Suicide Charlie: A Vietnam War Story

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Suicide Charlie: the bastard infantry company that fought where the combat was bloodiest.


Norman Russell was nineteen, a sportswriter for a small-town newspaper, when he was drafted for the Vietnam War and landed in the army's hottest spot as an infantryman in the 25th Division. Charlie Company, better known as "Suicide Charlie," had earned its nickname. Mole City was their next assignment. A combat patrol base smack in the middle of the ...

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Overview

Suicide Charlie: the bastard infantry company that fought where the combat was bloodiest.


Norman Russell was nineteen, a sportswriter for a small-town newspaper, when he was drafted for the Vietnam War and landed in the army's hottest spot as an infantryman in the 25th Division. Charlie Company, better known as "Suicide Charlie," had earned its nickname. Mole City was their next assignment. A combat patrol base smack in the middle of the enemy's resupply route off the Ho Chi Minh Trail into South Vietnam, Mole City was a sitting duck designed to provoke the NVA forces across the border.


Outmanned and overrun, Charlie Company barely survived the furious onslaught as mortars, rockets, and rocket-propelled grenades rained down, shrapnel exploded all around, and bullets screamed overhead. For Russell, whose own father committed suicide after returning from infantry duty in World War II, it marked his "acquaintance with the Devil" -- and the beginning of a remarkable journey through the despair and depravity of war, the camaraderie that made the horror almost endurable, and the torturous questions that lingered long after his tour of duty in Vietnam.

The affecting autobiography of a small-town sportswriter drafted into Suicide Charlie--the bastard U.S. Army infantry company that fought in the hot zones of Vietnam where the combat was the bloodiest. Kirkus Reviews called it "probing, painful . . . . At times as piercing as a splinter in the soul." Original.

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Editorial Reviews

Joe Collins
Twenty years after its end, the Vietnam War still dominates the consciousness not only of those who served, but also of those who were left behind; and all who lived through that period remain reflective about it. Russell, an infantry veteran during 1968-69, reminisces about all the standard things we've read about and seen in many films. However, his fervor for the subject and his abiding interest in the question why helps this autobiography become a vivid testament to the spirit of soldiers in Vietnam. Russell is a liberal, but he's not doctrinaire. He doesn't pass much judgment on the politics of the war (a couple of references to LBJ's and then Nixon's Vietnam policies are about the extent of his political commentary). What he is, however, is a soldier, and the book is not for the faint-of-heart or the prudish (it "is" about war, after all). Russell peppers his text with historical and literary references that seem forced, but there's no doubting his sincere feelings, especially in a sequence where he tells of how he was given the chance to transfer out of the hellhole that was his infantry life. His decision to decline seems rather surprising until he explains his reasoning--if he was not in that spot, some other poor slob would have had to have taken his place!
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780671522797
  • Publisher: Pocket Books
  • Publication date: 4/1/1995
  • Format: Mass Market Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • Product dimensions: 4.15 (w) x 6.72 (h) x 0.65 (d)

Meet the Author

NORMAN L. RUSSELL is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, and a self-employed writer. He has written and produced a PBS-TV program entitled, Fathers and Sons: Two Generations of American Combat Veterans, which won numerous awards.

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Table of Contents

Getting Acquainted

Code of Silence

Lost in the South

Marching in Rhythm

Riddles

Mole City

The Battle of Mole City

Routine Shit and Santa Claus

Team Sports

The Sweep

Enemies

New Mexico

The Battle of Frontier City

Dear John Letters

The Summer of '69

Apparitions

Songs

Time

Life on the Border

Lessons of Peace

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