I’m addicted to the very strange poetry in the column after newspaper column of quick summaries of the day’s soap operas.  They make a fabulous narrative of American life or something like it.  They leave me stunned wondering if it really was Aiden and his henchwomen who made that videotape of Della and Sophia making love so he could blackmail Sophia out of her family fortune.  Or was it Mei-Xing in the Ferrari out front, instead, while she supposedly made love to William, driving him to confess he loves her? Mei-Xing wants to believe him but panics when Jayden strolls Continue reading →

I know a guy who knew Brigid O’Shaughnessy.  His name was Joe Gores.  And she was real.  It’s a great story.  Brigid, as you know, was the seductive murderess who drove Sam Spade to hunt down The Maltese Falcon in Dashiell Hammett’s masterpiece of hard-boiled detective fiction.  Hammett had been a Pinkerton agent in San Francisco in the 1920s.  Joe Gores, who died last year, was a repo man in San Francisco.  That’s where this story begins. Way back in the last century, I met Gores, author of the great DKA Files mystery series.  I invited him to my ratty flat in Berkeley Continue reading →

The number of university and high school reading lists that include Ghost Soldiers for teaching the Vietnam war and the 1960s got me thinking about the sort of syllabus I’d advise for students if I were a teacher. Then  it hit me – there are plenty of good books and a few good movies about the war but only two I’d recommend, and one isn’t “about” Vietnam at all. Because ours is an increasingly visual culture for transmitting information between generations, first on my list is Burt Lancaster’s 1978 film Go Tell the Spartans based on the novel Incident at Muc Wa. It’s the only honest Vietnam Continue reading →

There comes a time in every man’s life when his thoughts lightly turn to setting his library on fire.  To burn away the jungle to let him find the books that most matter to him.  It requires re-reading the whole library, lit match in hand… Self Portraits:  Fictions  by Frederic Tuten Take the first book from the shelf.  Find a match.  Cover is by Roy Lichtenstein.  Hardback.  I wonder if I will need to break the spine before lighting its fire? I have not opened this book in a long while.  Skim through the short stories.  I like the physical Continue reading →

I had a buddy in the Vietnam war who was a different kind of fighting man.  He didn’t carry a gun.  He was a civilian warrior for hearts and minds.  But he taught me the most important part of the combat soldier’s task.  I want to tell you about his one very special combat. I’m going to call him “Bob.”  His mission was the aid and humanitarian work that kept children and their families alive in the crossfire of war.  As you would expect, he was a misery to the Viet Cong.  His work threatened to blow up their lies Continue reading →

I don’t understand how we could have so many heroes today. I knew a hero in the Vietnam war.  He died rescuing wounded.  I knew another in the first Gulf War.  She was killed by friendly fire.  But, today, every soldier, sailor, airman and Marine who returns from a combat zone is called a hero.  I don’t quite understand that. Audie Murphy was a hero, no question.  Ernest E. Evans of the destroyer USS Johnston attacking a Japanese battle fleet was a hero.  Chuck Yeager was a hero.  So was John Basilone on Guadalcanal.  It’s great to think but hard Continue reading →

I never saw Bob Hope in the combat zone, never heard his zippy one-liners and never gawked at his starlets and beauty queens in hotpants and skimpy blouses.  He never came to my corner of the boonies.  But we had comedy enough of our own, though it may seem a little crazy to some.  But war is crazy, isn’t it? * * * The hero of my favorite comic story is Lt. Alfa Bravo – that’s what I’ll call him – who misread an azimuth by 180 degrees and fired six howitzers east, instead of west.  Blew up the basecamp Continue reading →

The last uniformed veteran of World War I, a British woman, died this month. The last combat veteran, a British sailor, died last year in Australia. The last American veteran, an ambulance driver, died last year as well. All three reached age 110. She worked in a Royal Air Force canteen in England and remembered her war as a “good time,” filled with handsome pilots and excitement. The sailor, whose Royal Navy battleship fought a zeppelin, recalled his war as “tough.” What will the last Vietnam veterans remember at age 110, with great-grandchildren bouncing on their knees and asking for Continue reading →

I love marching bands and parades but I don’t go all soppy on Veterans Day remembering our fallen heroes.  That is because Veterans Day is the one day I don’t  think about them.  Sounds odd, doesn’t it?  Instead, it is the day I reserve for a private thanksgiving for what those men and women have given us – our country, safe and whole.  That makes it a second Fourth of July for me, one more day each year on which I feel especially good and very proud.  It’s also the one day of the year I don’t think about one Continue reading →

Everyone has some private holidays – besides commemorations such as the birth of a child or the wedding day – that may mean a lot or a little to the outside world but which are very special to that one person.  V-J Day is one of my private holidays but it didn’t start out that way.  Now, with its commemoration just past, I’d like to tell you how it became special to me. I’m a baby boomer and admit that V-J Day – Victory over Japan, September 2, 1945 – meant little to me growing up.  Oh, I relished the Continue reading →