The Boy Who Picked the Bullets Up

by Charles Nelson

They were just crew-cut kids, gung-ho recruits in a macho John Wayne war that was killing their humanity. He was Kurt Strom, a big, good-looking southern boy who left the Detroit Tigers farm team to serve as a medic. In the blood-and-guts insanity of jungle warfare, he tended their wounds. In the comaraderie of of combat, he seduced them.

Genres: Gay Fiction, Gay, Fiction, LGBT, Historical Fiction, Queer, Military Fiction

358 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

Reviews

[Carlos Mock · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Boy Who Picked The Bullets Up by Charles Nelson

For those of us who remember the Vietnam conflict, this is a novel that summarizes the tragedy endured by these valiant warriors.

The protagonist is William Kurt Strom. Kurt is a medic - a tall blond, handsome, and gay man. The book is the story of his 13 months tour of duty in that war, from 1966 to 1967.

The novel is narrated from Kurt's first point of view - but the format is a series of letters. To his Mom, his grandmother - grandma De Barrard - we learn the banal things - meals eaten, places visited, and exchanges of gossip about Kurt's family.

Through his cousin Chloe we learn about more of what's going on in the battle. With Chloe, family matters are still at play, but there is a transition into the horrors of the war.

With Arch - Kurt's straight friend - the narration turns darker. Here the casualties of war are described to the fullest detail. Arch does not know that Kurt is gay, so that part of Kurt's life is left out. It becomes clear that Kurt was physically attracted to Arch, but never had the courage to come out to him.

Finally, there's Paul - Kurt's best friend who happens to be gay - who gets the comings and goings of the war. Kurt's talents for seducing heterosexual men and his irresistible urge to use those talents take center stage. Kurt is willing to maintain his sanity by exploiting his fellow marines just like the Army is willing to exploit them. Through Kurt, we see Vietnam and the military as they've never been seen before.

This is a stunning novel of men at war. It was written in a remarkably original voice: it's amusing to see the same scene narrated four different way so as to fit the expectations of the reader they are addressed to. In a way it felt like there was "propaganda" being used, probably the same way The Pentagon did with the American public.

The letters are full of engaging and acute observations on the military, it's sexual attitudes, the catastrophes of war. The narrative is strong and sure - with graphic descriptions of all the atrocities associated with men at war.

The book is a slow read - but an important one. For all the talk these days of going to war with Iran and ISIS - it's good to reflect of how horrible war can be and perhaps think of other alternatives to solve these conflicts.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even without the hot gay sexual exploits of the corpsmen, Marines, and airmen, this would be a great book. It gives a raw, unvarnished depiction of the Vietnam "conflict" from the view of the grunts that fought it. The author uses a "letters from the field" format to show how one event can be depicted in different ways as the protagonist tells the story with or without certain details for consumption by his grandmother, female cousin, best friend, etc. It's no wonder there was confusion about the war's objectives and successes (or lack thereof) by people back home.

The language is racist, sexist, and definitely NOT "politically correct." It does, however, sound like dialog of the times, situation, and people involved in the action.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard book to read at times with the graphic war scenes, but very glad I kept at it.
Loved how it was written in letter form, each person to whom he was writing showed a different side of the narrator...Very well done.

[Garrick Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haven't re-read this book for forty years and decided to revisit it. The memory of the book was its sexual content, but I'd forgotten how much more there was to it. I also became aware of how much our culture has changed. The racism is majorly offensive. However, it was the way military people spoke back then, nearly 60 years ago, and for that, it's true to the times and the situation. It's easy to forget that a few years before this book was written the USA was still a racially segregated nation.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I read this novel for the first time back during the COVID lockdown I was blown away and thought it was funny, moving and generally a brilliant novel of the Vietnam war - but I didn't review it at the time so I need to read it again to confirm what I wanted to say and having recently read and hated 'The Innocent' by Robert Taylor (another 'gay' Vietnam War novel from 1997) I thought the time was now.

'The Boy Who Picked the Bullets Up' will always stand out because it was published in 1981 by a major USA publishing house, William Morrow, as a Vietnam novel first and not a 'gay' novel. It is a brilliant novel about war from the ordinary soldiers perspective. It is an excellent novel about Vietnam, as American soldiers experienced it, but it is not a novel about Vietnam, though unintentionally it reveals why that war was so misguided and it is painfully clear to extrapolate from it to places like Iraq and Afghanistan and see the same mistakes being made again and again.

There is also the problem of racism - now you can say that the book perfectly reflects the cultural milieu of the time of Vietnam and even of the time it was written but I defy anyone not to cringe when they read sentences like the following description of a new recruit:

"...a huge red-eyed black dude who hates white authority and was a ringleader among the 7th Battalion's uppity chocolate bloc..." (p.392)

Uppity chocolate bloc!? That is more then merely language lacking in reflective nuance of a less aware time but the barely concealed racism of an unregenerate White Supremacist. The author's language towards the Vietnamese, whether Southern Allies or Northern enemies, is equally horrendous. That the main character unselfconciously kills a ten year old Vietnamese boy when he is separated from his patrol as a way of preserving his life is one of the most appalling things I have ever read.

Did I not notice all this the first time round? Yes but I was dazzled by the novel's brilliance - epistolary novels are not easy and are not my thing but 'TBWPTBU' is an outstanding example of the genre and an encouragement to read more epistolary novels. On reading it again the quite appalling racial epithets and cliches are impossible to avoid. I could have supplied many other shocking examples. But it does explain why the novel has never been republished because although you could write about an 'uppity chocolate bloc' in 1981 it was impossible long before the end of the 1980s.

The pity is that it is a great novel about war and soldiering and about a 'gay' soldier but it is not so much trapped by its time as by its author prejudices.

I have given it three stars because I am split - the racism is appalling but there are tremendously good things in it but I couldn't recommend it, particularly to any reader younger then me without a serious health warning.

Finally did you know the UK government tried to ban this book? Well read on:

This book was one of many that were seized in 1984 from the first gay bookshop in London, or anywhere in the UK, Gay's The Word as part of a policy of intimidation against 'uppity' gays and I am posting information on this event against many of the books seized by the police.

This is a history that should not be forgotten.

The Boy Who picked the Bullets Up and the 1984 attempt to destroy 'Gay's The Word' the UK's first gay bookshop:

This novel was one of many 'imported' gay books which were at the centre of an infamous attempt to push UK gays back into the closet by the conservative government of Margaret Thatcher in 1984. Amazingly this event, important not only for gays but civil liberties in the UK, does not have any kind of Wikipedia entry. Because of this lack I have assembled links to a number of sites which anyone interested in free speech should read. If we don't remember our history we will be condemned to repeat it.

The genesis of the prosecution of 'Gays The Word' was the anger of homophobes to books like 'The Milkman's On His Way' by David Rees which were written for young people and presented being gay as ordinary and nothing to get your-knickers-in-a-twist over. Unfortunately there was no way to ban the offending books because censorship of literature had been laughed out of court at the 'Lady Chatterley Trial' nearly twenty years earlier. But Customs and Excise did have the ability to seize and forbid the import of 'foreign' books, those not published in the UK. As most 'gay' books came from abroad, specifically the USA, this anomaly was the basis for the raid on Gays The Word and the seizure of large amounts of stock. The intention was that the legal costs, plus the disruption to the business, would sink this small independent bookshop long before it came to trial. That it didn't is testimony to the resilience of Gay's The Word, the gay community and all those who supported them.

The best, not perfect, but only, guide to the event is at:

https://www.gayinthe80s.com/2012/10/1...

There follows a series of links to the event connected with an exhibition at the University of London:

The background:

https://www.london.ac.uk/news-events/...

The 142 books seized:

https://exhibitions.london.ac.uk/s/se...

The history of the prosecution:

https://www.london.ac.uk/news-events/...

The fight to clarify the law after the prosecution was dropped:

https://www.london.ac.uk/news-events/...

[Aricia Gavriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whenever I reread this novel (or parts of it; you can read a few pages here and there, jump ahead, turn around, or leave it) I still can't believe it was published about 37 YEARS ago by a mainstream publisher. It was done in 1981 by Avon, and re-re-re-reprinted. I think I have a 10th edition paperback.

This one is diarist's dream. It's told journal-style, in the form of letters to a variety of people. The whole thing revolves around Kurt Strom, a young gay guy from Detroit and parts southeast, who enlisted in the US Army to go to Vietnam as a medic. It would have been a hell of a book, even if Kurt wasn't gay.

But he is, and the book is amazing. It's not just gay, it's very gay. It's explicit, never pulls punches, says it all ... in 1981, in the mainstream press. I don't know how writer Charles Nelson and/or the publishers got away with it. But I'm glad they did.

There's an ultimate novel for every war. Or maybe for the whole "genre" of war. You can name books like THE CRUEL SEA, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, RED BADGE OF COURAGE and so on. The "ultimate" novels are not stories about adventure, heroics and glory. They're usually about the evils of war. Or at least they tell the story of the people, not the action, and what it costs human beings to do the things that look heroic and glorious in the newspapers.

If we were talking about movies, I'd name GALLIPOLI right here. (It's actually been called a gay movie, but the jury is still out on that score. Watch it yourself, make up your own mind.) But we're talking books. And there's just not that many about gays in war. (I'll be reviewing and recommending a couple in weeks to come.)

THE BOY... is also close to unique because it's set in the Vietnam War. Everything else I know is set in WWI and II. Here's where it crosses over a line from "good" to "great." Because it not only tells the story of a gay guy in the Army, in the field, under fire ... it also tells the story of real people in the Vietnam war.

It's a fantastic book if you're in the mood for something different. Also funny and moving at times. You'll learn much about war in general, and the Vietnam war in particular. The gay content has such a "real" feeling about it, this could actually be a problem for some readers.

Loads of readers of gay books are women, and their preference is often (but not always) for a sort of soft-edge fiction that's written by a lot of gay writers (male and female). THE BOY... doesn't have this soft-edge romantic approach. It's a slice of life. In fact, it's a slice of life that's still bleeding. Charles Nelson tells a guy's story, from a guy's POV, in a guy's language. The realism is 120%. So, if your favorite gay read is something more like Mike Seabrook or Chris Hunt, you might find THE BOY... too raw.

But even if you find it too raw, try to read it anyway, because I think of it as a milestone. You may not end up loving it, but you're not likely to ever forget it. And that's another mark of a really great novel. Highly Recommended. AG's rating: 5 out of 5.

[Amanda Clay · Rating 2 out of 5]

By Charles Nelson (Not Reilly, I assume. Though I could be wrong. Wouldn't that be awesome?!)

I first encountered this book my senior year in high school (1986/87, in case you care). A girl I would later make out with in the auditorium during play rehearsal brought it to our English class and we read the naughty bits under the desk. I was curious to read the whole book, but it wasn't until 20+ years later that I found another copy and dug in eagerly.

On one level, this book is really good. It's a fairly realistic book about being in the shit(if my dad's tales of 'Nam are anything to go by), and paints quite a picture of a gay soldier's experiences both in combat action and action of other kinds (no romance that I recall). Our hero, Kurt Strom, is a medic with a variety of postings, so his tales of hotness and heroism are gritty and gripping, and the atmosphere of the war and the jungle are well conveyed.

On another level, though, I found the book to be problematic. For one thing, it's one of the absolute most racist books I've ever read. Most of these Avon paperbacks had some level of casual racism, if only in the complete absence of characters of color (though one book which I'll post about eventually, does contain the amazing line of protagonist self-defense "I'm not racist! I love my housekeeper!") But this book is actively hateful. It could be passed off as part of the character if every single white character weren't racist, and the very few black characters weren't portrayed as stupid and useless. So I had a bit of trouble there.

The other bit of trouble was the number of times Kurt molests his unconscious patients. He gets plenty of action, so I don't think it can be written off as desperation. It's just creepy and kinda reprehensible.

Still, if you can overlook these aspects, the book is a pretty interesting read. I suspect there's more than a little actual experience brought by the author, which gives it some real tension and excellent atmosphere. And it broke the ice between me and Kim, and led to my getting lucky in the darkened balcony. For Oklahoma in the 80s, that's a powerful book indeed.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written as a collection of letters from the main character, it's an interesting book. The view we take of Kurt depends considerably on who he's addressing as what he reports is very much tailored to the recipient of his letters. Yet he has a coherent, if fractured, character that comes through from the shards of experience he shares. It's a brutally honest bulletin-from-the-front description of the destruction (personal and political) that was the war in Viet Nam, with pronounced echos of Heart of Darkness. As real-feeling a war novel as I've read. At times hilarious, at times painful to read.

It's easy to be seduced into thinking that this simply a chronicle of sexual romp through VietNam. A prurient reader, will, of course, see that. But Kurt - our main character and narrator - is not simply a sexual animal, but a sexual animal with a brain. There is the what, but also the why. Through Kurt's analysis of why he does what he does we get a rather subtle analysis of masculinity.

I think it's also helpful to realise going in that Kurt will wax sentimental about masculinity, but not about the men he encounters.

Since it's written from the point of view of a white, southern enlisted soldier in 1966-67, the reader must be prepared for attitudes (racism, sexism, etc.) which we might find abhorrent forty years later. Yet those of us who remember that period, will, if we admit it to ourselves, recognise Kurt's less progressive attitudes as perfectly normal and unremarkable. To expect liberation to flow from his lips would be absurd. Yet his character is revolutionary in a way: while he completely internalises the oppression of gayness (a la mid-60s), he deconstructs the heterosexuality of the time by being more masculine than the heterosexuals he encounters.

[Sean Meriwether · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has often been compared to M*A*S*H, though it only has 2 things in common, medicine and war; the comparison is tenuous at best. The novel is relayed in a series of letters from the protagonist, Kurt Strom, a former baseball player who has decided to become a nurse in the Army during the Vietnam conflict. What is most inventive in the novel is that Kurt is a different person to each of his readers: stubborn and valiant grandson to his grandmother (Mom), a fighter and family gossiper to his cousin, Chloe, a good buddy to his friend, Arch, and a big time whore with Paul. To all of these people he is being honest about who he is to them, but to none of them does he reveal the real Kurt. Only the reader gets to put all the pieces together to build a picture of the man over time. Throughout his one-sided conversations, we get the lowdown on his complex family life, the mismanagement of the war with a special focus on bad sergeants, messy medical details (now I know what to do if a leech crawls up my urethra) and lots of man-on-man sex. I found myself looking forward to his letters to Paul, which often felt the most honest, but overall the concept wears thin and the letters often read more like a novel made up of letters than real letters to real people. However, there is still plenty here to enjoy if you can tolerate all the racial slurs about blacks and the Vietnamese. Although this book is out of print, I learned about it in Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered and was able to get a used copy online.

[Josiah Patterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I began, I was not quite sure what to expect--mostly perhaps a tale of unabashed sexual conquests of a young medic in Vietnam, circa 1967. But there were moments here, of real fear, of real loneliness. Moments that branched out of one man's determination to leave his home and be someone on the other side of the world. Though to be honest, I was not convinced, could not believe in Kurt's variegated honesties--revealing different sides of himself to his friends and loved ones back home. Yes, I see it as the analogy of multiple closets of the gay man... being out and hidden all at the same time, to different faces in different places. But, how those around him see only the unfortunate glimpses of the man he would show to them. I wonder distinctly about the end of this story too--when the promiscuity and seeking of pleaseure all turns tables to reveal the death of comrades and the loss of innocence. War has that affect I suppose. However, in the end Kurt returns to the States after the trauma and loss, but then suddenly he hasn't changed. He speaks the same, acts the same, feels no different. It was as if time had passed, but he had not aged one moment, not matured or remolded himself in any way. That was the largest disappointment for me. So, though the novel was willful and bearing, I'm afraid I was not moved.

[Librisdraconis · Rating 2 out of 5]

ILLed.
Decided to read this book because my mother knew the author and I was curious. I was first interested after reading The Things They Carried in high school, inquired as to the copy of this that was presumably floating around the house. It was suggested I wait and read it when I was older, which was very atypical, hence the curiousity.

Did not finish reading it due to dislike of main character. A personal quirk, but I can't read books where I actively dislike the main character (see also: Twilight). Might be worth trying again in a few years.

I can see where it would be of interest as a gay narrative or a Veitnam War narrative.

[Karl Kraus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this one several years ago in a used bookstore. It was shelved in the Gay/Lesbian section, which makes sense, I guess, although it would've made at least as much sense to have shelved it in a Vietnam War section -- if the store had had one. For the series of letters that constitutes this novel can be divided into four correspondents, only one of whom is gay, a friend of the first-person letter writer Kurt named Paul. The other three are Kurt's grandmother, a fellow former Minor League Baseball player named Arch, and a female friend (but apparently not quite girlfriend) named Chloe, to none of whom he divulges his sexual identity. (This is also true of the couple of letters Kurt writes to a fifth correspondent, his sister.) The great fascination, wouldn't you know, subsists in how Kurt relates the same events to different letter recipients; and the lasting impression is one of male camaraderie tempered and blossoming under fire, which Kurt/Nelson relates often mercilessly and sometimes even eloquently.

Kurt himself is no angel, and I suppose one should laud the author's honesty in making him a person who isn't entirely (or even essentially?) good. As a sort-of-genteel Southern boy he's hardly a stranger to racial slurs, although he at least tends to relate to his fellow Black grunt as a fellow human being. Kurt and his fellows are also capable of those everyday war crimes that are part of warfare, especially when dealing with a group of people they all regard as inferiors. Finally, Kurt is also something of a sexual predator, having blackmailed a straight man into sex even before being shipped off to 'Nam, yet capable of great tenderness with some of his brothers-in-arms. From what I gather from commentary about this novel's sequel, Kurt's postwar "development" is more or less exclusively a matter of his tendency to wheedle, blackmail, or force straight guys into having sex with him; I'll have to pick up a copy of the sequel to determine whether it's really as bad as everyone says.

Don't read this as a novel; there's no real development, no climax, no falling action. Toward the end the sister of one of the grunts shows up (against regulations, of course), but this does little to problematize the sexuality issues. But maybe that's the point, war being senseless and all, so why expect sense, logic, structure? (We're told that the book is at least in part autobiographical, so one's ears would be justified in hearing somewhat of a ring of truth -- although I must confess that this hardly puts Charles Nelson on a list of authors I'd like to meet.) In the end, Kurt is injured, then injured again while in a helicopter crew attempting a rescue mission, and sent home -- the last letter is almost hallucinatory in effect, making me wish for more writing in that state of mind.

Well worth the read, and not primarily for the juicy bits.

[Ron Kerrigan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two and a half stars: The writing is clever and witty, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Taking the form of letters written to a couple of male friends, a female cousin, his mother and his grandmother, they reek of "aren't I clever?"-ness and some are amusing. Maybe reading them over the year long period they are written in would be better instead of many pages of them at a sitting. I thought they got old after a while and gave up after a third of the 350 pages.

[JamesK · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute classic that's worth seeking out. Had it been a straight novel, it and its sequel would unquestionably have been made into a major all-star movie. It makes me recall the remarkable blog-diary GeekSlut.org, which was written by a gay vet with AIDS, and was tough and sinewy and unforgiving and utterly memorable. Like that blog, this novel isn't for sooks and snowflakes, or those who haven't truly lived, or don't wish to know what it's like to do so.

[S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first gay themed novel. It is very violent and the story is narrated by gay protagonist.

[sedge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Epistolary and vivid, pretty over-the-top, and interesting.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this as a young teen.