Vietnam War Lit and Its Authors Quiz

Answer: A.R. Flowers

In "De MoJo Blues," Flowers relied upon his belief in hoodoo, love of blues music, and early years growing up in Memphis to tell the fictional story of three black soldiers returning from Vietnam. He also wrote "Another Good Loving Blues."
Webb was a UPI reporter captured and held for three weeks by the North Vietnamese in 1971 in Cambodia. Del Vecchio and Johnson wrote fictional books, respectively, "The 13th Valley" and "Tree of Smoke."

Answer: Neil Sheehan

Sheehan, Schanberg and Halberstam were all war correspondents for the New York Times, have won Pulitzers for the non-fiction work and/or reporting, and carved for themselves illustrious careers and the homage of several decades of journalism students. Jurate Kazickas was a female correspondent in Vietnam and based her book, "These Hills Called Khe Sanh," on her experiences patrolling with soldiers through the battlegrounds and mountains on the Cambodian border.

She became a reporter working in both Washington and New York, and contributed to "War Torn," a collection of essays by nine women who had worked as correspondents in Vietnam.

Answer: Martha Gellhorn

Gellhorn, who wrote "Vietnam: A Different Kind of War," was dismissive of the younger generation of war correspondents who "reported from their typewriters in Siagon" while not going into the villages and battle zones. The third wife of Ernest Hemingway, Gellhorn has been recognized as one of the five greatest war correspondents of the 20th century. Ailing and blind at the age of 89, she took her own life in 1998. Palmer was 22 when she went to Vietnam to cover the War.

She became a TV producer and researched and compiled the remembrances of those who had left notes and gifts for loved ones at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, "Shrapnel In the Heart." Mariano adopted two Vietnamese orphans, became a reporter for "The Washington Post", and, like Palmer, participated in writing the 2002 recollections of women correspondents who had covered the Vietnam War, "War Torn." Hull was the first woman to be accredited as a war correspondent by the War Department and reported on both WWI and WWII.

Answer: David Halberstam

Halberstam began writing "One Very Hot Day" in 1966, although he is largely known for his non-fiction.
Vann was the US Army officer who was the subject of Neil Sheehan's non-fictional "A Bright Shining Lie." Caputo's "A Rumor of War" was based upon his experiences as a Marine Lieutenant. After becoming a war correspondent for "The Chicago Tribune", he returned to Vietnam in 1975 to report on the end of the war and Vietnam's fall to Communism.

Answer: Ron Kovic

Kovic wrote "Born on the Fourth of July" in a cathartic, two-month period in 1974. It was turned into an Oliver Stone movie starring Tom Cruise, Willem Dafoe and a young Kyra Segwick as Kovic's highschool sweetheart. John Williams provided the musical score to the film and Tom Paxton wrote the song of the same title. Moore's pro-war novel, "The Green Berets," was made into a movie starring John Wayne and David Janssen, and Moore co-wrote "The Ballad of the Green Berets." His friend, Robert Kennedy, had assisted in arranging for him to train with the Special Forces in preparation for writing the book. Brown was a disabled Vietnam vet, and served as U.S. Secretary of Veteran Affairs from 1993 to 1997.

Answer: Joseph Galloway

Galloway, a photo-journalist, co-wrote "We Were Soldiers Once...And Young," with Col. Henry "Hal" Moore. Galloway was from Refugio, Texas, and Moore resides there today and writes a column for "The Corpus Christi Caller-Times". Galloway writes for the McClatchy papers. In 2008, they published "We Were Soldiers Once and Still" wherein they journey back to the Ia Drang Valley.
Grey, a correspondent for Reuters who was held hostage in Peking for two years during the Cultural Revolution, wrote the fictional novel "Saigon" and Weber wrote "Rules of Engagement".

Answer: Norman Mailer

Mailer, best known for his many screenplays, essays, novels and biographies, was also a vocal antiwar advocate during the Vietnam era.
Newfield, who was at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when Robert Kennedy was assassinated, worked at "The New York Post" and "The Village Voice", and was once a member of SDS, wrote "A Prophetic Minority." Ginsberg was a poet of the 1950s Beat Generation, and a political and social activist who became an early and vocal proponent of drug use, gay rights, anti-war and the "hippy" movements of the 60s. Among his most famous poems is "Howl".

Answer: Daniel Ellsberg

Ellsberg published two books concerning his theft and copying of what became known as The Pentagon Papers, "The Papers on the War" in 1972 and, thirty years later, "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and The Pentagon Papers." He released them to Neil Sheehan of "The New York Times".

When the government took legal action against the "Times" in 1972 to stop their publication, an appellate court judge ordered that they do so. Ellsberg then sent the documents he had illegally copied to other newspapers including "The Washington Post" editor, Ben Bagdikian, who then sent pages to Senator Mike Gravel. Gravel made them a matter of public record by reading them from the Senate Floor into the Congressional Record.

The courts eventually upheld the newspapers' right to publish the Papers under the First Amendment in New York Times Company vs. United States, and the Times won a Pulitzer. Charges for federal espionage were brought against Ellsberg and his "co-conspirator," Anthony Russo, who had helped with the copying.

In 1973, the trial judge ordered a mistrial due to the government's "bizarre" and unlawful acts such as John Erlichman trying to bribe the judge with a job as FBI director, and the "plumbers" Hunt and Liddy breaking into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist to obtain his medical records. The federal government eventually dropped the charges against Ellsberg and Russo. Plumbers Liddy and Hunt, Erlichman and the rest of the gang were not brought to justice until the Post's Woodward and Bernstein broke the Watergate scandal and a Senate Committee investigated and sought to impeach Nixon.

Answer: Denis Johnson

Johnson's Vietnam era book is entitled "Tree of Smoke."
Schaeffer's work of fiction, "Buffalo Afternoon," involves the Vietnam experience of protagonist Pete Bravado and his return home to parades. Kane wrote "Veteran's Day: A Vietnam Memoir," and Grey wrote "Saigon," and "Return to Saigon".

Answer: Gustav Hasford

Hasford's novels, "The Short-Timers," and "Phantom Blooper" revolved around a group of Marines serving in Vietnam, and he claimed to have deserved credit alongside Michael Herr for the screenplay of Stanley Kubrik's "Full Metal Jacket."
Heinemann wrote what he calls an accidental trilogy: "Close Quarters," "Black Virgin Mountain" and "Paco's Story," the latter of which earned the 1987 National Book Award for Fiction. Weber wrote "Rules of Engagement."