Bernard Clancy
About the bloke behind the quill
Welcome to the world of Australian author, playwright and journalist Bernard Clancy. Yep, that’s me, myself and I. It’s a world of real people, living their lives in a whirlpool stirred by the stick of Big Brother (the George Orwell one, I mean). Out of control, mate.
My people are just like you, whether they be in the true stories of my journalism, or factionalised characters in my book "Best We Forget" and my play on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), "Foxholes of the Mind". Intriguing stories, remarkable lives. A good belly-laugh here and there mixed with black humor, love and hate, triumphs and tragedies.
"Best We Forget" has been described by one critic as “Australia’s Catch 22” and others as simply “a bloody good read”. But don’t just take my word for it, see what the critics and my readers say at www.bernardclancy.com.
Go to it ... enjoy the ride.
A bit of history
When I was conscripted into the Australian Army I was a small town bi-weekly newspaper reporter eyeing off the world. Man, I couldn’t wait to get to journalism’s Holy Grail, Fleet St. It was the mid-60s and the Beatles were holdin’ my hand. Adventure beckoned.
When the Army pointed the finger at me in 1967 and said “we’ll have you for two years young fella” I accepted my fate with a touch of pragmatism. It wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind but what the hell, I thought, Vietnam certainly would be an adventure. And I determined there and then not to waste it, to one day write a book about the experience.
"Best We Forget" is that book. It’s gestation period was painfully long. You see, I had a family to feed - not to mention a ball of anger buried deep inside, burning my guts. I worked on Australia's largest daily newspaper, the Sun News Pictorial in Melbourne, Victoria, from 1972 to 1988 firstly as a sports sub editor. In subsequent years I became Design and Production Editor, Supplements Editor, columnist, then Group Foreign Editor. Before I realised it, they’d made me “a Suit”. On the bottom rung of the News Ltd Executive Ladder.
Underwhelmed, I jumped off. I wanted to write books, not memos.
To finance my writing I formed my own public relations company. Unfortunately, it became so damn successful that I still had no time for writing! I consulted to some of Australia’s biggest companies. Fun, but it took its toll. Agent Orange, said one doctor. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, said another. PTSD said the shrink. Vietnam was coming back to bite me on the arse. Bugger this, said I, time to become a beach bum. And write.
And so began my PhD journey on the Art of Beach Bumming. Let me tell you, the life of a bum has a lot to recommend it. For one thing, you get back your life. You also get time to write ... and play golf and go fishing ... enjoy Victoria’s Surf Coast beaches where my partner Christy and I live. Even smell the roses. Meditate. Go to yoga class. Look at life through my third eye. Gee, it can see a helluva lot more than the other two.
"Best We Forget"
Now, let me tell you something about "Best We Forget". The title, of course, is a "steal" from Lest We Forget, the time-honored remembrance of the fallen. Except that when we came home from our war, all we wanted to do was forget the whole, ugly experience. So too did our fellow "warriors", be they Australians, Americans or any of the other nationalities involved in that conflict. The attitude of all, very definitely, was Best we forget.
So the story goes like this: Brian “Donkey” Simpson, a typically naive young Australian thrust into uniform by his country, sets out on the adventure of a lifetime – or so he thinks.
But Vietnam is not what he expected. It’s a horror story. It is a life-threatening journey over which he has no control, an inch away from a bullet at any time.
A typical Army stuff-up throws him into this whirlpool of war, wrenching him first one way then another, like a puppet soldier on a string – but who’s pulling the strings?
"Best We Forget" is the fast-paced story of Simpson and his mates, caught in a war between powerful ideologies which none of them understand.
They walk the fine line of sanity, swinging wildly between love and hate, pathos and humor, patriotism and treason, life and pointless death.
It is the story of the Vietnam veteran you’ve never read before: the souls of Australia’s first “fighting failures” are laid bare; the blunderbuss firepower of American military might blunted by little brown men in car tyre sandals.
It is the story of six-gun totin’ American generals, of drug-crazed Yank grunts grasping kangaroo feathers to keep themselves alive; of corrupt South Vietnamese politicians and seductive Mata Hari spies. It is an out-of-control roller coaster of classic farce, intrigue, double-cross, espionage – and black, black humor ...
Because despite the madness, they still laughed ‘til they died.
What the critics say:
"Best We Forget" is a brilliant parody of the phrase of remembrance. I found this book riveting as it took me on a roller coaster ride on a sea of emotions known to most vets written by a guy who went through it all himself. At times it is a brilliantly funny book, at others gut-wrenching.
It delves very deeply into the hearts and souls of Diggers with short, sharp bayonet-like thrusts and yet one paragraph later there’s a belly laugh.
Simpson becomes involved, through no fault of his own, in some astonishing escapades, from a plot to assassinate the leaders of both North and South Vietnam to forays into the Tu Do Street bars with the irrepressible little Polish-Australian entrepreneur Ned.
The major plot twists and turns through some extraordinary events, and it is these and the people who are involved in them which are the really meaty reading in the novel.
The characters are painted with cinematographic clarity; that is, they seem so real in such an “unreal” celluloid of time. So often I found myself smiling wryly and saying, “yeah, that’s right.”
The novel touches on the subject of rejection of vets in what appears to be a rather cursory fashion. And yet after I’d finished it and was reflecting on its messages, I realised with not a little surprise that it is absolutely central to the book’s raison d’etre.
