Fort Benning Blues - Hardcover

Busby, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0875652387 ISBN 13: 9780875652382

Publisher: TCU Press, 2001

Synopsis

If you've never even been to Southeast Asia, can you be a Vietnam veteran? In a novel that captures the life and times of a generation, Mark Busby takes us on a journey through an era of hippies, the shootings at Kent State University, integration, and Woodstock. Fort Benning Blues tells the story of Vietnam from this side of the ocean.

Drafted in 1969, Jeff Adams faces a war he doesn't understand. While trying to delay the inevitable tour of duty in Vietnam, Adams attends Officer Candidate School in Fort Benning, Georgia, desperately hoping Nixon will achieve “peace with honor” before he graduates. The Army's job is to weed out the “duds,” “turkeys,” and “dummies” in an effort to keep not only the officers but also the men under their command alive in the rice paddies of Vietnam. It doesn't take long for the stress to create casualties.

Lieutenant Rancek, Adams' training officer at OCS, is ready to cut candidates from the program for any perceived weakness. He does this, not for the Army, but because he wants only the best “. . . leading the platoon on my right” when he goes to Vietnam.

Hugh Budwell, one of Adams' roommates, brings the laid-back spirit of California with him to Fort Benning. Tired of practicing estate law, he joins the Army to relieve the boredom he feels pervades his life. About Officer Candidate School, Budwell states, “If I wanted to go through it without any trouble, I'd be wondering about myself.”

Candidate Patrick “Sheriff” Garrett, a black southerner, spends a night with Adams in the low-crawl pit after they both raise Rancek's ire. Expecting racism when he joined the Army, Garrett copes better than most with the rigors of Officer Candidate School.

Busby uses song lyrics, newspaper headlines, and the jargon of the era to bring the sixties and seventies alive again. Henry Kissinger is described as “Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove” and Lieutenant William “Rusty” Calley as “Howdy Doody in uniform.” Of My Lai, Busby says, “At Fort Benning everybody took those actions as a matter of course.”

As America continues to try to comprehend the effects of one of the most transforming eras in our history, Fort Benning Blues adds another perspective to the meaning of being a Vietnam veteran.

About this title

About the Author

Mark Busby is an English professor and Director of the Center for the Study of the Southwest at Texas State University–San Marcos. He is the author of books on Larry McMurtry, Ralph Ellison, Lanford Wilson, and Preston Jones and has edited several books, anthologies and journal articles about the Southwest and its writers. His stories can be found in New Texas Short Stories and Texas Short Stories II. Busby is currently secretary-treasurer of the Texas Institute of Letters and editor of Southwest Literary Review and Texas Books in Review. He completed OCS at Fort Benning in 1970.

From Publishers Weekly

Like his protagonist, Jefferson Bowie Adams II, Busby attended Officer Candidate School in Fort Benning, Ga., in the early 1970s. His first novel presents Vietnam from an alternative perspective, showing that those who didn't actually see action in southeast Asia were still irrevocably affected by the conflict. Although he is personally ambivalent about the war, Adams knows it will break his grandfather's heart if he flees to Canada. He joins OCS as a way to postpone being sent to Vietnam. As an officer candidate, he goes all out to succeed, showing himself to be as tough and gung ho as any of his peers. The candidates are harassed by seemingly sadistic officers, in Adams's case by the brutal First Lieutenant Rancek. As the men endure the rigorous training, contradictions become evident. Absolute obedience and reflexive subservience are required, yet the program is supposed to produce leaders. What Busby has going for him until the final pages is the crystal-clear voice of an open-minded reporter as he chronicles the first weeks of training with an objective eye. Moments of humor and a number of surprises include an account of an afternoon Adams spends with Lt. William "Rusty" Calley of My Lai infamy. Later, a surprisingly human side of Lieutenant Rancek is revealed. The events of the final pages strain credulity as the impartial reporter, affected by Kent State and My Lai, chooses sides. An unnecessary epilogue is a letdown, but Busby still delivers a memorable account of Officer Candidate School in the Vietnam era.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: TCU Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0875652387
• ISBN 13: 9780875652382
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 206