Suicide Charlie: A Vietnam War Story [Mass Market Paperback]

Norman L Russell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1995

"Suicide Charlie": the bastard infantry company that fought where the combat was bloodiest.

Norman Russell was nineteen, a sportswriter for a small-town newspaper, when he was drafted for the Vietnam War and landed in the army's hottest spot as an infantryman in the 25th Division. Charlie Company, better known as "Suicide Charlie", had earned its nickname. Mole City was their next assignment. A combat patrol base smack in the middle of the enemy's resupply route off the Ho Chi Minh Trail into South Vietnam, Mole City was a sitting duck designed to provoke the NVA forces across the border.

Outmanned and overrun, Charlie Company barely survived the furious onslaught as mortars, rockets, and rocket-propelled grenades rained down, shrapnel exploded all around, and bullets screamed overhead. For Russell, whose own father committed suicide after returning from infantry duty in World War II, it marked his "acquaintance with the Devil"-- and the beginning of a remarkable journey through the despair and depravity of war, the camaraderie that made the horror almost endurable, and the torturous questions that lingered long after his tour of duty in Vietnam.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Drafted in 1968 and sent to Vietnam when he was 19 years old, Russell served as a mortarman with the so-called Suicide Charlie company of the 25th U.S. Army Division. He recounts how the demands of war hardened him, turned him into a good soldier and left him haunted by certain experiences--most notably, the hideous death of a Vietnamese boy. "The further I got into the war," he writes, "the less sense it made." He began to rebel against routine orders, one of which was to shoot at Vietnamese children hanging around the camp's trash dump. After his return to the States in 1969, Russell faced another kind of battle--against postcombat depression and delayed stress. His memoir is marred by occasional moments of misplaced self-admiration ("The true miracle is that we comported ourselves so well--even nobly--under difficult circumstances"). Russell wrote and produced Fathers and Sons: Two Generations of American Combat Veterans for PBS-TV.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

The author writes of his experience as the typical 19-year-old draftee infantryman dispatched in late 1968 to the 25th Division on the Cambodian border. In a low-key manner, he proceeds through the draft, basic training, arrival in country, the travails of a grunt, the warrior bond, R & R, and return home. He articulates the common Vietnam combat experiences as well as anyone: the drudgery, horror, absurdities, futility, and captivation of war; the bond of camaraderie that lured him back from the rear to the field; and the trauma that scarred his postwar life. Russell's memoir is the saga of a crash maturation in which time in country became each soldier's most valuable possession and key element of self-definition. Now a self-employed writer who has survived serious readjustment problems, Russell possesses a philosophic maturity made resonant by his 25-year vantage point. One of the best of the hundreds of first-person accounts. Military Book Club main selection.
- Joe P. Dunn, Converse Coll., Spartanburg, S.C.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Pocket; First Edition edition (April 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671522795
• ISBN-13: 978-0671522797
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 4.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,007,111 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book gives is as accurate as any I've read on Vietnam., January 31, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Suicide Charlie: A Vietnam War Story (Mass Market Paperback)

This book was the first one I ever read on the subject, having avoided books about the war up to that point. But when I came accross a description of it in a library trade publication, curiosity got the better of me. I served in the same division as Norm Russell, during the same time period. Like him, I served in a mortar platoon. His descriptions of the conditions, attitudes and reactions were in many respects identical to mine. I highly recommend this book to those interested in first-person accounts of combat service in Vietnam during the time period of 1968-69.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book captures the reader., July 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Suicide Charlie: A Vietnam War Story (Mass Market Paperback)

I picked this book up from a library. I started reading it on an airplane. Once I started reading it, I didn't stop. I read the whole book at once, because it really captivated me. Russell's descriptions are full of anguish, yet so real. A truly excellent book of a time when all hell broke loose.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good read, March 1, 2000

By 

Pye (Irvine, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Suicide Charlie: A Vietnam War Story (Hardcover)

I first read _Suicide Charlie_ in highschool and even though I was kinda naive and immature back then I still liked it. The book has real-life characters who's names have not been changed and it tells of the damaging effects of war on a person's psyche, heart, and inner being.