The Odyssey of Echo Company

by Doug Stanton

  Stan Parker, Tom Soals, Anne Stanton, and I are indebted to Mr. Vo Van Sinh in Trung Hoa, Vietnam, for graciously offering his home and his memories as a Viet Cong soldier, when our serendipitous meeting transformed this journey into a true homecoming. As well, Mr. Vo Thanh Tuat, of Danang, recounted his life as an officer in the North Vietnamese Army, beginning with his country’s fight against the French at Dien Bien Phu. Facilitating these meetings were the irrepressible Bill Ervin and Nguyen Thi Tuyet Anh of Bamboo Moon Travel in Danang, whose professionalism and bonhomie made our road trip from Saigon to Hanoi a rich and enlightening experience. Mike Sieberg in Saigon and George Burchett in Hanoi helped us see the undertow that the “American War” still presses upon their adopted country. George Burchett recounted his father, author Wilfred Burchett’s early excursions with Ho Chi Minh.

  Other people also touched by the war offered their support. I want to thank Anna Parker for speaking with me about her life with Stan Parker, and Maureen Bell Osborn for sharing her insight about Stan Parker after his return from Vietnam, particularly about the day he retrieved his high school varsity jacket. Every soldier needs someone as caring as “Ma” Mickey Rinker, who mailed cookies and news of home from California to dozens of men in Echo Company, who eagerly wrote back. Thank you, Ma, for sharing these letters. Lastly, Thom Nolan shared his memory of his hometown neighbor Darryl Lintner, whose death, like Charlie Pyle’s, transformed the platoon.

  I’d like to thank the 101st Airborne Division Association for welcoming me at its annual reunion, where I interviewed Ron Kuvic. In the course of writing, I was fortunate to meet Jonathan Shay, whose landmark works Odysseus in America and Achilles in Vietnam plumb the deep channel that can be a veteran’s troubled road home. Over dinner, Jan Scruggs recounted his inspirational work to bring to life the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. These meetings affirmed that the war in Vietnam is with us today as one of America’s unfinished epic narratives, a period of upheaval still in search of conclusion.

  Thank you as well to Phil Caputo, Karl Marlantes, Sebastian Junger, Brian Castner, Brian Turner, David Finkel, Benjamin Busch, Hampton Sides, and Michael Paterniti for their presence at the National Writers Series, where some of the ideas animating this book were discussed. John Laurence offered key comments at an important moment. Some are old friends, others new acquaintances; all are exemplars nonpareil of a writer’s task, which might be, to paraphrase T. S. Eliot, “to throw the nerves in patterns on a screen.”

  To others: Our friends Grant and Paulette Parsons have made life better. John and Christie Bacon provided much appreciated encouragement. Sid Van Slyke and Lloyd Phillips help keep home fires burning, and Marina Call and Cindy Weaver keep the engines running at the National Writers Series. A highly caffeinated thank-you to Jeff and Misha Neidorfler at Morsels, along with their staff, Luke Norris, Ingrid Messing, Tony Pasquino, Dalton Cooper, Connor Steinbauer, and Aleshia Oosterhart; and to Missy and Sean Kickbush and their Brew crew—Patrick Tesner, Jeremiah Burnett, and Corie Wickham—where I wrote parts of this book. Thanks as well to Amy Reynolds and staff at Horizon Books; and to Dave Denison and Jeff Libman at Amical.

  Thank you to Sloan Harris and Heather Karpas at ICM Partners for keeping this writer on track. Sloan is the loyal agent and friend every writer and every book needs, and whose support and understanding of story and process have kept this project moving. In film and TV, I am indebted to Ron Bernstein and James Robins Early at ICM Partners, and Ron West at Thruline Entertainment for their continued support of my books and screenwriting. Thank you to Jerry Bruckheimer, Chad Oman, and Melissa Reid for your belief in Horse Soldiers. To Mark Gordon, thank you for keeping the story alive.

  I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Scribner, my publisher, and to Colin Harrison, its editor in chief. I repeat: Colin is amazing. He read a book proposal about a war few had wanted to remember and believed in the story and my telling of it. Thank you, Colin, for your patience and ideas, which shifted this book’s shape, my perception of it, and made both better. I remain grateful. Likewise, I’m very appreciative of Sarah Goldberg’s editorial and organizational brilliance. Thank you!

  I also want to thank Susan Moldow, Roz Lippel, and publisher Nan Graham for their support and care of my books and writing. I’m very, very lucky to be in their company. I’m also grateful to Brian Belfiglio, Katherine Monaghan, Kara Watson, Ashley Gilliam, and Lauren Lavelle in Scribner’s publicity department, for their tirelessness in getting books out into the world, where they can be heard and read. Thank you as well to Jeff Umbro of Umbro Media and Jason Bean of JBean Media. Without you, it’d be awfully quiet out there. A huge thank you also to Kathleen Rizzo and Elisa Rivlin for your edit and counsel, and to Erich Hobbing for his fabulous book design.

  To my parents, Bonnie and Derald Stanton, and Deb and Tony Demin, my sister and brother-in-law, and their children, Genessa and Wylie, thank you for your support, good cheer, love. Tony, you are a photographer whose pictures are always a complete surprise yet seem inevitable. Thank you for your stunning images of our trip in Vietnam.

  To my family. First and last, there is Anne.

  She made the journey of this project every step of the way, both across Vietnam and across these pages, managing at the same time two jobs of her own. My gratitude to her is endless, my admiration boundless. Who knew a long-ago pickup truck ride to Montana, during which I tried to impress you by reading James Wright and Yeats poems, would lead us to Vietnam, and to here, to our children, John, Katherine, and William August McCoy Stanton?

  To you four: I wish you adventure and the knowledge you are loved unconditionally, and that home is never far. All of you lived this story over many dinner conversations and during many silences of my absences.

  I cannot end without saying this: Welcome home, everyone.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  © TONY DEMIN

  Doug Stanton is the author of the New York Times bestsellers In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors and Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan, which is the basis for a Jerry Bruckheimer–produced movie by the same name, starring Chris Hemsworth and Michael Shannon, to be released by Warner Bros. in 2018. Stanton is a founder of the National Writers Series, a year-round book festival, and lives in his hometown of Traverse City, Michigan, with his wife, Anne Stanton, and their three children, John, Katherine, and Will. He attended Hampshire College and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Times Book Review, Time, the Washington Post, Men’s Journal, the Daily Beast, and Newsweek, and in Esquire and Outside, where he has been a contributing editor.

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  ALSO BY DOUG STANTON

  Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan

  In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors

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