Distant War

Distant War: Recollections of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia

by Marc Phillip Yablonka

A Merriam Press Original Publication
Military Monograph MM27

Specifications

• First Edition (July 2009)
• Paperback: ISBN 978-0-557-08441-8 — $19.95
  • Perfect bound, full-color wrap-around cover
• Hardcover: ISBN 978-0-557-14378-8 — $36.95
  • Blue linen cover with title stamped in gold on spine, full-color dust jacket
  • Note change in ISBN number only for hardcover edition: old ISBN was 978-0-557-08483-8
    
• 258 6 × 9 inch pages
• 67 photos/illustrations

This is a newly-edited compilation of eighteen years of Yablonka’s reportage on American involvement in Indochina and the people affected by America’s connection to that part of the world. After all those years and numerous articles about an indelible mark on American history published in the likes of the U.S. Military’s Stars and Stripes, Army Times, American Veteran, the Weider History Group publication Vietnam Magazine and others, these stories needed a wider audience for the world to know what they suffered, how most survived, and how they overcame adversity.

Distant War: Recollections of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, will be the vehicle to the reader’s understanding of a war and its aftermath that may seem distant now, but what is important is that it will make readers realize—if they haven’t already—that in war, whether in the jungles of Vietnam or the sands of Iraq, in a very real sense, while who wins and who loses is obviously important, what is equally necessary is that good somehow must and shall prevail.

Contents

• Prologue
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Doctors in a War Zone: The Ultimate Training Ground
• Chapter 2: Wounded Four Times and Still Proud: Major Jim Morris
• Chapter 3: A Gold-Plated Mission
• Chapter 4: Indomitable Spirit at the Hanoi Hilton: Vice-Admiral James Bond Stockdale
• Chapter 5: Everything is Okay Now: Nick Ut
• Chapter 6: From AFVN to Wheel of Fortune: Pat Sajak
• Chapter 7: $100, a Leica, and a One-Way Ticket to Saigon: Catherine Leroy
• Chapter 8: Air America: The Truth
• Chapter 9: If the Walls of the Continental Could Talk…
• Chapter 10: When Art and Life Blur: Kieu Chinh
• Chapter 11: Cambodia Revisited
• Chapter 12: Bringing the War Home: Requiem
• Chapter 13: Standing by Their Men: Donut Dollies
• Chapter 14: Q&A Time with Steve Stibbens
• Chapter 15: Lest We Ever Forget: The POWs
• Chapter 16: Chopper Chums Reunite: Pilot Association Remembers Vietnam’s Good Times
• Chapter 17: Heaven Helped Them: Oliver Stone and Le Hy Haislip
• Chapter 18: Back to the Present
• Chapter 19: Canada Just Lost Track of Something: Vietnam Vets From North of the 49th Parallel
• Chapter 20: Dog Tags Take the Long Road Home: David and Kurt Arnold
• Chapter 21: Unfriendly Skies for Air Vietnam
• Chapter 22: So Long Bob: Obit for Bob Hope
• Chapter 23: Burying the Hatchet: Nguyen Ngoc Hung
• Chapter 24: Shadow of War: Cherie Clark
• Chapter 25: A Shepherd in Laos: Bishop Jean Khamse Vithavong
• Chapter 26: Radio Japan Manager is Tuned in to Vietnam: Masako Yuasa
• Chapter 27: Serving with Distinction…on Four Legs! Dogs in Vietnam
• Chapter 28: The Longest Yards: The Mountain People
• Chapter 29: The Long Journey of Bounlieng Philavong
• Chapter 30: Big Trouble in Little Saigon
• Chapter 31: He Hated War but Loved the Work: A Q&A with Allen Cates
• Acknowledgments: Thank You to Magazines and Newspapers

Video Interview
Interview with the author on Eleven Bravo show on the Veterans Network here. The video runs over 26 minutes, the interview with Marc starts at 1:59. Provides insight into how the stories and the final book came about.

Author's Talk at Military Writers Society of America
Three videos of Marc's talk at the 2009 conference.

 
 
 

Interviews

Rod Utech of POW/MIA Radio in Colorado did a live interview with the author on Sunday, 30 August 2009.

The author was interviewed by Dale Throneberry of Veterans Radio Network at the Military Writers Society of America convention in Orlando, Florida, 9-11 October. Marc was interviewed by Dale on the 12 September 2009 program on VRN; to listen to the program, click here; to visit the MWSA web site, click here. Marc was interviewed again by Dale on 26 September, for much of the hour-long program. The complete program can be heard here.

Reviews

Book Review: ‘Forgotten’ war back into focus by James Famera
Published in the Burbank Leader, 15 January 2010
     For those who served their country honorably, the horrors of Vietnam are best left forgotten. But for Burbank freelance journalist Marc Phillip Yablonka, the Vietnam War served as the inspiration for his life’s work. Yablonka’s first book, Distant War: Recollections of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia is an expansive collection of Vietnam-related articles he wrote for various military magazines and newspapers, and quite an interesting read.
     In the prologue, Yablonka admits that he came to the Vietnam War “eight months after it was over.” Yet the war was never more than an earshot away. Like most baby boomers, he grew up in an era when American body counts were broadcast live and in color via the evening news. It was a contentious time in American history, and one that Yablonka saw himself ill prepared for.
     That is until a small film called “The Killing Fields,” based on the New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg’s reportage of the Cambodian War, changed his life. As Yablonka notes of his initial reaction to the film, “it eventually became clear to me that if I had a true purpose in life, it was to be a chronicler of war.”
     One of the rather unlikely figures Yablonka chronicles is that of TV host, and former Armed Forces Radio disc jockey Pat Sajak. Sajak spent 13 months in Vietnam and never saw combat. “There was a war going on,” Sajak said, “and I was playing records and going to restaurants every night. It was a fairly normal life.”
     After a brief stint as a clerk typist, Sajak earned a spot as the morning man for a top-40 radio station based out of Saigon. Much like Robin Williams’ character in the film “Good Morning Vietnam,” Sajak began each broadcast with that now iconic phrase. As Yablonka notes, Sajak looked upon his time spent in Vietnam as the best radio gig he ever had.
     Some of the more interesting stories Yablonka includes are those of people who became historically significant in the war simply by chance. Along the way we meet photographer Nick Ut, who received international acclaim for his 1972 photograph of 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc, more commonly known as “the Napalm Girl.”
     Yablonka recounts how Ut captured the iconic image of the little girl running naked down a village road after being bombed by napalm while he was on assignment in the Cao Dai village of Trang Bang.
     “I had seen napalm before, but never dropped on a village,” Ut recalled.
     The photos Ut shot that day became symbolic of the millions of Vietnamese whose lives were devastated by the war, and earned him the Pulitzer Prize and World Press Photo Award for 1973.
     The war still lingers in the minds of those who lived through it. For Yablonka, the life’s work he set out to complete nearly 30 years ago is on full display in Distant War.
     He approaches each subject with an unquenchable curiosity that could only be the result of a man obsessed. His subjects’ honesty and frankness are beyond commendable, given the circumstances, and we have Yablonka to thank because of it.
     Distant War gives a wonderful insider’s perspective of a war most Americans want to forget, but simply cannot.
     About the writer: James Famera has been reviewing books for more than five years.

Review of Distant War by Karen St. John, Staff Writer, Veterans Today: Military Veterans & Foreign Affairs Journal, can be seen here.

Testimonials

I love your stories. They have so much depth. I just want to reach that kind of impact too. You know me, and that makes me proud.
—Michael D. "Moon" Mullins, author of Vietnam in Verse: Poetry for Beer Drinkers, Vietnam Veteran, Delta 3/7, 199th Light Infantry, '68-'69. Past President, current Vice-President, Military Writers Society of America

Have been reading each chapter of Distant War.  Great job!!  Still have a few to go, but your work is so well done and I would like to do a review on our next Veterans TV Hour segment in a few weeks. I really appreciate how your writing experience and expertise, along with great journalism, makes this book special. A Vietnam combat infantry vet myself, I can't agree more with the other reviews in that it brings many perspectives to that war which are rarely offered. Thanks, Marc!
—Rick Seaman, co-producer, Veterans Network, "online TV for America's Veterans"

Thank you for the copy of your latest book Distant War. It is a distinct break from traditional research and memoirs on previous wars. Your very human and personal approach to the myriad characters was refreshing and interesting. I appreciate your thinking of me and providing this great addition to my personal library. Enclosed is one of my coins. Please accept it in appreciation of your thoughtfulness and for your service in our State Military Reserve.
—William H. Wade II, Major General, Former Adjutant General, California National Guard, and Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Joint Forces Command–NATO Response Force

I got your book, thank you, and am almost finished with it. It's a outstanding read. There is a lot of info in it and interesting facts to top it off.
—Paul Harrington, USAF, ret. Stars and Stripes reporter in Vietnam, and Associated Press photojournalist

Marc Philip Yablonka has written and assembled a darned good book about a long ago war that sometimes gets lost these days in the rumble of more contemporary cannons. In the 40-plus years since I left Vietnam as a Marine Combat Correspondent and an Associated Press war correspondent, I thought I had read everything that could be said about the place I first knew in 1962 as "a dirty little war." I was wrong. Thanks, Marc.
—Steve Stibbens

It is a truism that everything that can be said about Vietnam, Watergate, and that terrible era in our history has been said or written. Marc Yablonka proves this wrong, as he explores those days from odd and untouched angles. He creates an unforgettable portrait of something you thought you knew well, and find you did not know at all.
—Jim Morris, author of War Story

Marc Yablonka captures the nuances and sidelights of Vietnam and the personalities of the war in South East Asia. I spent two tours flying Army helicopters in this conflict and Marc brought out some views that I was not aware of. Combat is not all war stories and he artfully fills in a lot of blank spaces for veterans like me. His writings will help others understand the war better. Yablonka has a skill and it shows in his recent work. Hope there is more to come ...
—LTC (Ret)Tom Lasser, RVN, 1967-68, 1969-70

Kudos on your book. It's a very interesting read, well written and well researched. Glad you righted the wrong done to the Air America guys. Can't believe there was still a Huey lying in the weeds at Cu Chi as late as 1990 [cover photo]. Cu Chi was my first duty station flying with the 116th Assault.
—Richard Jellerson, Storyteller Films

I was reading your book on the plane to Kentucky last month, and it brought tears to my eyes---the Kim Phuc story sent those tears quietly down my cheeks.
—Kenn Miller, via email [Kenn was in Vietnam with the 101st and later wrote Tiger the LURP Dog and Six Silent Men.]

Your book arrived!!! Three cheers, I like the cover—including your pix on the back, good choice and I knew immediately where it was taken! My first visit there was profound for me. Lively great prologue, then Bert took it and looked through the book and read me your acknowledgments—thank you. I was proud to walk the journey with you at the beginning—how proud I am of you and of the book, which I will get back soon. Again, bravo, cheers, and hurrah!
—Noël Riley Fitch, the authorized biographer of Julia Child and an award-winning biographer and historian of expatriate intellectuals in Paris during the first half of the 1900s.

The book arrived today and I just have to say, the covers are spectacular. When I opened the envelope, I saw the back first. The wall section [Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C.] is or is close to, Panel 3 East (Ia Drang), one of significance to my family. The wall always moves me. I want to thank you for signing the book, and your thoughtful comment. I very much appreciate it. It makes the book more special to have your signature! In reading the prologue, I know you wrote from the heart. I promise you that I will give your words their due, and will read the book in its entirety, and I will let you know when the review is set to be posted. Thank you for getting the book to me so quickly! I cannot wait to begin reading it. 
—Karen St. John, via email

Congratulations! Thank you for your love for Vietnam and its people and for being such a passionate journalist. From the moment I opened the book, I couldn't stop, page after page. The names, the faces, the places... Distant War brought back a lot of memories. And thank you for your friendship.
—Kieu Chinh [Kieu Chinh was in the Oliver Stone-produced film Joy Luck Club. She also was in the films Hamburger Hill, The Children of An Lac, Last Flight Out, and in the TV series "M*A*S*H". During the war, she starred in the films A Yank in Vietnam with Marshall Thompson and Operation CIA with Burt Reynolds.



Above photos show the author at a book sale/signing. Photo by Tanya Pham, civilian PAO, ESGR, Southern California.


The Author

Marc Yablonka is a graduate of the Professional Writing School of the University of Southern California.

He served as a Public Affairs Officer (CWO-2) with the 40th Infantry Division Support Brigade and the Installation Support Group, California State Military Reserve, at the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, California, between 2001 and 2008. He also served with the Sar-El unit of the Israeli Defense Forces.

He lives with his wife Cammie and their long-haired orange Tabby named Ruffy in Burbank, California.


Booksellers: This title is now available through Ingram.