Gripping Vietnam novel unveils the true reality of war

RG Belsky, Tribune News Service

“The War You’ve Always Wanted” is a gripping, gritty Vietnam novel that is all about the reality of war — not the myth. There are no John Wayne-like heroes in this book. Instead, we see an idealistic young man caught up in the closing months of the Vietnam War during the early ‘70s who is struggling to help the people there survive and at the same time get out alive himself too. Pat Dolan grew up idolizing his father who came back from World War II with medals, pictures and memories that made it all seem like a great adventure to his son. But, when he enlists in the Army and goes to Vietnam — where he eventually becomes an Army combat correspondent, Dolan finds out that this war is somehow completely different than he expected.

Full disclosure here, I am a Vietnam veteran myself so I can probably identify even better than most readers to author Mike McLaughlin’s stark descriptions of life in Vietnam for American soldiers by 1971-72 after years of unsuccessful warfare that began all the way back in 1965. The theme for this book — and the title — is set early on when the 19-year-old Dolan shows up at an Army recruiting center to enlist and passes a young woman protester holding up an anti-war sign, depicting her son’s gravestone at Arlington cemetery. Throughout the story, Dolan hears a phrase repeated by other veterans: “It’s the war you’ve always wanted.” Maybe it was true once, when American forces first arrived in force during the 60s, but now seven years later when Dolan joins the war, it’s clear that it’s only a matter of time before the American troops leave and then South Vietnam will be overrun by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong.

Dolan is a smart guy, and he wants to do the right thing for as long as he is in Vietnam. Okay, he’s not educated smart, he didn’t go to college. But he loves to read and to write (he wrote a series of eloquent letters to the editor for Boston newspapers before he joined the Army). And, after a few months with an infantry outfit, the military brass discovers his writing talent and assign him a job as a war correspondent. Pat Dolan is now a military journalist. He learns the tough state of things in this war quickly in an initial exchange he has with the officer in charge of the military newsroom where he is now working. “How many US troops were here two years ago?” the officer asks him.

“About half a million, Chief.”

“Five hundred and forty-nine thousand…As of this morning, that number was one hundred and seventy-eight thousand. That’s less than a third of what it was in ’69. It means that whether they carried rifles, drove forklifts, or scrambled eggs, two out of every three men are now gone. Tell me what this means to the Vietnamese.”

“It’s bad, Chief.”

“You are correct, son. On average, one man leaves this country every five minutes, give or take, and that pace is accelerating. I emphasize the word ‘average.’ There have been days when a thousand men simply got on planes or ships and left.”

At first, the job of being an Army combat correspondent is more boring than dangerous — as he writes countless articles and covers event after event for his military bosses without ever really seeing any serious combat or even firing his rifle. Pretty soon his fear of dying in Vietnam before his tour of duty ends is not so terrifying, and he falls into a comfortable rhythm of doing his job. It’s not the war he expected, but nothing bad really ever happens to him. And then suddenly everything changes in a blinding twist of fate where Pat Dolan learns the true horror about war and the pain and death it inflicts on everyone involved. One of the best things about this book is the detailed descriptions by author McLaughlin of the Vietnam surrounding Pat Dolan during this era at the end of the war.

At least three of the locations written about — Saigon, Quy Nhon and Cam Rahn Bay — are places I have been during my own term of Army service. And I also experienced many of the same things Dolan did in Vietnam such as the unbearable heat, mosquitoes carrying malaria, distrust from the local populace and fear as you counted the days until you went home. There have been many Vietnam novels written over the years, but The War You’ve Always Wanted is the real deal!