Combat Correspondent   Gus interviewing POWs.       He saw the spilling of blood and the mangling of hearts and minds, but when he wrote them all down, they were just G.I. Joe stories.  He had wanted to write the real thing.
    "We were public relations men for the war and the Marine Corps," Hasford says in a phone call from Los Angeles.  "We appeared to be journalists, but we were really simply promoting the war and promoting the Marine Corps." --from "Alabama Native Wrote the Book on Vietnam," the Birmingham News, 1987         As a Combat Correspondent I was part of the vast gray machine that does not dispense clean information.  The American weakness is that we try to rule the world with public relations, then end up believing our own con jobs.  We are adrift in a mythical ship which no longer touches land. --from The Phantom Blooper            The Short-Timers  |  The Phantom Blooper  |  A Gypsy Good Time  |  Full Metal Jacket   |  Stories  |  Poems   Profiles  |  Interviews  |  Reviews  |   Book Theft  |  Obituaries  |  Remembrance  |  Photos  |  Links