Fifty years ago, I was drafted into the US Army and a few months later, I was provided an all-expense paid tour of Southeast Asia. I served a year in Vietnam (1969-70) as an Army enlisted man in the Americal Division. When I returned from Vietnam and was admitted to graduate school at West Virginia University, I decided that I would write about my experiences in the war. I actually wrote a couple of chapters of a novel and sent them off to a few literary agents - all of whom uniformly replied that no one would pay to read and be reminded of that awful war.

But I vowed to myself that at some point in my life, I would write about my time in Vietnam. It would be on my bucket list. But of course, life got in the way and I found it necessary to find a real day job to support my young family. And so the book was put on the back burner. A couple of years back when I decided to retire from my public relations business – Brown Communications - my wife and a few friends encouraged me write my story. And so I began a long and, at times, difficult journey to compose a novel about Vietnam, and how a young soldier was affected by the experience. 

I had never harbored any illusions that my novel would be commercially published, but I knew that finishing the project would be personally rewarding. After all, it was number one on my bucket list of things to do.

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John Brown was the owner of Brown Communications (now owned by his son Bryan Brown). He has also been a newspaper wine and food columnist for more than 30 years. He continues to write for the Charleston (WV) Gazette-Mail and for The State Journal - a statewide business weekly. He is a graduate of West Virginia University and lives in Charleston, West Virginia.