As an aging Vietnam veteran and writer I sometimes reflect on the war and my involvement in it. I was young, just twenty years old. I turned twenty-one on October 14, 1968 as my unit slogged through the jungle near the Cambodian border. It was on a trail leading into Vietnam from Cambodia that we killed a young North Vietnamese officer who was just walking casually in the direction of our company.
This led to a series of firefights and our casualty count was high, including our company commander and others who were killed on November 2nd. We rescued a family of non-combatants during this time and I was appalled at the way they were treated by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, which we called the ARVN. We also rescued a downed helicopter pilot and crew near the border. As I called in air support in an intense firefight, an F-4 was shot down and we had to rescue that pilot and his gunner.
These incidents swirl in my brain now more than forty years later. I have often wondered how the current citizens of Vietnam view American soldiers of the war. Blending all of this together I evolved a story about a retired Vietnam war vet who killed a young North Vietnamese officer on a trail but refuses to take a young boy into custody because he knows he will be turned over the ARVN.
Forty years later that young boy, now a fifty-year-old Vietnamese business executive, comes after the soldier who killed his father. Somehow I pieced together a cogent story that seems to resonate with many, especially those who were impacted by the war and the political turbulence that surrounded it. An Act of War is a book in which I take great pride and it was worth the time and effort.
