Thanks to Sean Baker, head of production, and to Nicole Burns-Ascue, production manager. I absolutely love this cover and all the covers of my novels. They tell the story so well. Thanks to Dennelle Catlett, Amazon Publishing PR, and to Erica Moriarty, Kyla Pigoni, Lindsey Bragg, and all the others who tirelessly promote my work. Thanks to Jaye Whitney Debber, production editor, and Valerie Paquin, copyeditor. Thanks to Jeff Belle, vice president of Amazon Publishing, and Mikyla Bruder, publisher, and associate publisher Hai-Yen Mura. This is quite a team and I’m humbled to be part of it.
Thank you to the two men I worked with that summer of 1979 who inspired this work. Thanks to my former brother-in-law, Rick McHale, who got me the job and the education of a lifetime. Thank you to my high school buddies for allowing me to use their likenesses and some of our stories. I want to emphasize again, however, that this is a work of fiction. My high school buddies have grown to be great men who, though I live far away, I still consider my good friends.
Thanks to my mother, Patty Dugoni, who gave me my love of reading and writing. I didn’t fool her that night I snuck home and jumped in bed. She just let me think I did.
Thanks to my daughter, Catherine, and to my wife, Cristina. You’ve helped me to achieve a dream come true.
Last but never least, thanks to you, my loyal readers, for your continued support. Your emails have been heartwarming, intelligent, and inspiring. This has been a difficult year for all of us, but this book helped me put this experience in perspective. Most of the young men who served in Vietnam served for a full year. Marines served thirteen months. Those who served in World War I and World War II served much longer. They were separated from their families, their country, and their jobs. They awoke each day wondering if it might be their last. And the Vietnamese people endured more than fifty years of war.
Heroes. Every one of them.
RESOURCES
I know the Vietnam War experience is highly personal for each of those men and women who served. What I have attempted to capture and re-create in The World Played Chess is one fictional marine’s experience based upon the stories two veterans told to me during the summer of 1979 and thereafter and all the firsthand accounts documented in the books, articles, treatises, and military papers on the marine experience in Vietnam, as well as movies and documentaries. These resources are set forth in the attached list. Any mistakes are mine and mine alone.
Documentaries
The Vietnam War, ten-part series, directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, 2019.
Articles and Journals
“Combat Photographer: Vietnam Through the Lens of Marine Corporal William T. Perkins, Jr.” by Frank Blazich, October 12, 2017, https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/combat-photographer-Vietnam.
“The Psychological Effects of the Vietnam War,” Edge, Josh Hochgesang, Tracye Lawyer, Toby Stevenson, War & Peace: Media and War.
“US Marines in Vietnam Vietnamization and Redeployment 1970–1971,” Graham A. Cosmas and Lieutenant Colonel Terrence P. Murray, US Marine Corps （USMC）， History and Museums Division Headquarters, US Marine Corps, Washington, DC, 1986.
“US Marines in Vietnam, The War that Would Not End 1971–1973,” Major Charles D. Melson, USMC, and Lieutenant Colonel Curtis G. Arnold, USMC, History and Museums Division Headquarters, US Marine Corps, Washington, DC, 1991.
“The Marines in Vietnam 1954–1973: An Anthology and Annotated Bibliography,” second edition, History and Museums Division Headquarters, US Marine Corps, Washington, DC, 1985.
Books
Bing West, The Village, Pocket Books, 2003.
Dan Brookes and Bob Hillerby, Shooting Vietnam: The War by Its Military Photographers, Pen & Sword, 2019.
Don McQuinn, Targets: A Vietnam War Novel, Raven’s Call Press, 1980.
Jim Ross, Outside the Wire, Stackpole Books, 2013.
Mark Baker, Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Soldiers Who Fought There, Berkley Books, 1981.
Michael Herr, Dispatches, Vintage International, 1977.
Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War, fortieth anniversary edition, Picador Henry Holt, 1977.
R. C. LeBeau, Donut Hole: A Marine’s Real-Life Battles in Vietnam During 1967 and 1968 Marines, First Force Logistical Command Clutch Platoon, 2019.
Tim O’Brien, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Broadway Books, 1975.
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried, Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1990.
William F. Brown, Our Vietnam Wars: As Told by 100 Veterans Who Served, Booknook.biz, 2018.
Movies
Apocalypse Now
Born on the Fourth of July The Boys in Company C
The Deer Hunter