Nam Au Go Go by John Akins

by OTB Sat Mar 27, 2021 12:18 am

Title: Nam Au Go Go
Author: John Akins
Publisher: Vineyard Press, Port Jefferson NY, 2005
ISBN 1 930067 38 0

Summary:
John Akins volunteered for the US Marines, figuring that he was probably going to get drafted anyway. All the way to Vietnam he took every opportunity to point out his typing skills, hoping to get a clerk's position and some managerial training whilst in the Marines. Instead, after punching out a bullying Jehovah's Witness on the runway at Khe Sanh, who figured he was an easy mark because he kept to himself to himself and read books, he finds himself transferred to the Combined Action Program, where he learns the sort of special operations skills that have zero transferability when back in the world. He learns Vietnamese, how to call in fire from anything from a Huey Hog to a battleship, and finds himself feeling oddly at home in the world of unconventional warfare, to the point that he begins to relish going into combat, working with a Combined Action Team comprising various misfits at a minuscule firebase exposed to constant attack. Towards the end of his tour, his commander says he can make the specious charges filed against him for murdering 14 NVA prisoners disappear if he re-ups. His reply: I'll only do it if you guarantee I get into jump school.

Thoughts:
This autobiography is a raw account of a veteran's attempt to come to terms with a very violent, troubling tour of duty that left him a changed man. We see glimpses of how this period affected his later life, prompting repeated returns to Vietnam after the war, "searching for my soul", as he put it to one US border security officer who asked him the reason for his travel. Whilst there, he finds a strange peace as he comes to terms with his past. Definitely a guy I would like to go drinking with in Saigon, and I hope one day our paths will cross.