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Internal Conflicts
Moving deftly from the epic to the personal and the hilarious to the heartbreaking, acclaimed military historian Flint Whitlock thrusts us back to the 1960s in one of the most emotionally compelling and powerful stories to ever chronicle the Vietnam Era. Peter Luton, a sensitive college student, is beset with a host of fears, failures, inadequacies, and anxieties. More intellectual than athletic, he has shamed himself by a painfully impetuous act he can only refer to as "The Incident in High School," and still suffers from the after-shock of being dumped by his rich, spoiled fiancée who challenged him to "grow up and be a man." Convinced that manhood can only be achieved when one demonstrates courage in the face of extreme danger, Peter welcomes the opportunity of joining the Army and soon finds himself a second lieutenant searching for sex, love, manhood, and identity in a world at war.
332 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 1, 2009
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4 people want to read
About the author
Flint Whitlock
34 books17 followersAs an art major, Flint Whitlock graduated from the University of Illinois in 1964 with a degree in Advertising Design, but has always been as much a writer as an artist. His love for military history began at an early age—fueled by his father, James, who served with the famed 10th Mountain Division in World War II. Flint also had an uncle who was a military policeman with the 1st Infantry Division and another uncle who served with the Navy in the Pacific.
Wanting to serve his country, Flint was commissioned a Second Lieutenant through the Reserve Officer Commission Training Program and entered active duty in December 1964. After attending the basic Air Defense Artillery officers' course at Fort Bliss, Texas, Flint earned his jump wings at Airborne school at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was then posted to a Nike Hercules battery in Baumholder, Germany. After two years in ADA, he received a branch transfer to the Quartermaster Corps and spent an additional year with the Supply and Maintenance Agency in Zweibruecken, Germany, where he was promoted to captain.
In 1968, Flint was transferred to South Vietnam, arriving one day before the Tet Offensive in January, 1968. He served for six months as a supply specialist at 1st Logistical Command Headquarters at Long Binh, northeast of Saigon, before being transferred to the 14th Inventory Control Center at the same post. He returned to the States in 1969 and spent a year with the 5th Infantry Division Supply and Maintenance Battalion at Fort Carson, Colorado, before resigning his commission and returning to civilian life.
After a stint as the Public Relations Director for the Denver Dynamos of the now-defunct North American Soccer League, he served as a copywriter, art director, and creative director for several major Colorado advertising agencies. While holding down these positions, he also continued to paint and write, becoming a locally prominent artist of the “photo-realist” genre. His attention to visual detail also translated to the written word, as he sought to convey the emotional and physical aspects of the soldier's experience.
To heighten his understanding of, and appreciation for, what the World War II combat soldier went through, he became involved in World War II re-enactment groups, in which he has been active for over 20 years. As a tribute to his father, he founded the 10th Mountain Division Living History Display Group in 1983 (www.tenthmountain.org). He is also a member of the 10th Mountain Division Foundation Board of Directors and the 10th Mountain Division Resource Center Advisory Committee.
Flint Whitlock lives in Denver, Colorado, with his wife, Dr. Mary Ann Watson, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at Metropolitan State College of Denver. They have three grown children: Gillian Lee Whitlock, an actress and make-up artist in Hollywood; Suki Montgomery, a psychologist and member of the counseling staff at Ithaca (NY) College; and Matthew Montgomery, an anesthesiologist in Denver. To keep in shape, Flint skis, referees soccer, and plays tennis.
Wanting to serve his country, Flint was commissioned a Second Lieutenant through the Reserve Officer Commission Training Program and entered active duty in December 1964. After attending the basic Air Defense Artillery officers' course at Fort Bliss, Texas, Flint earned his jump wings at Airborne school at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was then posted to a Nike Hercules battery in Baumholder, Germany. After two years in ADA, he received a branch transfer to the Quartermaster Corps and spent an additional year with the Supply and Maintenance Agency in Zweibruecken, Germany, where he was promoted to captain.
In 1968, Flint was transferred to South Vietnam, arriving one day before the Tet Offensive in January, 1968. He served for six months as a supply specialist at 1st Logistical Command Headquarters at Long Binh, northeast of Saigon, before being transferred to the 14th Inventory Control Center at the same post. He returned to the States in 1969 and spent a year with the 5th Infantry Division Supply and Maintenance Battalion at Fort Carson, Colorado, before resigning his commission and returning to civilian life.
After a stint as the Public Relations Director for the Denver Dynamos of the now-defunct North American Soccer League, he served as a copywriter, art director, and creative director for several major Colorado advertising agencies. While holding down these positions, he also continued to paint and write, becoming a locally prominent artist of the “photo-realist” genre. His attention to visual detail also translated to the written word, as he sought to convey the emotional and physical aspects of the soldier's experience.
To heighten his understanding of, and appreciation for, what the World War II combat soldier went through, he became involved in World War II re-enactment groups, in which he has been active for over 20 years. As a tribute to his father, he founded the 10th Mountain Division Living History Display Group in 1983 (www.tenthmountain.org). He is also a member of the 10th Mountain Division Foundation Board of Directors and the 10th Mountain Division Resource Center Advisory Committee.
Flint Whitlock lives in Denver, Colorado, with his wife, Dr. Mary Ann Watson, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at Metropolitan State College of Denver. They have three grown children: Gillian Lee Whitlock, an actress and make-up artist in Hollywood; Suki Montgomery, a psychologist and member of the counseling staff at Ithaca (NY) College; and Matthew Montgomery, an anesthesiologist in Denver. To keep in shape, Flint skis, referees soccer, and plays tennis.
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January 13, 2011
Review Written by Bernie Weisz, Historian, Vietnam War Pembroke Pines, Florida, U.S.A. January 13, 2011 Title of Review:
"What Good Is Fighting For People When The People You Are Fighting For Hate Your Guts? And By the Way, Welcome to Vietnam!" Flint Whitlock has done come in with a superb historic lesson about many issues in "Internal Conflicts." On the surface, this is a novel about a young, Army officer who while joining the Army in an attempt to discover his manhood by way of wearing "army greens, sexual conquests and love," searches for the meaning of life in the tumultuous 1960's. Although Whitlock throws to the reader a novel of varied themes, i.e. eroticism, romance, sibling rivalry, mortality, murder, war, and peace, his protagonist, a Vietnam bound Officer named Peter, Luton, sums up his personal "Internal Conflict" best in this book with his following lament: "My mother is not really my mother, my brother is not really my brother, my father was not really my father, I am not who I always thought I was." The title chosen by Flintlock is appropriate, as Luton, an awkward, graceless youth matures into adulthood in the shadow of his older, athletically adroit brother Jack. Full of negative self poise and overly sensitive, Peter is forever plagued by self-recrimination, indecision and self doubt. As the reader will discover through what Whitlock deemed "The Incident," Luton's impulsive behavior precipitate negative repercussions that cause self doubt and insecurity that plague him nearly to the end of this story. Yet, the reader need to be forewarned: when it came time for Luton to step to the plate and prove his prowess and fortitude in the face of death, he smashed a grand slam home run. Unfortunately for Luton, his base clearing blast was in an unforgiving place that was not a John Wayne film, devoid of makeup, fake blood, flags and bugles. This was in Vietnam and in the watershed year of this conflict, where he was to ultimately find out that he was deceived by his drill instructors with the following admonition: "The more you sweat in peacetime, the less you bleed in wartime."
The reader needs to be forwarded that it is once in a while a book will come along where the majority of occurrences one reads about can be identified vicariously. I myself experienced identical or similar incidents and experiences that Whitlock's protagonist encountered and experienced. It brought back poignant memories of my youth and my own voyage of self discovery. If the reader of this novel went through the 1960's, the whole scene of Vietnam, the search for manhood, sexual conquest, masculine identity, adoption, sibling rivalry, post traumatic stress syndrome, etc., this book will certainly churn both your head and stomach with emotions perhaps dulled with the passage of time. I did not expect this book to end as violent and abrupt as it did. Being Whitlock's first foray into fiction, I did not even expect this to be anything more than a marginal regurgitation of historical facts coated by a flimsy storyline. Needless to say, this book turned out to be a plot I simply could not put down until the last page was turned, and even then I was shaking my head as to "why?" I will not be a plot spoiler and let on to why I say this. I can promise anyone, man or woman, that there is something in this book that you will identify with and have you thinking about for weeks after you have finished it. One wonders if Whitlock is veiling his own biography through fiction. The writer of almost 10 best selling historical books that effectively convey the emotional and physical aspects of the soldier's experience, Whitlock's past parallels his protagonist. A college graduate in ROTC, Peter Luton, a Chicagoan, tearfully finds out the circumstances of his adoption late in life. Witnessing the death of his friend through a suspicious incident in basic training, Luton underwent a grueling ordeal of learning to be a soldier at Fort Benning, Georgia. Luton spent two years in Germany as an Officer for the Nike Hercules Missile Battery prior to his involuntary deployment to Vietnam at the height of the 1968 "Tet Offensive." His real father and mother perished in a fatal car accident and his adopted father vanished in a downed B-17 Bomber, shot down over Germany's skies during the Second World War.
Despite the fact that this is a novel, very real issues were brought up, particularly of the U.S. military in Germany in this period of time. Luton, trained to watch a radar grid of possible Soviet ballistic incoming missiles, is warned by lieutenant Stiles Van Dellen, a later casualty of Vietnam, the dangers of the Battery Control Center. Showing Luton how to work the radar, Van Dellen instructs the following: "Every so often, we'll see a dozen or so blips in formation heading our way-probably MIG's-but they always turn back before they reach the East and West Germany border." "What happens if they don't turn back?" "Then Pete," Stiles said, the proverbial balloon has just gone up." Peter gulped. World War Three would just be minutes away if ever those advancing blips did not reverse course." Aside from war games, Whitlock showed how the military could easily change one's "Military Occupational Specialty" at whim and even if one had a week left in their tour of duty, re-designate them for combat duty. During the Vietnam era, this was referred to as being "curtailed," although now with Iraq and Afghanistan in the background, it is referred to as "Stop Loss." This amounts to the involuntary extension of a service member's active duty service under the enlistment contract in order to retain them beyond their initial end of term of service date and up to their contractually agreed end of obligated service. It also applies to the cessation of a permanent change of station move for a member still in military service. There has recently even been a major motion picture of this issue. Peter Luton, thinking that he is safe from being called to Vietnam because he is in air-defense and the North Vietnamese had no planes, is corrected once again by Stiles as follows: "Pete, the Army can do whatever it damn well pleases, including sending you or me to anywhere." Yeah, but they guaranteed-" Army guarantees don't mean squat, Pete." In a memoir about Vietnam, written by James A. Daly entitled "Black Prisoner of War: A Conscientious Objector's Vietnam Memoir," Daly, a Jehovah's Witness, joined the Army under the promise of being made a cook and designated a permanent rear echelon job, was deceived, sent to the front lines as part of the 196th Light Infantry Brigade, captured and spent over five years as a North Vietnamese prisoner of war.
Flint Whitlock also included an incident where Peter Luton, on night patrol of his own men, discovered two men having sex. This is significant, considering the 1960's view of homosexuality in the military, the subsequent "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" term policy restricting the U.S. military from efforts to discover or reveal the sexuality of closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring those who are openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual from military service, and it's current repeal. Nevertheless, Luton did meet an Army nurse, Meredith, whom he eventually wed, had a daughter with, and then it happened. His worst fears were realized, as he was shipped to Vietnam, no less on the first day of the "Tet Offensive". Contrary to W. W. II, there was no enthusiasm of going to combat, and unlike any previous conflict the U.S. has ever been involved with, his war chariot was a commercial airplane, a Boeing 727. Given a short leave between Germany and Vietnam to visit his new bride's family and his own in America's Midwest, he was given this little speech by his new father in law: "We either stop Communism over there or we try to stop it when the Russians or Red Chinese parachute in to Milwaukee. That's our choice, Pete. Far as I'm concerned, I'd rather we stopped it over there, in Vietnam. I just want you to know that I'm damn proud that you are going over there." "Well sir, I guess it's my duty. When I joined the Army, I knew that was part of the bargain, he lied. "Well, I'm just proud of you. And my daughter, too, for being an Army nurse, Too many of these long haired hippies are running around, burning their draft cards and American flags and smoking pot, are just spoiled brats, if you ask me. The kids today are as soft as marsh mellows they need to go into the service to toughen them up, and learn some discipline and respect. That's what my generation did. We gave up our jobs and our schooling and our families to serve our country. When they called us up, we all went. There were no protests or demonstrations back then. Draft dodgers were few and far in between. In fact, guys who were underage or were four-F and unfit for service did everything they could to get in. It took almost four, years, but we licked those Japs and Krauts. That's the problem today-nobody's willing to sacrifice. Everybody just wants everything handed to them on a silver platter."
Regardless, the "internal conflicts" of Peter Luton continue. After a two week stay in Milwaukee, Luton flew to Vietnam, via San Francisco and the Philippines, a common passage during the war. However, an interesting tract was included by Whitlock, which speaks volumes, in terms of ambivalence: "Luton landed in San Francisco, was bussed across the bay bridge to Travis Air Force Base, near Oakland, where he spent the night at the Visiting Officers Quarters. early the next morning, Peter, along with twenty other officers, was loaded onto a 727 in which now he sat, along with ten dozen other worried, frightened, and confused soldiers, to continue their westward journey. A brief refueling stop in Hawaii, and then they were airborne again, flying in a wide arc over Pearl Harbor, where Peter looked downward could see the submerged hull of the U.S. S. Arizona, and he though sadly of the noble men still entombed within her. Now that had been a war-a war to embrace fervently, a war to get excited about. He wondered why he-or anyone else he knew-wasn't excited about going off to war." Anyone that has experienced the Vietnam ordeal will immediately identify. Luton landed at Bien Hoa Air Base and Whitlock wrote: "Even though it was two in the morning, the heat and humidity swamped Peter like a soaking wet electric blanket turned up high." The day was January 31, 1968, the first day of the Lunar New Year, as well as the infamous "Tet Offensive." As promised, I am not going to spoil the outcome, but this is where this book travels at the speed of light to it's earth shaking outcome. Several key events happen that influence the outcome of this book. Luton goes on an emergency bereavement leave following several months "In Country" after he is informed that his mother without warning drooped dead of a heart attack and through a chance of fate gets caught in the 1968 Democratic Convention riots. "Internal Conflicts" continues as he is both tear gassed and bashed in the head by Mayor Richard Daley's goons,and assailed a "baby killer" by the protesting, unruly crowds. Like most Vietnam Vets that became "adrenalin junkies," as he couldn't resist the call of Vietnam to return, where ironically he felt at home. Luton cried "What are they doing to our country?"
The major events in Vietnam were the meeting of Jack Luton with Captain Todd Gorman and Australian Army Captain Graham Birdsong, both of whom played vital roles in propelling the novel to its shattering, inevitable conclusion with an emotional impact that few readers will be able to ever forget! Gorman knocked America's role of world policeman and showed Luton, given a safe, air conditioned desk job, the realities of the war. Pulled to an evacuation hospital, Gorman showed Luton both KIA and WIA victims, some dismembered, some burned beyond recognition. While Luton sat behind a desk, Gorman explained that every promise and guarantee the Army made to him had been broken. Warning Luton, Gorman exhorted: "If the Army says we are winning this war, head for the bomb shelter. The generals don't want this war to end. It's their profession, their livelihood, their whole reason for being. If peace talks are ever held and the fighting stops, the generals will be out of work. They'll be stuck at the Pentagon, making chains out of paper clips." Luton also saw the false, inaccurate reporting of the Tet Offensive. A complete American route of the enemy, the men with the pens and microphones reported this as a U.S. military defeat, while in reality it was a shattering blow to the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. The final internal conflict was when Luton met a "Digger"(A soldier in the Australian Army) named Captain Birdsong, who albeit inebriated, hit a sensitive nerve in Whitlock by questioning his manhood and calling him a coward. Birdsong sent Luton over the edge by telling him: You should be out in the boondocks with us, mate, mixing it up with Charlie, not pushing a pencil back at your cushy headquarters. Oh sure, you can say, "I'm in Vietnam, but you aren't really, are you? This is just like being in the States, isn't it, with a bit of shelling thrown in from time to time-just enough so that you don't have to feel guilty about collecting your hazardous pay duty. You and your fellow REMF's are more than willing to take the credit and the glory and the medals that will come your way for being in a war zone without actually taking part in the war itself. You're content to stand on the fringe of the battlefield, handing food and ammunition to those of us who are doing the real fighting, just as long as you don't get any of the mud or blood on you, You truly do believe in stopping communism-as long as it's someone else who has to do the actual stopping. Am I right?" I promise what happens next will never leave you and will be read over and over again. If you read one historical novel about the Vietnam War, make it "Internal Conflicts."
"What Good Is Fighting For People When The People You Are Fighting For Hate Your Guts? And By the Way, Welcome to Vietnam!" Flint Whitlock has done come in with a superb historic lesson about many issues in "Internal Conflicts." On the surface, this is a novel about a young, Army officer who while joining the Army in an attempt to discover his manhood by way of wearing "army greens, sexual conquests and love," searches for the meaning of life in the tumultuous 1960's. Although Whitlock throws to the reader a novel of varied themes, i.e. eroticism, romance, sibling rivalry, mortality, murder, war, and peace, his protagonist, a Vietnam bound Officer named Peter, Luton, sums up his personal "Internal Conflict" best in this book with his following lament: "My mother is not really my mother, my brother is not really my brother, my father was not really my father, I am not who I always thought I was." The title chosen by Flintlock is appropriate, as Luton, an awkward, graceless youth matures into adulthood in the shadow of his older, athletically adroit brother Jack. Full of negative self poise and overly sensitive, Peter is forever plagued by self-recrimination, indecision and self doubt. As the reader will discover through what Whitlock deemed "The Incident," Luton's impulsive behavior precipitate negative repercussions that cause self doubt and insecurity that plague him nearly to the end of this story. Yet, the reader need to be forewarned: when it came time for Luton to step to the plate and prove his prowess and fortitude in the face of death, he smashed a grand slam home run. Unfortunately for Luton, his base clearing blast was in an unforgiving place that was not a John Wayne film, devoid of makeup, fake blood, flags and bugles. This was in Vietnam and in the watershed year of this conflict, where he was to ultimately find out that he was deceived by his drill instructors with the following admonition: "The more you sweat in peacetime, the less you bleed in wartime."
The reader needs to be forwarded that it is once in a while a book will come along where the majority of occurrences one reads about can be identified vicariously. I myself experienced identical or similar incidents and experiences that Whitlock's protagonist encountered and experienced. It brought back poignant memories of my youth and my own voyage of self discovery. If the reader of this novel went through the 1960's, the whole scene of Vietnam, the search for manhood, sexual conquest, masculine identity, adoption, sibling rivalry, post traumatic stress syndrome, etc., this book will certainly churn both your head and stomach with emotions perhaps dulled with the passage of time. I did not expect this book to end as violent and abrupt as it did. Being Whitlock's first foray into fiction, I did not even expect this to be anything more than a marginal regurgitation of historical facts coated by a flimsy storyline. Needless to say, this book turned out to be a plot I simply could not put down until the last page was turned, and even then I was shaking my head as to "why?" I will not be a plot spoiler and let on to why I say this. I can promise anyone, man or woman, that there is something in this book that you will identify with and have you thinking about for weeks after you have finished it. One wonders if Whitlock is veiling his own biography through fiction. The writer of almost 10 best selling historical books that effectively convey the emotional and physical aspects of the soldier's experience, Whitlock's past parallels his protagonist. A college graduate in ROTC, Peter Luton, a Chicagoan, tearfully finds out the circumstances of his adoption late in life. Witnessing the death of his friend through a suspicious incident in basic training, Luton underwent a grueling ordeal of learning to be a soldier at Fort Benning, Georgia. Luton spent two years in Germany as an Officer for the Nike Hercules Missile Battery prior to his involuntary deployment to Vietnam at the height of the 1968 "Tet Offensive." His real father and mother perished in a fatal car accident and his adopted father vanished in a downed B-17 Bomber, shot down over Germany's skies during the Second World War.
Despite the fact that this is a novel, very real issues were brought up, particularly of the U.S. military in Germany in this period of time. Luton, trained to watch a radar grid of possible Soviet ballistic incoming missiles, is warned by lieutenant Stiles Van Dellen, a later casualty of Vietnam, the dangers of the Battery Control Center. Showing Luton how to work the radar, Van Dellen instructs the following: "Every so often, we'll see a dozen or so blips in formation heading our way-probably MIG's-but they always turn back before they reach the East and West Germany border." "What happens if they don't turn back?" "Then Pete," Stiles said, the proverbial balloon has just gone up." Peter gulped. World War Three would just be minutes away if ever those advancing blips did not reverse course." Aside from war games, Whitlock showed how the military could easily change one's "Military Occupational Specialty" at whim and even if one had a week left in their tour of duty, re-designate them for combat duty. During the Vietnam era, this was referred to as being "curtailed," although now with Iraq and Afghanistan in the background, it is referred to as "Stop Loss." This amounts to the involuntary extension of a service member's active duty service under the enlistment contract in order to retain them beyond their initial end of term of service date and up to their contractually agreed end of obligated service. It also applies to the cessation of a permanent change of station move for a member still in military service. There has recently even been a major motion picture of this issue. Peter Luton, thinking that he is safe from being called to Vietnam because he is in air-defense and the North Vietnamese had no planes, is corrected once again by Stiles as follows: "Pete, the Army can do whatever it damn well pleases, including sending you or me to anywhere." Yeah, but they guaranteed-" Army guarantees don't mean squat, Pete." In a memoir about Vietnam, written by James A. Daly entitled "Black Prisoner of War: A Conscientious Objector's Vietnam Memoir," Daly, a Jehovah's Witness, joined the Army under the promise of being made a cook and designated a permanent rear echelon job, was deceived, sent to the front lines as part of the 196th Light Infantry Brigade, captured and spent over five years as a North Vietnamese prisoner of war.
Flint Whitlock also included an incident where Peter Luton, on night patrol of his own men, discovered two men having sex. This is significant, considering the 1960's view of homosexuality in the military, the subsequent "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" term policy restricting the U.S. military from efforts to discover or reveal the sexuality of closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring those who are openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual from military service, and it's current repeal. Nevertheless, Luton did meet an Army nurse, Meredith, whom he eventually wed, had a daughter with, and then it happened. His worst fears were realized, as he was shipped to Vietnam, no less on the first day of the "Tet Offensive". Contrary to W. W. II, there was no enthusiasm of going to combat, and unlike any previous conflict the U.S. has ever been involved with, his war chariot was a commercial airplane, a Boeing 727. Given a short leave between Germany and Vietnam to visit his new bride's family and his own in America's Midwest, he was given this little speech by his new father in law: "We either stop Communism over there or we try to stop it when the Russians or Red Chinese parachute in to Milwaukee. That's our choice, Pete. Far as I'm concerned, I'd rather we stopped it over there, in Vietnam. I just want you to know that I'm damn proud that you are going over there." "Well sir, I guess it's my duty. When I joined the Army, I knew that was part of the bargain, he lied. "Well, I'm just proud of you. And my daughter, too, for being an Army nurse, Too many of these long haired hippies are running around, burning their draft cards and American flags and smoking pot, are just spoiled brats, if you ask me. The kids today are as soft as marsh mellows they need to go into the service to toughen them up, and learn some discipline and respect. That's what my generation did. We gave up our jobs and our schooling and our families to serve our country. When they called us up, we all went. There were no protests or demonstrations back then. Draft dodgers were few and far in between. In fact, guys who were underage or were four-F and unfit for service did everything they could to get in. It took almost four, years, but we licked those Japs and Krauts. That's the problem today-nobody's willing to sacrifice. Everybody just wants everything handed to them on a silver platter."
Regardless, the "internal conflicts" of Peter Luton continue. After a two week stay in Milwaukee, Luton flew to Vietnam, via San Francisco and the Philippines, a common passage during the war. However, an interesting tract was included by Whitlock, which speaks volumes, in terms of ambivalence: "Luton landed in San Francisco, was bussed across the bay bridge to Travis Air Force Base, near Oakland, where he spent the night at the Visiting Officers Quarters. early the next morning, Peter, along with twenty other officers, was loaded onto a 727 in which now he sat, along with ten dozen other worried, frightened, and confused soldiers, to continue their westward journey. A brief refueling stop in Hawaii, and then they were airborne again, flying in a wide arc over Pearl Harbor, where Peter looked downward could see the submerged hull of the U.S. S. Arizona, and he though sadly of the noble men still entombed within her. Now that had been a war-a war to embrace fervently, a war to get excited about. He wondered why he-or anyone else he knew-wasn't excited about going off to war." Anyone that has experienced the Vietnam ordeal will immediately identify. Luton landed at Bien Hoa Air Base and Whitlock wrote: "Even though it was two in the morning, the heat and humidity swamped Peter like a soaking wet electric blanket turned up high." The day was January 31, 1968, the first day of the Lunar New Year, as well as the infamous "Tet Offensive." As promised, I am not going to spoil the outcome, but this is where this book travels at the speed of light to it's earth shaking outcome. Several key events happen that influence the outcome of this book. Luton goes on an emergency bereavement leave following several months "In Country" after he is informed that his mother without warning drooped dead of a heart attack and through a chance of fate gets caught in the 1968 Democratic Convention riots. "Internal Conflicts" continues as he is both tear gassed and bashed in the head by Mayor Richard Daley's goons,and assailed a "baby killer" by the protesting, unruly crowds. Like most Vietnam Vets that became "adrenalin junkies," as he couldn't resist the call of Vietnam to return, where ironically he felt at home. Luton cried "What are they doing to our country?"
The major events in Vietnam were the meeting of Jack Luton with Captain Todd Gorman and Australian Army Captain Graham Birdsong, both of whom played vital roles in propelling the novel to its shattering, inevitable conclusion with an emotional impact that few readers will be able to ever forget! Gorman knocked America's role of world policeman and showed Luton, given a safe, air conditioned desk job, the realities of the war. Pulled to an evacuation hospital, Gorman showed Luton both KIA and WIA victims, some dismembered, some burned beyond recognition. While Luton sat behind a desk, Gorman explained that every promise and guarantee the Army made to him had been broken. Warning Luton, Gorman exhorted: "If the Army says we are winning this war, head for the bomb shelter. The generals don't want this war to end. It's their profession, their livelihood, their whole reason for being. If peace talks are ever held and the fighting stops, the generals will be out of work. They'll be stuck at the Pentagon, making chains out of paper clips." Luton also saw the false, inaccurate reporting of the Tet Offensive. A complete American route of the enemy, the men with the pens and microphones reported this as a U.S. military defeat, while in reality it was a shattering blow to the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. The final internal conflict was when Luton met a "Digger"(A soldier in the Australian Army) named Captain Birdsong, who albeit inebriated, hit a sensitive nerve in Whitlock by questioning his manhood and calling him a coward. Birdsong sent Luton over the edge by telling him: You should be out in the boondocks with us, mate, mixing it up with Charlie, not pushing a pencil back at your cushy headquarters. Oh sure, you can say, "I'm in Vietnam, but you aren't really, are you? This is just like being in the States, isn't it, with a bit of shelling thrown in from time to time-just enough so that you don't have to feel guilty about collecting your hazardous pay duty. You and your fellow REMF's are more than willing to take the credit and the glory and the medals that will come your way for being in a war zone without actually taking part in the war itself. You're content to stand on the fringe of the battlefield, handing food and ammunition to those of us who are doing the real fighting, just as long as you don't get any of the mud or blood on you, You truly do believe in stopping communism-as long as it's someone else who has to do the actual stopping. Am I right?" I promise what happens next will never leave you and will be read over and over again. If you read one historical novel about the Vietnam War, make it "Internal Conflicts."
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