Muddy Jungle Rivers: A river assault boat cox'n's memory journey of his war in Vietnam - Softcover

Wendell Affield

Softcover

ISBN 10: 098470230X ISBN 13: 9780984702305

Publisher: Hawthorn Petal Press, 2012

Synopsis

Muddy Jungle Rivers is a close-up look at life on a gunboat during 1968, the bloodiest year of the Vietnam War. It’s the story of a seven-man crew captained by a volatile pro-war enlisted man. Like Philip Caputo’s "A Rumor Of War," this narrative takes the reader into frustration, rage, terror, death, betrayal, and the search for redemption. Muddy Jungle Rivers has 29 chapters, maps, and photographs. Today’s generation watch their peers returning from combat and cannot understand why their loved ones have changed after being blanched in the cauldron of war. In Muddy Jungle Rivers the reader will glimpse the genesis of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Steve Almond wrote the Foreword for Muddy Jungle Rivers.

About this title

About the Author

It's one thing to write a book; it's another to live it. Wendell Affield never knew his father. His childhood was punctuated by a volatile mother and an unpredictable stepfather. At twelve, he and his siblings were placed in foster homes, his mother committed to a mental hospital. At sixteen, he rode the rails out west and lived in hobo camps. At seventeen, he enlisted in the navy. At twenty, he was wounded in an ambush while driving a river patrol boat in Vietnam and medevaced home. This lifetime of adventure and instability are the foundation for everything he writes. After being diagnosed with PTSD in the 90s, Wendell began exploring writing as a way to process everything he had experienced. He studied the writing craft at Bemidji State University. Today, he speaks to groups across Minnesota about PTSD and leads workshops to show veterans and others how to use writing as a way to move forward from their experiences.

From the Back Cover

When Wendell Affield arrived in Vietnam in February 1968, the Tet Offensive was in full swing. Affield, cox'n on Armor Troop Carrier 112-11 and the rest of River Division 112 operated non-stop. They were subjected to ambushes, snipers, North Vietnam Army artillery, and river mines. Vampire mosquitoes, racism, boredom, and a volatile boat captain strained boat crew morale. On a Sunday afternoon, ATC 112-11, the platoon of army troops on board, and the boat crew were savaged in the opening moments of a Viet Cong Main Force ambush.

"I could speak at length here about the merits of Muddy Jungle Rivers: its eloquence, its emotional generosity, its urgent and haunting prose. But the book's enduring virtue is that it records, with utmost fidelity, the unspeakable horrors of the author himself, as a young man adrift in the moral chaos of war."
From the Foreword:
Steve Almond, author of God Bless America: Stories, and many other works

Edition details

• Publisher: Hawthorn Petal Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 098470230X
• ISBN 13: 9780984702305
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352