Vietnam War Fiction

In this gripping memoir, a former marine returns to Vietnam to try to make sense of the war. Previously published as Brothers in Arms, this edition includes a new preface by the author. When William Broyles Jr. was drafted, he was a twenty-four-year-old student at Oxford University in England, hoping to avoid military service. During his physical exam, however, he realized that he couldn't let social class or education give him special privileges. He joined the marines, and soon commanded an infantry platoon in the foothills near Da Nang.

Ultimate soldier. Ultimate mission. But will the SAS survive a nightmare journey into the tunnel lair of the Viet Cong? June 1966: 3 Squadron SAS (Australian Special Air Service) set up a forward operating base in Vietnam's Phuoc Tuy province, a swampy hell of jungle and paddy fields 45 miles east of Saigon, in the heart of enemy territory. The Viet Cong have bases throughout the jungle, and the Australians soon find themselves under constant attack.

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.

American aircraft are going down, victim to missile batteries hidden deep in the jungles of South Vietnam, and they bring in an Air Force expert, Colonel Dan Carter, to analyze the defenses and devise a strategy to destroy them. Yet, the Vietcong gets wind of the colonel’s arrival, and plan to murder him. Joe Cooper, Air Cav, returns from an abortive mission to grab an important and high-ranking North Vietnamese. A mission gives MACV an idea to protect their expert.

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.

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.