Conduct to the Prejudice of Good Order: The Final Years of the Vietnam War

ISBN 10: 0971780137 ISBN 13: 9780971780132

Publisher: Mountain Whispers Audiobooks, 2004

"Conduct to the Prejudice of Good Order" tells the story of low troop moral, high stakes drug deals and the prosecution of ill-fated soldiers caught in the chaos that was Southeast Asia in 1971-72. Through the eyes of Captain Bill Blake of the Judge Advocate General’s Corp. we are taken by surprise as the truth of America’s first television war emerges. What the public saw from the comfort of their living rooms was a cleansed version of how a war is supposed to go: overwhelming success on the battlefields with total victory always in site. What America wasn’t seeing on the evening news amid the enemy body counts was our own high incidence of racism, severe addiction to heroin, and a vendetta-driven form of murder known as ‘fragging’. Through the chaotic tangle of rank and disorder comes the truth about war and those who profess to manage it: war isn’t just Hell, it is also Goodbye.

About the Author:

Dan Dane attended the University of New Mexico in the 1960's during the turmoil of the Civil Rights movement and the beginning of the Vietnam War. He graduated from the University of Arkansas with a law degree in 1969. He would later serve in the Third Brigade of the First Cavalry Division in Vietnam as a U.S. Army JAG officer. He currently lives in Texas.

Ross Ballard II is a practitioner professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies. He has performed on several dramatic audiobooks. He currently lives in Martinsburg, West Virginia.

From AudioFile:

This intelligent and unblinking glimpse of the final years of the Vietnam War is billed as a "JAG CORP" novel, but it's much more. This is the real unvarnished deal. Unlike the glitzy television show "JAG," Army lawyer and draftee Captain William Blake is on the muddy, loud, bloody, and many times, mundane front lines near Bien Hoa, facing endless streams of drug possession charges and AWOL cases. Not a lawyer's paradise. Ross Ballard's youthful, engaging reading reflects Blake's path from idealism to resignation to drama--as he is finally pushed to confront his superiors' apathy in his attempt to exonerate a fellow soldier. The background jungle sounds and ubiquitous helicopters overhead mirror the book's gray realism, while Mike Morningstar's poignant incidental music and final song add further to the heart-wrenching realization that nothing was simple in Vietnam. B.P. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine