my new book quiz.

the first person to answer all the questions correctly will win a swag bag of unbelievable quality.
You will need to be the first to get on Facebook and get a private message to me.

June 11th is the release date for So You Want To Be A Marine. From Solstice Publishing.
here are the questions.
1.  What happened to me when I came face to face with a King Cobra?
2.  How much time did I append in jail?
3.  How many times do I mention Pontiac, Illinois in my book?
4.  To whom am I referring when i mention the song "Charlie on the MTA?
5.  How do I describe the plane after it arrives in San Diego?
6.  What happened to me when I looked the DI in the eyes?
7.  Why do I spell Viet Nam the way I do in the book?
8.  To what use was the quarter size piece of toilet paper put?
9.  What happened with the cockroaches?
10. What did the cigarette test prove?
11. What did we call the guy who threatened to frag me in Viet Nam?
12. What did getting short mean?
14. Why was I picked to go the Headquarters Marine Corps, Washington D.C.?
15. What is the real name of the Bar I call the Purple Eagle?
16. Where did I meet Faye?
17. In what city were we married? Where Were we married?
18. What did our wedding feast consist of?
19. What great bus did I drive the last day of enlistment?
20. Who always said, "Who loves ya, baby"? (trick question, not intended to count in contest but whom ever answers it will get something special.





 

June 11th

The time is now. Get your reservations in, get that credit card out. Yeah, baby. JUNE 11th is the official release date for my new book.
"So You Want To Be A Marine"
What life was really like in the green machine.
Just a few things the recruiter left out.

The Marine Corps immortalized by Hollywood hardly resembles the dysfunctional organization I joined in 1967, just as the Vietnam War was heating up. Incompetence, arrogance, sadism—all were rampant from the top down in an indifferent hierarchy that rewarded obedience over competence and sycophancy over truth-telling.

My four-year tour took me from California’s Camp Pendleton to North Carolina’s Cherry Point, from Subic Bay Naval Air Station on the isle of Luzon to Vietnam’s Chu Lai, where I served on the flight line as a jet engine mechanic. I never saw combat, but I witnessed enough to convince me that, had I to do it all over again, I would take a different path.

SO YOU WANT TO BE A MARINE

here is what to expect from my book out soon from Solstice Publishing

The Marine Corps immortalized by Hollywood hardly resembles the dysfunctional organization I joined in 1967, just as the Vietnam War was heating up. Incompetence, arrogance, sadism—all were rampant from the top down in an indifferent hierarchy that rewarded obedience over competence and sycophancy over truth-telling.

I joined the corps because I had few choices available to me. As the youngest of eleven children, all of us living in poverty in rural Illinois, and as someone who had lived his whole life intimate with deprivation and hardship, I had few paths available to me.

 I was surrounded by characters—outsized individuals with larger-than-life personalities, colorful ticks, and perplexing complexes.

There was the lance corporal from Pittsburg who liked to call himself Pitt. Rail thin, with a neck like a turkey’s to support his oversized head, he owned a crooked set of teeth that had yellowed from tobacco smoke. He had a quirky habit of sprinkling his cigarette ashes into whatever he was drinking at the time and then chugging it down, all in order to attain a more perfect high. Pitt, as I learned during my first night in Vietnam, was all about getting high, even while manning a checkpoint as an MP.

And there was W.B. Greene, a tall, muscular Marine with Sidney Poitier good looks, Cary Grant charm, and a voice that would make James Earl Jones proud. W.B. had a quick wit and skin just the far side of milk chocolate. He boasted a chiseled chin and dark, expressive eyes that could see into your soul and make many a fair maiden weep.

During much of my four-year tour, one tether remained between me and Pontiac, Illinois: Sandy. She stood tall, almost able to look me in the eyes, and had a build any Marine would die for. With auburn hair and green eyes that sparkled like diamonds when she spoke, Sandy had a come-hither smile and a quick wit that I found adorable—in a masochistic way. We’d met my junior year in high school and had been dating ever since, albeit in an on-again, off-again way. We broke up and reunited numerous times before she finally sent me a Dear John letter.

.           From Camp Pendleton in California to Cherry Point in North Carolina, from the Naval Air Station just outside of Memphis, Tennessee, to Chu Lai in Vietnam, the Marine way was the same: hurry up and wait. It wasn’t important to be busy; we merely had to look busy.

Alive and Well

We are nearing the end of our journey. The book cover is done and the re-write is almost complete. Enjoy the cover and when the book comes out, see if you are tough enough to be one of the few the proud