Vietnam War Fiction

There are dozens of unforgettable characters, and scores of authentic scenes in Brandywine's War. From behind the headlines and the front-line dispatches has come this Rabelaisian novel. Chief Warrant Officer Vaughan completed Brandywine's War while serving his second of three tours of duty in Vietnam.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.