogy, and others. Together, they have over five hundred 5-star Kindle reviews.