Collected Stories

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The nine Myrmidon stories here are of young men drafted into military Service and assigned to an infantry company, in a combat zone, and once there to fight to the death if need be. They are glimpses of little people trapped in a huge conflagration; moreover, they are descriptions of the kinds of things that can and do go wrong in war, any war but especially one in which the troops are given no clear reason as to why they are to kill or be killed. While there were many stories of true heroism that came out of the war in Vietnam, those examples of self-sacrifice are, in a way, clouded, by an overall sense that none of it should ever have been allowed to happen. If there was any Glory to be had there it was on the side of the Vietnamese people in defense of their homeland. They were written not because I’m a glass-half-full type but, rather, as a kind of pray, a cry, a hope that this kind of thing - our nation’s propensity for wildly and recklessly careening around the world, guns blazing - may never happen again. They are intended as a warning to anyone entering military service to be made aware that, when it comes to war, there is no such thing as a neat surgical strike or a cake walk. It’s a ragged, messy, bloody affair where, even with the best of intentions, everyone suffers, especially the little people .