Interview With MWSA

Last month, I was interviewed by the Military Writers Society of America, and they have posted that interview on their website here: MWSA Interview with Joshua Bowe

It was very nice, after all these years spent immersed in the writing and research process, to finally talk about what it was like. It’s very personal and from the heart. I shared this interview on Facebook last week and got so much kind and encouraging feedback that I was really overwhelmed. Thank you to the MWSA for taking the time to help share this story!

Silver Medal

Dad and I were very honored to be awarded the Silver Medal for “Vietnam Memoir” by the Military Writers Society of America. Thank you to all who shared their stories with us and made this a successful project that has touched many lives! MWSA Review

2nd Edition Release

I wanted to announce that the 2nd Edition of The Ground You Stand Upon has recently been published and is available on Amazon for Kindle, as well as the full-color hardcover and black & white paperback.

The original edition of this book was published in May of 2018. The hardest part was actually finishing the project, as I continued to come across new information and new people with stories to tell, such as family members and friends of the fallen, as well as other former Alpha Company soldiers. At a certain point, I had to simply finish with the information I had at the time. I actually had a deadline of sorts. Many Alpha Company soldiers had already contributed much to this book, and I had promised them that I would have print copies available at the 5/7th Cav’s upcoming bi-annual reunion that was scheduled for August of 2018. Since that time, I’ve met a handful of additional Alpha Company soldiers, some at the reunion my dad and I attended, and others through email.

The catalyst for publishing this revised edition was a phone call I received in December 2018 from a gentleman named John Benson. Apparently, he had written an article in 2017 for his local newspaper commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the death of an Alpha Company soldier who was killed in action, and who had been a close friend of my dad. A friend of his happened to be reading this book and recognized the name of the soldier from their hometown whom John had written his article about. He called John to tell him about it, and then John called me. He provided me with details about this soldier’s life before being drafted into the Army, as well as the text of his citation for the Silver Star that he was awarded for his actions during his final battle. Before this, I wasn’t even aware that he had been awarded the Silver Star. John also put me in contact with one of the soldier’s hometown friends. He spoke of their years growing up together, as well as the day he saw soldiers in dress uniform approaching the family home of his friend along with their priest. I’d always felt that this soldier, being good buddies with my dad before he was killed, deserved to have a more prominent role in this story—and now he does.

Reunion

In August of 2018, Dad and I flew to Pittsburgh to attend his first reunion. I had just printed the first two hundred copies of the book, and many had already been delivered to former soldiers of Alpha Company. One was Joe Williams, who greeted us in the lobby and made us both feel very welcome. “It’s sort of strange reading something that’s written about yourself and your friends,” he said. While there, we met many more fellow troopers from the company, including Gene Cross, the guy whose helmet Dad recalls with the hole shot in it.

Another fellow I met was not a fellow soldier but rather a CBS journalist. Norman Lloyd was embedded with Bravo Company, 5/7th Cav during their incursion into Cambodia in May of 1970. His film features much of the footage taken as they fought the NVA there. The film is named for the young soldier, Chris Keffalos (nicknamed “Shakey”), who was killed atop a hill shortly after discovering what turned out to be an enormous underground stockpile of NVA weapons. While producing this film decades later, Lloyd reunited many Bravo Company soldiers who served during the Cambodian mission. He was kind enough to give me a copy of his documentary Shakey’s Hill.

We were sitting around late one night in the hotel, and Bobby Hansen was recalling their first big battle in the mangrove swamps, trying to rescue a couple of downed helicopter pilots on October 4th 1966. In very animated fashion, he was demonstrating how one of their Korean War veteran platoon sergeants would run from one spider hole to the next, killing NVA troops with wild abandon. “I got the little bastard!” he exclaimed. Another Alpha Company trooper I had just recently met, Chester Millay, remarked how all he could remember about that day was a bunch of noise, screaming, and chaos. He was perplexed at how Bobby could remember everything so vividly, “like it was yesterday,” as he put it. As I listened to their conversation, what struck me was that despite their outward appearance, they weren’t old men to me. To me, they were the same nineteen and twenty-year-old kids they were over fifty years ago.