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WARBIRD FORUM > DANIEL FORD'S BOOKS > ONLY WAR


THE ONLY WAR WE'VE GOT: EARLY DAYS IN SOUTH VIETNAM

"In The Only War We've Got, you'll meet the men and women -- soldiers and
reporters, foreigners and locals, heroes and fools -- who populated South
Vietnam in the early years of what turned into the longest and most bitter war
in American history (until the 21st century, anyhow!). These dispatches were
written on a Hermes portable typewriter in spare moments between one adventure
and the next. It's impossible not to read them with a sense of dread for an
American enterprise that began with such good intentions, and that turned out so
badly." (Annals of Vietnam)

In the spring of 1964, I took the $2,500 advance for Now Comes Theodora and
bought a ticket to Saigon. (Advances were larger then, and tickets more
expensive.) I rode through a mangrove swamp with the armored cavalry, walked to
the Gulf of Siam with the Rangers, flew with American helicopter and flare-ship
crews, and went on a search-and-destroy mission with a montagnard Strike Force.
Though intended for publication, my journal of those months was made old news by
the larger war launched by President Johnson that fall.

So I used the experience as grist for a black novel, Incident at Muc Wa, which
became the Burt Lancaster classic, Go Tell the Spartans. Then, thirty-some years
later, I got out those typewritten dispatches and read them for the first time.
I was amazed at how well they stood up, so I decided to put them in print, with
some of the photos I had taken, as a sort of freeze-frame of how the war stood
on the eve of LBJ's escalation of it. The book was published as a quality
paperback by iUniverse in May 2001, and an updated version by Warbird Books in
2012, in print and digital editions.

GET THE PAPERBACK

The paperback is 6x9 inches, 170 pages, with black-white photos, notes and
bibliography. It sells for $12.95 in the US plus shipping.
Amazon USA - other Amazon stores
Barnes & Noble - the Book Depository (cheap shipping worldwide)

Or I'll send a signed copy by Media Mail to your US mail address. You can also
pay by check. Finally, you may be able to get it through your local bookstore
using the ISBN code 978-1479194728, though there's likely to be a surcharge.

GET THE E-BOOK

The digital edition sells for $5.95 in the US ($1.99 on Amazon.com if you buy
the print edition). You can get it from these e-tailers:
Amazon USA - other Amazon stores
Apple iBooks - Barnes & Noble - Kobo - Google
other online stores and libraries

SERGEANT SINDLEDECKER

Here's the half-title page, showing Sergeant Sindledecker, a fine "old" soldier.
A helicopter put me down in a village through which the Vietnamese Rangers were
sweeping; I trotted along until I found an Anglo-looking type to whom I could
attach myself. At first I had so much trouble understanding his North Carolina
accent that I wondered if he wasn't perhaps a French soldier who'd stayed behind
and cast his lot with the ARVN.





After the book was published, the sergeant's daughter spotted this page on the
web and wrote me about her dad, who'd quit the service in order to bring up his
children after a divorce. I sent her the original. I love these meetings that
the internet makes possible!

Question? Comment? Newsletter? Send me an email. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford





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